Does your e-mail address make your ISP a permanent business partner?

"YourName"@"YourCompany".com or "YourCompany"@AOL.com?

Are you using an e-mail address at your Internet Service Provider's domain (e.g. AOL.com, MSN.com, Adelphia.net) for your business? Or an e-mail address at a free e-mail service, such as Hotmail.com?

If so, you're not only undermining your own credibility, you're also creating a long-term commitment to that 3rd-party company that's providing your e-mail address.

For example, let's say your name is Chris Jones, and you own the company North Idaho Widgets (any resemblance to a real Chris Jones or North Idaho Widgets is completely coincidental, by the way). If you're using your ISP for your e-mail, you might have an e-mail address like NIWidgets@AOL.com. Or, if you're using a free e-mail service, perhaps your e-mail address is ChrisJ957@Hotmail.com.

In comparison, if North Idaho Widgets had its own domain name of NIWidgets.com, you could have e-mail addresses such as: ChrisJ@NIWidgets.com, Info@NIWidgets.com or Sales@NIWidgets.com. These look much better, don't they?

What’s wrong with free or ISP-based e-mail addresses?

The primary concern with using a 3rd-party company for your e-mail address is that you can’t switch to a different company without also changing your e-mail address, which is a big deal if you’ve printed it on business cards and advertising.

It’s not uncommon at all to become dissatisfied with a free e-mail service company as it experiments with different features, becomes more complicated to use, or cuts quality in order to become profitable. An ISP has the same potential problems, plus the fact that you might move to an area that the ISP doesn’t serve.

Also, addresses like ChrisJ@Hotmail.com or ChrisJ@AOL.com just don’t look as professional as ChrisJ@NIWidgets.com. Worse yet, because there's probably more than one Chris out there with a last initial of J, ChrisJ@Hotmail.com probably isn't available. That's why people end up with addresses like ChrisJ957@Hotmail.com (the random numbers were added to make the address unique).

So, you’ve decided you should probably have an e-mail address at your own domain, but aren’t sure how to proceed. Fortunately, it's fairly easy and cheap to do. If you're comfortable with filling out web forms (which you've done if you've ever made a purchase on the Web), you can do it. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Get your own domain name

I talked at length in last month's column about what domain names are, why you want one of your own, and how to get one.

For the purpose of this month’s column, suffice it to say that you'll need to go to a registration company such as www.Dotster.com or www.GoDaddy.com, register a domain (typically between $8.95 and $14.95 per year), and "park" it. "Parking" it means that you’re only acquiring ownership of the domain but aren't ready to start using it yet.

Step 2: Get e-mail hosting

You’ve got two choices here. If you’re going to have a website created shortly, the most cost-effective choice is a combination website and e-mail hosting package. Search for "web hosting" on the Internet or look in the Yellow Pages under "Internet." Through a national company, this should cost less than $8/month for a simple website.

(Note: Be careful not to end up with a "cut-rate" web host at these prices - there are web hosts that offer full-service hosting and great customer support at these prices, you just need to know where to look!)

However, if you do not plan to have a website soon, just sign up for e-mail hosting. Search for "email only hosting" on the Internet (since this isn’t as common of a service, smaller local companies are less likely to offer it).

Then follow the e-mail host’s instructions on how to make your domain name work in conjunction with their service.

Step 3: Check your e-mail

Checking e-mail boils down to somehow getting to the e-mail host's computer that’s sitting on the Internet with your e-mail on it (that computer is called an "e-mail server"). This is done with either a web browser or a special e-mail program.

Web mail

With web mail you use Navigator or Internet Explorer to browse to a special web page that checks your e-mail. This is how the free services such as Hotmail work – many ISPs offer web mail too.

The key thing to keep in mind is that e-mail is NOT downloaded to your local computer’s hard disk, but rather is stored on the e-mail server. A benefit of this is that if you travel a lot, you can use any computer that’s connected to the Internet to see your e-mail.

E-mail programs

This is the traditional situation, where a dedicated e-mail program, such as Outlook or Eudora, runs on your computer, occasionally connecting to the Internet to communicate with the e-mail server. Outgoing e-mail is uploaded from your computer to the e-mail server, which in turn sends it out onto the Internet.  Conversely, incoming e-mail that has been received by the e-mail server is downloaded to your computer’s hard disk.

The advantage of this is that you’ve got access to your downloaded e-mail even when you aren’t connected to the Internet. Plus, you can store as much e-mail as your hard disk can hold (web mail services have limits on how much can be stored).

Also, these e-mail programs are very powerful. They have built-in abilities to manage incoming e-mail using rules, check more than one e-mail account at a time, filter out spam, and so on.

The e-mail host company will have instructions on how to configure your e-mail program. At a minimum, they’ll tell you:

• The name of the e-mail server to check for incoming mail. This is usually called a POP ("Post Office Protocol") server.
• The name of the e-mail server to send outgoing e-mail to (the "SMTP server" in techno-speak).
• Your user name (usually the same as your e-mail address).
• Password.

So, consider making the leap and start enjoying the stability, freedom and professionalism of having an e-mail address at your own domain.