First Impression, Last

Hotmail or Gmail?

Almost everyone has a ‘free’ email account these days, not only it is free, everyone can sign up and check their emails anywhere in the world. Great? Well, yes if for personal use, but no if you are a business owner…

There are a lot of free email providers, two of the major ones are hotmail and gmail, both provides excellent free email services. Having a free email account is great, hey it’s free, therefore it has got to be good right? B.. B.. BUT wait, if you are a business owner, and still using hotmail as your contact email address, you should seriously start to look for a ‘real’ email address for your company! Here are the pros and cons of having a free email account.

Free webmail Pros

1. Anyone can sign up for a free email account easily
2. Can check email anywhere
3. Permanent email account for free
4. Excellent secure socket for privacy
5. Ideal for personal use

Free webmail Cons

1. Email archiving– All your past emails are stored on the host server, instead of the local hard drive. In order to find your old emails, you will need an internet connection.
2. Ads – You are forced to load ads, and unconsciously watching them on your browser.
3. Important email as Junk email – Your important email lead could get put into the junk mail folder, because the contact’s email was not on your list, or server was blacklisted. You could loose potential client this way.
4. Credibility – If you own a company called “Johndoe”, a johndoe@hotmail.com just doesn’t seem as credible as info@johndoe.com. A real domain name is important for business owners, it provides the company with credibility and professionalism.
5. First impression ‘Last’ – When you present your client with a hotmail or gmail account as your main contact email, your client’s first impression of you could also be their ‘last’. What have you got to hide? Why haven’t you already got an email with your own company name? Can I trust you? These are questions that could be running through your client’s mind upon your first meeting.

We believe a company’s email address is as important as your company’s corporate identity, or you can say it is an important aspect of your company’s corporate identity, and should be highly regarded.

In the world of business, credibility and professionalism are in fact two of the most important factors to help a client choose you from your competitions. A real company email address makes you look bigger than you actually are – You can assign multiple email addresses for your staff (or yourself if you are a one man company), e.g. sales@ info@ john@yourcompany.com, you see instantly you have made ‘departments’ within your company.

It is not at all expensive to register a domain name and a basic web hosting, it probably would the biggest bang out of your dollar as far as company marketing is concerned. In fact the sooner you secure your company name the better, as they say ‘early birds get the worms’, do a domain search NOW, and check to see if your company name is still available for registration. Are you still using hotmail or Gmail to run your business?

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