Free business email in the US: name@yourbusiness.com without the monthly fee

Most US small businesses form the LLC, get the EIN, open the bank account, and then put a Gmail address on the website because the "business email" quotes all came back at six to eight dollars per user per month. For a plumber with three trucks or a two-person agency that is a real line item. Email on your own .com does not have to cost that: the domain is a yearly fee at the registrar and the mailboxes can be free. This guide walks through it, including the parts that are specific to the US.

Quick answer

Register yourbusiness.com at a registrar with honest renewal pricing (Cloudflare, Porkbun or Namecheap), create a free OquMail workspace with no card, add the domain, paste four DNS records at the registrar, click Verify, and create a mailbox for each person plus hello@ and billing@. Then add the mailbox to Outlook, Apple Mail or your iPhone with the settings below.

Choosing your domain: .com first, then the rest

In the United States the convention is simply .com. Customers type it by habit, and a .net or .biz version of a taken name looks like the second choice it is. A .us domain exists and is open to US citizens, residents and businesses with a real US presence, but it is rare enough that people assume a typo. If the exact .com is taken, a short modifier (getacme.com, acmeplumbingtx.com) beats a different ending.

• .com: the default; register it even if you also buy another ending, and point both at the same mailboxes
• .us: open to anyone with a US nexus; fine for local services, unfamiliar to most customers
• .co, .io, .ai: common among startups and software companies; make sure the .com is not a competitor
• Registrars: Cloudflare registrar (the company where you bought your domain, e.g. Namecheap or GoDaddy) sells at cost, Porkbun and Namecheap are inexpensive, GoDaddy and Squarespace Domains are fine if you ignore the email upsell at checkout

Why it matters for an LLC or sole proprietor

Nobody will refuse to work with you over a Gmail address, but a lot of small decisions go against you quietly. Business bank and payment-processor applications ask for a business email and a reviewer looks at it. Commercial clients, property managers and general contractors compare your bid with two others, and the one from a domain address reads as the established business. Customers who get a receipt from name@yourbusiness.com are less likely to question it than one from a personal address. And when you hire, a mailbox on your domain stays with the company when the person leaves; a personal Gmail used for work walks out the door with them.

Step by step: from domain to working inbox

1. Register yourbusiness.com. Check the renewal price before you buy, not just the first-year price, and turn on auto-renew.
2. Go to oqumail.com and create a free workspace. No card and no trial that converts to a charge.
3. In the dashboard choose Add domain and type yourbusiness.com. OquMail shows the four DNS records to add.
4. At the registrar open the DNS settings for the domain and add the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records exactly as shown. If you bought the domain at Squarespace or GoDaddy, delete the placeholder MX and email records they pre-fill.
5. Return to OquMail and click Verify. The live DNS check shows which record is still missing.
6. Create mailboxes: one per person, plus hello@ for the public and billing@ for invoices and receipts. The free plan allows up to 15 mailboxes with 5 GB each.
7. Send a test from webmail, then add the account to Outlook, Apple Mail or the Mail app on your iPhone with the settings below.

The four DNS records OquMail needs

Cloudflare: keep the MX and TXT records unproxied (grey cloud). Namecheap: use Advanced DNS and set the domain to Namecheap BasicDNS first. Squarespace Domains: DNS settings, then Custom records. GoDaddy: My Products, DNS. Remove any MX records (the settings that tell the internet where to deliver email for your domain) that is not mail.oqumail.com so mail does not split between two providers.

• 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 it costs

The domain is a yearly fee at the registrar, typically around ten dollars for a .com. 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 Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and phones, delivery logs and a send API. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are good products, but for a team that needs mailboxes rather than shared drives and video calls, the per-user fee is the only thing you are paying for. Free Gmail and Outlook.com are free because the address is on their domain, not yours.

Pitfalls common in the US

• Taking the email upsell at domain checkout. registrar (the company where you bought your domain, e.g. Namecheap or GoDaddy) email bundles are per-mailbox subscriptions that are hard to leave later because the mail history lives there.
• Using Gmail's "Send mail as" with your domain. The message leaves Google's servers, which are not in your SPF and do not DKIM-sign for your domain, so it fails DMARC alignment at the recipient.
• Choosing SSL on port 587 in Outlook. It must be STARTTLS.
• Home and small-office internet (Xfinity, AT&T, Spectrum) blocks outbound port 25. Port 587 is all a mail app needs.
• Leaving @gmail.com, @yahoo.com or @comcast.net on the truck wrap, the Yelp listing and the Google Business Profile after the domain is live.
• Ignoring DMARC. Since 2024 Gmail and Yahoo require every sender to pass SPF or DKIM, and bulk senders to pass both plus DMARC. Publish at least p=none on day one.

Common questions

Do I need an LLC or EIN before I can have business email?

No. Email on a domain is independent of your business structure. Many sole proprietors register the domain first and form the LLC later; the mailboxes and DNS do not change when they do. If you later register the business name as a trademark, owning the matching .com makes that cleaner.

Does it work with Outlook and my iPhone?

Yes. Add an IMAP account with the settings above in Outlook, Apple Mail or iPhone Mail. Use your full address as the username and your webmail password; the same mailbox then stays in sync across your desk, your laptop and your phone.

What about marketing email and CAN-SPAM?

Mailboxes on your domain are for ordinary correspondence and transactional mail. Newsletters and promotions fall under CAN-SPAM, which requires a working unsubscribe and your postal address in every message, and belong in a list tool that handles both. Send them from a subdomain so a complaint never touches the reputation of the domain your team writes from.

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.