Free business email in Nigeria: set up name@yourbusiness.com.ng

A CAC certificate, a business bank account and a WhatsApp Business line are the first three things most Nigerian businesses sort out. The email address is usually the fourth, and it is usually a Gmail. Replacing it with sales@yourbusiness.com.ng is the cheapest credibility upgrade available: the domain costs a few thousand naira a year, the mailboxes can be free, and nothing has to be paid in dollars.

Quick answer

Register yourbusiness.com.ng (or a direct .ng) at a NiRA-accredited registrar that takes naira by card, transfer or USSD. Create a free OquMail workspace with no card, add the domain, paste four DNS records at the registrar, click Verify and create your mailboxes. Then add the mailbox to the Gmail app on your phone over IMAP so you answer from where you already are.

Choosing your domain: .com.ng, .ng or .com

Nigeria's country domains are run by NiRA (the Nigeria Internet Registration Association). The .com.ng ending is open to anyone and is what most Nigerian companies use. A direct .ng is shorter and costs more. Accredited registrars include Whogohost (now GO54), Qservers, Web4Africa and DomainKing, and all of them price in naira.

• .com.ng: the default for Nigerian businesses; open registration, no documents needed, cheapest renewal
• .ng: short and premium; good for brands and startups that want a two-letter ending
• .org.ng, .edu.ng, .gov.ng: for NGOs, schools and government; .gov.ng is restricted
• .com: fine if most of your customers are abroad; Nigerian buyers trust it too, but .com.ng says you are local and reachable

Why a domain address matters more in Nigeria than elsewhere

Nigerian businesses are vetted harder than most. A procurement officer at a bank or an oil-services firm will search your domain before replying. Paystack and Flutterwave merchant onboarding, Jumia and Konga seller accounts, and most corporate vendor forms ask for a company email, and a Gmail answer gets a second look. Foreign clients are blunter: a quote from a free webmail address sent from Lagos often goes unanswered, while the same quote from accounts@yourbusiness.com.ng gets a reply. Your CAC business name on the domain closes that gap.

Step by step: from domain to working inbox

1. Search and register yourbusiness.com.ng at a NiRA-accredited registrar. Pay in naira by card, bank transfer or USSD; registration is usually live within the hour.
2. Go to oqumail.com and create a free workspace with your name and a password. No card, no trial countdown, no dollar payment.
3. In the dashboard choose Add domain and type yourbusiness.com.ng. OquMail shows you the four DNS records to add.
4. Log in to your registrar, open DNS Management or the Zone Editor for the domain, and paste the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records exactly as shown.
5. Return to OquMail and click Verify. The live DNS check tells you which record is still missing, so you never guess.
6. Create your mailboxes: info@, sales@, accounts@ and one per person. The free plan allows up to 15 mailboxes with 5 GB each.
7. Open webmail, send a test to your Gmail, then add the account to the Gmail app or Outlook on your phone with the settings below.

The four DNS records OquMail needs

On Whogohost, Qservers and most Nigerian registrar panels the DNS editor is cPanel-based: look for Zone Editor or Advanced DNS. Delete the MX records (the settings that tell the internet where to deliver email for your domain) the registrar added for its own bundled mailboxes first, otherwise incoming mail splits between two servers and some of it vanishes.

• MX — host @, value mail.oqumail.com, priority 10
• SPF (TXT at @) — v=spf1 MX (Mail Exchanger — where incoming email is delivered) a:mail.oqumail.com ~all
• DKIM (TXT at your selector ._domainkey) — v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=… (the exact key is shown in your OquMail dashboard)
• DMARC (TXT at _dmarc) — v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain.com

OquMail connection settings

• Incoming (IMAP): mail.oqumail.com, port 993, SSL/TLS
• Outgoing (SMTP): mail.oqumail.com, port 587, STARTTLS
• Username: your full email address (you@yourdomain.com)
• Password: the same password you use for OquMail webmail

What actually costs money, and what does not

The domain is a yearly fee in naira at the registrar. The email is free: OquMail's free plan has no card step and includes 15 mailboxes, 3 domains, 5 GB per mailbox, webmail, IMAP and SMTP for any mail app, delivery logs and a send API. That matters in Nigeria specifically, because many banks limit or block dollar payments on naira cards, and a Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 subscription that fails to renew locks the whole team out of their mail. A plan that never asks for a card cannot fail that way.

Pitfalls common in Nigeria

• registrar (the company where you bought your domain, e.g. Namecheap or GoDaddy)-bundled mailboxes with no DKIM. Mail from a new .com.ng domain already gets extra scrutiny at Gmail and Outlook; without DKIM and DMARC it lands in spam.
• Choosing SSL on port 587 in the mail app. It must be STARTTLS. This is the single most common setup mistake.
• MTN, Airtel and Glo mobile data all block outbound port 25. Port 587 works everywhere, so never configure a mail app on 25.
• Keeping the Gmail address on your Instagram bio, Google Business Profile and flyers after the domain is live. Update every surface the same week.
• Skipping DMARC. Invoice-swap fraud using lookalike Nigerian company domains is common; publish at least p=none and read the reports.
• Letting the domain lapse. Set auto-renew and keep a working payment method at the registrar; a lapsed .com.ng can be bought by someone else.

Common questions

Do I need a CAC registration to get a .com.ng domain?

No. NiRA registrars sell .com.ng to anyone. Register the domain in the exact business name on your CAC certificate anyway, so the email, the bank account and the invoices all match when a client checks.

Can I use it with the Gmail app on my phone?

Yes. Add an account in the Gmail app, choose Other, and enter the IMAP and SMTP settings above with your full address as the username. The same mailbox then stays in sync on your phone, in webmail and in Outlook on a laptop.

What happens when I grow past 15 people?

Extra mailboxes are added on request; your DNS and existing mailboxes do not change, so there is no migration. Most Nigerian SMEs never reach the limit.

Want to see how your own domain is set up? Use the free SPF checker, DMARC checker and MX lookup: they run in your browser and store nothing.