hello@ vs info@ vs contact@: Which Public Email Address to Use

Every business needs one public address that goes on the website footer, the Google Business Profile, the invoice template and the packaging. The three candidates are hello@, info@ and contact@, and the choice matters more than it looks: it shapes how people feel before they have typed a word, and it decides how much spam you inherit. Here is how to choose, and how to set the address up so a real person always answers.

Quick answer

Use hello@ as your main public address if you sell to people (consumers, creators, small companies) and want replies. Use contact@ if you are a professional practice such as a law firm, clinic or accountancy where a warm tone would feel off. Use info@ only if you already have it printed everywhere and cannot change it; otherwise skip it, because it is the most scraped and spammed local part on the internet and it reads like a brochure rather than a person.

What each address signals

• hello@ — friendly, modern, human. It implies someone will actually write back. Common on SaaS, agencies, studios, D2C brands and consultancies.
• contact@ — neutral and formal. It says "this is the official channel" without promising warmth. Fits professional services, B2B suppliers and public bodies.
• info@ — the oldest convention. Because every spam list on earth already contains info@ for every domain, it draws the most junk, and many readers assume nobody checks it.
• Regional note: in the UK, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, enquiries@ (with the British spelling) is a common fourth option and reads well on a .co.uk, .co.ke, .co.za or .ng domain.

Why hello@ tends to get more replies

There is no published study we would stake a claim on, so treat this as practitioner experience rather than a statistic: people reply to hello@ more readily because it looks like an inbox a person owns, not a form that disappears into a CRM. It also keeps the tone of your whole site consistent. If your homepage says "Let's talk", a footer that says info@ contradicts it. The same logic applies in reverse: a barrister's chambers that writes "hello@" on a letterhead looks like it is trying too hard, so contact@ is the safer pick there.

Set it up in seven steps

1. Create the mailbox on your own domain. On OquMail a role address is just another free mailbox, so hello@yourdomain.com costs nothing and lives alongside your personal name@ address.
2. Decide who owns it. One named person is accountable for a first reply within one business day; a second person covers holidays.
3. Give the mailbox a display name that is a person or a team, for example "Amara at Northline" or "Northline Team", not "Info". Replies from a name get read.
4. Set a signature on that mailbox with the owner's first name, the company, and a phone number or WhatsApp line if you use one.
5. Add the address to your website footer, contact page, Google Business Profile, invoice template and social bios. Keep it identical everywhere.
6. Create one alias for the other two conventions so misremembered mail still lands. If hello@ is primary, forward info@ and contact@ into it rather than leaving them bouncing.
7. Turn on IMAP in the owner's phone mail app (OquMail supports any client over IMAP and SMTP) so the address is answered from wherever they are.

What to do about the spam you will inherit

A public address gets scraped within weeks. Do not fight it by hiding the address behind a contact form only; forms lose the sender's real address and attachments. Instead keep the address visible, rely on the inbound filtering your host applies, and once a month check that no genuine enquiry has been mis-filed. If you move an old info@ address to OquMail you will bring its scrape history with you, which is one more reason to launch hello@ fresh and quietly let info@ forward.

Mistakes that lose enquiries

• Publishing hello@ but having it forward to a personal Gmail where it sits unread next to newsletters.
• Using a no-reply style display name such as "Do not reply" on a mailbox that is meant to invite conversation.
• Printing three different addresses across the site, invoices and social profiles, so customers do not know which one is real.
• Leaving the mailbox with no signature, so a prospect cannot tell whether a human or a bot answered.
• Switching the address every time you rebrand instead of keeping the old one forwarding for at least two years.

Common questions

Can I use hello@ and contact@ at the same time?

Yes, but pick one to publish and let the other forward into it. Two published addresses split conversations across two threads and make your team look disorganised.

Should the main address be a shared mailbox or a personal one?

Shared, with a named owner. A shared mailbox survives staff changes. On OquMail you can give the login to whoever owns it this quarter and simply change the password when the role passes on.

Does the choice affect deliverability?

Not directly. Receivers judge the domain, its SPF, DKIM and DMARC records and its sending history, not the local part. What does matter is replying from the same address people wrote to, which keeps threads and reputation consistent.