You have a polished website, a recognisable logo and a clear quote. And then you send that quote from a free Gmail or Hotmail address. It works, the email arrives, but the recipient sees something different from what you see. They see a business that doesn't fully own its own name yet.
An address on your own domain, like jan@yourcompany.com, looks like a detail. It is also more than a nice address. Behind the scenes, your domain has to tell the rest of the internet who is allowed to send email on your behalf. Get that wrong and your emails end up in your clients' spam folder, or someone else can send email in your name without much effort.
In this article we walk through the mistakes we run into most often, each with its fix. Not a manual for system administrators, just what you need to know as a business owner to ask the right questions and check whether your setup holds up.
Why an address on your own domain builds trust
An email address is often the first thing a new client sees from you, even before your website. If it carries your own domain name, the story adds up: the same name on your invoice, your website, your business card and your email. That gives peace of mind. The reader doesn't have to wonder whether they're talking to the right company.
A free address does the opposite. It doesn't say you're unreliable, but it leaves a question open. Is this a real business or a side project that hasn't started yet? On a quote worth a few thousand euros, you don't want that question hanging in the air.
There's a practical side too. An address on your own domain belongs to you. If you switch email providers, your address comes with you. If someone joins you later, you create an extra address on the same domain. A free address is tied to the platform that gives it to you, and to the login details of whoever once created it.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC in plain language
Three acronyms decide whether your email is seen as trustworthy. They all live as a line of text in your domain's DNS, the address book in which your domain says where everything is. You don't have to write them yourself, but it helps to know what they do.
SPF: the guest list
SPF is a list of servers allowed to send email on behalf of your domain. When an email arrives from yourcompany.com, the receiving server checks that list. If the sender is on it, fine. If not, the email becomes suspicious.
DKIM: the sealed envelope
DKIM puts a digital signature on every email you send. The recipient checks that signature with a key published in your DNS. If it matches, they know two things: the email really comes from your domain, and nobody tampered with it along the way.
DMARC: the house rules
DMARC tells recipients what to do when SPF or DKIM fails. Do nothing and just report, put the email in quarantine, or reject it. On top of that, DMARC can send you reports, so you can see who is sending email in your domain's name.
| Record | Question it answers | Consequence if missing |
|---|---|---|
| SPF | May this server send email for this domain? | Email via unknown servers is flagged as spam more easily |
| DKIM | Is this email genuine and unchanged? | No proof of authenticity, less trust |
| DMARC | What do you do when the check fails? | Recipients decide for themselves, abuse stays invisible |
Common mistakes and how to fix them
You still send from a free address
The domain exists, the website is live, but email still runs through a personal address. Sometimes out of habit, sometimes because the old address is on every invoice.
The fix: create an address on your own domain and let the old address forward to the new one for a while. Update your signature, invoices and profiles. After a few months you'll notice almost nobody uses the old address anymore.
Two SPF records side by side
We see this a lot. Someone adds an SPF line for the email provider, later another one for the newsletter service. Two separate lines seem logical, but a domain may only have one. With two, the result is invalid and recipients ignore the whole record.
The fix: merge everything into a single SPF record that includes every service sending email for you.
DKIM isn't switched on
Many email providers offer DKIM but don't enable it automatically. You have to place the key in your DNS yourself.
The fix: look for DKIM in your email provider's control panel, copy the key into your DNS and then activate it. Send a test email and check in the source of the received message whether the check passes.
DMARC is missing, or set to strict right away
Without DMARC you have no view of abuse. But if you set DMARC to reject straight away, without knowing which services send email on your behalf, you sometimes block your own invoices or newsletter.
The fix: start with a DMARC rule that only reports. Watch for a few weeks which sources show up, set them up correctly in SPF and DKIM, then tighten things step by step.
You forget the services that send email for you
Your accounting software sends invoices, your webshop sends order confirmations, your newsletter service sends campaigns. All with your domain as the sender, but through their own servers.
The fix: list every tool that sends email with your address as the sender, and make sure each one is in your SPF and, where possible, signs with DKIM.
Why emails from your contact form land in spam
This is the classic. A visitor fills in your contact form, the website sends you an email, and that email ends up in spam or never arrives at all. You miss an enquiry without knowing it.
The cause almost always lies with the sender. Many forms send the email with the visitor's address as the sender, from your web server. To the receiving server, that looks like an email from, say, a Gmail address, sent by a server that has nothing to do with it. Exactly what SPF and DMARC are meant to stop.
The fix has three parts:
- Send the email from an address on your own domain, for example website@yourcompany.com.
- Put the visitor's address in the reply-to field. When you hit reply, your answer simply goes to the visitor.
- Let the website send through your real mail server with a login, not through the web server's default mail function.
Then test it yourself. Fill in your form with an address from another provider and see where the email lands. Do that again after every major change to your site. A form that fails silently costs you clients you never get to see.
Aliases versus separate mailboxes
Not every address needs its own mailbox. The difference is simple.
An alias is an extra address that forwards to an existing mailbox. info@, quote@ and invoices@ can all arrive in your own inbox. No extra login and no extra storage. Ideal if you work alone or with a small team where one person handles the email.
A separate mailbox has its own login, its own storage and its own inbox. You need one as soon as a colleague has to read and send email independently, or if you want to be able to hand things over when someone leaves.
A few rules of thumb:
- One person, several roles: one mailbox with aliases.
- Every employee who sends email: their own mailbox.
- An address you put on your website: preferably an alias like info@, so you can change the destination later without touching your site.
With us, an email address on your domain costs from €5 per month per address. If you choose wisely between aliases and mailboxes, you only pay for the people who really need their own inbox. We include the SPF, DKIM and DMARC settings in our work on optimisation, SEO and maintenance, just like testing your contact form after every change.
A short checklist
Want to check where you stand yourself? Run through this list:
- Do you send email from an address on your own domain?
- Does your domain have exactly one SPF record, including every service that sends email for you?
- Is DKIM switched on at your email provider and in your other tools?
- Is there a DMARC record, and do the reports actually arrive somewhere?
- Does a test message via your contact form land neatly in your inbox, and not in spam?
- Do you know which addresses are aliases and which are real mailboxes?
If you can't say yes to every question straight away, that's no disaster. These are settings you set up properly once and then check now and then.
Not sure whether your email is set up correctly, or are enquiries through your form going missing? Book a free thirty-minute call via the contact page. We'll look together at where it gets stuck and what you can do about it.
