A business email address is an email address connected with your company that typically uses your company’s website as the domain name. It helps your customers and partners identify you as a legitimate representative of your organization.
In this article, we’ll show you how to make a business email address that keeps your data secure against hacks, data breaches, and surveillance. While there are many choices for business email addresses, providers like Gmail or Outlook don’t use end-to-end encryption to prevent your messages from being accessed by third parties.
Let’s take a look at how to quickly and easily set up a business email address through Proton for Business — as well as how we keep your data private, even from us.
- What is a business email address?
- How to create a business email address
- What are the benefits of a business email address?
- Why select a security-first service for business email?
What is a business email address?
A business email address is different from a personal email address like yourcompany@gmail.com.
Rather, a business email address combines a username such as yourname with an internet suffix, like companyname.com, with an @ symbol in the middle. So your business email address might look like yourname@companyname.com.
The suffix looks like a website because it’s part of the internet address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) used to locate webpages, such as the website you’re on currently: https://proton.me.
How to create a business email address through Proton
With Proton for Business, you can create email addresses using your domain name. The following overview includes where to start if you don’t yet have a domain.
For more detailed instructions, check out our domain setup guide.
1. Secure a domain for your business email address
If you don’t have a domain name already, you can search for and purchase one through a registrar like Porkbun, which also offers web hosting and other domain management tools. When you create a domain, you’ll need to decide on a couple of things: the domain name (typically your business name if it’s available) and the domain extension, or top-level domain (such as .com and .co, which are both short for “commercial,” or something unique like .tech or .me).
2. Choose a Proton subscription plan for your business email account
Once you have a domain, select a Proton for Business plan. If you’re using your domain with another email service and want to switch to Proton, migrating your data is easy and fully supported.
3. Connect your custom domain to your Proton account
Add DNS (Domain Name System) records from Proton Mail to your domain provider’s DNS console. Detailed instructions to add DNS records.
4. Add users and email addresses to your Proton account
You can add users and assign business email addresses on the users and addresses settings page (see our detailed instructions to add users). You’ll be asked to fill out and save the following information for each user:
- Name
- Email address
- Password and confirm password
- Key strength (the default option is best for most people)
- Account storage
5. Troubleshoot with Proton support
If you need help at any stage of setting up your business email account, Proton’s support team is standing by.
What are the benefits of a business email address?
A business email address plays a role in how targets of your messaging gauge the character and quality of what you do.
- Professionalism: Generic business email addresses such as yourname@gmail.com look less official and are more likely to be marked as spam, whereas custom addresses project authority and authenticity.
- Impact: A professional business email address matters to name recognition and the effectiveness of email marketing (which is among the most effective channels(nuova finestra)). Every message has the potential to reinforce your brand and increase its performance.
- Legality: Email is valid, organized proof of communication when legal records are required. So anything business-critical should be emailed.
- Security: Depending on the security measures taken by your email service provider, a business email account can safeguard company data and ensure it’s in compliance with privacy laws.
Small businesses may still pursue a generic address through a free service, either because of the cost-savings or because they find the prospect of setting up a business email address daunting. But they generally pay with their data, which is tracked, collected, and potentially shared or leaked to third parties.
Why select a security-first service for business email?
In addition to routinely sharing your data with third parties, popular email service providers such as Google, Outlook, and Yahoo don’t use the most secure encryption methods. Although your email is protected in transit through TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption, your email service provider retains access to your messages. Because these service providers hold your encryption keys, you don’t have true control of your data.
We set out to solve these security issues when we launched Proton Mail in 2014. Since then, it has become the world’s most popular encrypted email service with over 100 million users, including over 50,000 businesses. Let’s look at how Proton Mail is built to be private by design:
Comprehensive privacy
Instead of only encrypting your emails in transit and decrypting them on our servers, Proton Mail ensures your messages are always encrypted and accessible only to you. We do this through our battle-tested end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption. This makes your information inaccessible to us and much more secure against data breaches. You can also protect your emails sent to outside services like Gmail or Outlook by using password-protected emails.
Proton services are compliant with a range of privacy laws, from HIPAA to the EU’s GDPR. As a Swiss company, Proton isn’t subject to US law so we cannot be compelled to engage in bulk surveillance or warrantless data requests as US-based email providers are. You’re protected by strict data protection laws and a constitutional right to privacy.
Stringent security
Cyberattacks are rampant, so Proton offers multiple layers of defense.
- Detect phishing attempts: Our PhishGuard system catches and flags phishing attempts seeking to compromise your data, sending you a warning with every detection.
- Log in securely: Data breaches in recent years have leaked billions of passwords, so two-factor authentication (2FA) is a must. You choose the method, from physical security keys to an authenticator app, and can enforce 2FA companywide as an administrator.
- Meet regulatory requirements: Proton is ISO 27001 certified (an international standard for information security management systems), and its effectiveness is regularly re-verified through audits by independent security experts. That means your data stays protected and in line with the law.
- Layer on protections: Proton Sentinel is an advanced account protection program that uses AI and human analysis to respond to any suspicious activity with 24/7 support (available with various subscription plans). This level of security is advisable for executives, tech workers, small businesses, and anyone concerned about hacking threats.
Part of a secure ecosystem
Proton for Business doesn’t just give you secure mail. It also comes with access to secure calendar, drive, docs, password manager, and VPN(nuova finestra). This means you can protect all your business data with the same end-to-end encryption that secures your emails, making collaboration with colleagues and clients much safer.
