Security, tools tailored to your business needs, and impactful communication are all characteristics that make a professional email address a must-have for professionals.
To ensure effective communication with your collaborators, clients, and prospects while safeguarding your data, it's essential to choose your email service carefully. But with so many options available, it's not always easy to decide...
Don't worry! We provide you with a complete guide to choosing your professional email service, and explain how to create your professional email address for free.
Quick answer: of course not! Nothing obliges you to create a professional email address. However, three solid reasons can encourage you to take the plunge:
Pair it with a professional email signature and your communication will simply shine!
So, concretely, how to get a professional email account? Although the creation protocol varies from one email service to another, generally, you just need to follow these three steps:
First, you need to select an email service that fits your specific needs. We'll detail below the key criteria to help you choose the right provider, but it should be secure, convenient, and easy to use.
To give you a first boost of inspiration, here's a shortlist of the best email services (free and paid) that meet these characteristics:
It's then up to you to browse the different offers and features to determine the email software that best meets your needs.
Once you've chosen your email service, you'll need to buy a domain or connect your existing domain.
Note that some email services offer the creation of your own domain name to ensure strong communication. Others help you get closer to domain registration offices for purchasing a domain. Some even allow you to check whether a domain name is available.
In any case, your email service will guide you step by step to select the domain name that will best suit your future professional email address.
The final step to launch your professional email account: configure your email addresses.
At this step, you create a user address for yourself and each team member. Each user has a name, email address, and a personalized password to log in to the email box.
This is also the time to define a variety of settings, such as the receiving protocol (POP or IMAP) and sending options (name and email address that will appear when sending an email). You will also be asked to configure your SMTP server (which manages your outgoing emails) and then confirm your email address.
Don't worry, you'll be guided step by step to ensure the correct configuration of your new email address.
You can also take this opportunity to decide on other secondary elements, like the format of your email signature.
Once this third phase is completed, your professional email address is officially up and running!
Now let's focus on the criteria you need to consider to ensure you're choosing the right professional email service.
Let's start by looking at the features offered by your email service. It should provide you with applications that simplify your work life and streamline your communication with your contacts.
For example, you could choose an email service for its integrated organization tools. Some software offers a video conferencing tool for meetings, as well as a calendar to plan your company's tasks and important moments.
Also, check the data management and storage options offered by your email service. Many of them provide unlimited storage space for emails and the ability to attach large files (up to several GB).
Avec certaines boîtes de messagerie, vous pouvez également importer des emails depuis d'autres fournisseurs. Idéal si vous souhaitez rassembler toutes vos correspondances au même endroit !
Finally, look at the various customization options. Some providers allow you to change the appearance of your interface to match your company's colors. An interesting option for internal communication, which you could combine with a custom email signature tool.
As a professional, every minute counts! To save you time and energy, make sure to choose an email service with a clear and easy-to-use interface. You should be able to navigate the different sections and features intuitively, without spending hours trying to find your way.
N'hésitez pas à tester différents fournisseurs; même les services de messagerie payants vous proposent en général une période d'essai gratuite. Vous pourrez ainsi déterminer si l'interface correspond à vos attentes et vous permet une navigation fluide.
Moreover, email services are constantly improving the user experience by integrating more and more tools into a single ecosystem. This is the case with Microsoft 365, where Outlook is directly connected to other Microsoft professional features such as Word, Excel, and Teams.
This way, you can switch from your email to another tool in the blink of an eye! It's definitely more pleasant than having to open 40 tabs at once...
The last important criterion to carefully consider when choosing your professional email service is security! Your email address must be secure enough to ensure the complete protection of your company's data. This characteristic is all the more important as phishing attempts, data theft, and account hacks are becoming increasingly common.
Email software offers a wide range of protection features, such as:
To conclude this section, here are some additional tips about encrypting your data! On one hand, it’s best to opt for end-to-end encryption. This guarantees that no one but you and your recipients can read your emails. On the other hand, note that some encryption protocols are more effective than others, such as the OpenPGP protocol, which is considered one of the most powerful.
A few paragraphs ago, we provided a list of the best-performing professional email software. But three of these services hold a special place in our hearts... Here are, according to us, the top 3 professional email services!
Attention Microsoft users! If you're already immersed in the American tech giant’s universe, the logical next step is to create your Outlook Business email address.
With its numerous features and well-integrated email service in the Microsoft ecosystem, Outlook is ideal if you're looking for a provider with a wide variety of tools.
The email service itself includes several practical options, such as:
But the best part with Outlook is its seamless integration into the Microsoft 365 suite. From your email space, you can easily access the entire range of Microsoft apps, including Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and OneDrive, which provides you with online storage. The email service also has a mobile app, so you can access your communications anytime.
If your main goal is time-saving and fluidity (and Google is your friend), Gmail is probably the best option for you. Its major advantage: perfect integration of Gmail email into the Google Workspace suite.
From the paid version of Gmail, you can quickly access all the cloud features, including:
And for an even smoother experience, Gmail and all Google tools have their own mobile app. Perfect for staying connected when you're on the go!
The Gmail service also integrates several advantageous features, such as 15 GB of data storage and a confidential mode. As for security, Gmail is also up to par, offering a two-factor authentication system, a powerful anti-spam filter, and advanced protection against phishing.
Finally, note that the basic version of Gmail, already very satisfactory, is free. The paid version gives access to more advanced tools.
Your primary concern is security? We understand! In this case, it's better to choose ProtonMail, one of the most secure email providers.
Designed by MIT researchers, this provider is entirely dedicated to protecting your data. So much so that the company does not have the encryption keys: in other words, even ProtonMail employees will not have access to your email correspondence.
The service ensures end-to-end encryption of your data, which includes your emails, but also your contacts. All this information is stored in Switzerland, a country known for its particularly strict information protection standards.
Still on the security front, emails are protected by a password, which you will need to provide to your recipients so they can access them.
In addition to these multiple protection measures, ProtonMail has a smooth email interface and many practical features, including:
Finally, note that ProtonMail offers a free version, but it has limitations, particularly in terms of storage.
Now that you've chosen your email service, it's time to create your free professional email address! Here's how to do it with our three favorite providers.
Note: If the services included in the free versions are not enough, you can always upgrade by subscribing to a paid plan.
Creating an Outlook address is done in a few simple steps:
Your Outlook professional email address is ready to use!
To create a Gmail account:
Your Gmail address is now ready to use!
If you’ve chosen ProtonMail, the ultra-secure email service, creating your Proton address takes 5 simple steps:
That's it, your Proton email address is up and running.
Now you know the best professional email services and how to create your professional email address! All that’s left is to dive into your correspondence with your team. By the way, if you need some inspiration, here are some examples of professional emails. It's a gift!
Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.
You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.
If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.
With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.
And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.
It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.
This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.
It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!
A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.
With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.
What is the user experience like for our employees?
In both cases:
In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.
With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.
Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:
Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.
If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.
As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:
As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.
If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.
As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:
As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.
