If your business email ends in @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @comcast.net, or @aol.com, you're leaving credibility on the table every time you send a quote.
Why it matters more than it should
A property manager comparing two bids sees cody@secondgendigital.com and secondgen1987@gmail.com. Fair or not, one of those looks like a company.
For residential work it's a small ding. For commercial and property management work, it's sometimes disqualifying.
What you should have
An address on your own domain: yourname@yourcompany.com. It costs about $6 to $7 per user per month through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and it takes an hour to set up correctly.
Set these up while you're at it
- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records — these keep your quotes out of spam folders
- A shared info@ address so nothing sits in one person's inbox
- An email signature with your phone, license number, and website
- Forwarding rules so field staff see what they need to see
The deliverability part nobody mentions
Sending business email from a free account, or from a domain without proper authentication records, means a real percentage of your quotes land in spam.
The customer thinks you never followed up. You think they went with someone else. Both of you are wrong.
We set this up as part of every website launch, including the authentication records, because a quote nobody receives is worse than one that gets rejected.
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Everything in this article is part of what we do for small businesses across Delaware & Delmarva every month.
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