I am just beginning the VA journey. Since my current email address is used for 'everyday business' (basically family and teacher communication), and is 'cute' (created when my children were very young, and it reflects that), should I secure a NEW email address with my business name in it, and if so, which email works best? gmail? hotmail? etc... Is one email provider more easily applied to other helpful planning tools like time tracking, etc?

Thanks! These forums are amazing!

Depending on where you decide to host your website, you can usually get email addresses with that (like name@yourdomainname.com). Most of the advice I have seen is to set up an email address with your company name instead of using gmail or whatever.

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Devon Zimny
Vintage VA Services

Yes you definitely need to brand your email. I also have several so when I sign up for newsletters, software, etc. it does not come to my regular email.

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Lisa Olinda of Olinda Services
Keeping you on the path to success!
www.olindaservices.com

Hi:

Everyone told me it was unprofessional to have an email account like x@hotmail.com or x@yahoo.com. I didn't understand at first but I do now. If you choose info@yourdomainname.com or sales@yourdomainname.com or name@yourdomainname.com (and your web host will probably have more than one email to offer you), it shows your brand (company name) and projects your professionalism. As well having a few like the above examples, are great to use for organizational purposes. If you are like me and get a lot of email from clients, groups you belong to, newsletters/blogs you subscribe to - it is easier to organize when you can create accounts using more than one email address.

Diane L. Coville
ALTERNATIVE OFFICE ASSISTANCE

How do I find these 'host' sites? I'd love to have my own 'domain name'... and link my email to it so there is 'name recognition', per se!

Thanks for any help you can give me with this... I'm a newbie at 'domains'!!

Laurie

I'm not sure where you are located, but I recommend Go Daddy - by far the best - excellent customer service, more than competitive prices: http://www.godaddy.comhttp://www.god...2&checkAvail=1

That link will take you directly to where you search domains. The reason I recommend them is that initially I had my site with someone else who acquired my domain for me and hosted my site but long story to short - their servers were hacked and all 600 customers they had were lost - including mine. They "held" my domain for ransom so I wouldn't quit with the webhost, however, they disappeared into receivership and I still did not control my domain until a local web host that I use now recommended Go Daddy and I am not sorry I went with them - they showed me how to get control of my domain back and now I have 2 sites with them.

You can also just Google "domain names search" and I'll bet Google will come up with a lot more choices for you.

Diane L. Coville

I beg to differ on the gmail, yahoo sites. I have a yahoo email account and I am doing just fine with it and it is also FREE which newly started companies like mine, the money saved is well worth it while I gain my clients.

Kristen

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:daisy:Kristen Voss
KPV Virtual Office Solutions

Originally Posted by Kryssy221

I beg to differ on the gmail, yahoo sites. I have a yahoo email account and I am doing just fine with it and it is also FREE which newly started companies like mine, the money saved is well worth it while I gain my clients. Kristen

Hi Kristen,

I agree that as a new VA you may be functioning fine with a yahoo account for the time being. However, as your practice grows, you will probably find that in order to develop your personal 'brand', a unique domain name becomes something you wish to develop to accompany your logo, website, etc. And as most domain names only cost around $10 a year to maintain, it really is a worthwhile investment in your 'newly started company'.

Frankly, given the choice between a company that bothers to register and make use of their own domain name and one that doesn't, I would hire the domain registered over the non-registered. In our business, perception really does make a difference because we are virtual.

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Kate V. Kerans
Kerans Virtual Assistance

I personally use Yahoo Hosting and like it fine. It's about $10 a month for my domain and pretty much however many email accounts I want.

I mainly use my personal email address, but I have the account set up to automatically forward any emails to my business email address to the personal inbox so it's all in the same spot and I don't have to go to different places. So my personal email is an @yahoo.com address but my business email is kari@yourlefthand.net which is the same as my domain name.

Go Daddy is rated pretty well but if you do some searches you will find some VERY comparable companies with great pricing structures. I just did some research on this recently. There is a company called Just Host that gets really good reviews....Host Gator is another one.

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Kari Thevenot, Virtual Assistant
www.yourlefthand.net

Thank you Kate. I will definately look into that with it being that inexpensive!!

Kristen

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:daisy:Kristen Voss
KPV Virtual Office Solutions