An email address is the most fundamental form of your online identity. It lets you send and receive emails with anyone, create an account on various websites or apps, receive email newsletters from interesting sources, accept critical notifications, apply for jobs, etc. It’s pretty common to see “cool” or “hip” email addresses that were created several years ago whilst the users were in high school or college, such as "cooldude86@aol.com", "crazypunkmaster999@yahoo.ca" or "anna2cute@msn.com". However, these identities are a terrible idea when you use your email account for anything remotely professional. Whether you’re scouting for a job, running a business or building your network, you absolutely need a professional email address.
A good professional email account used in a resumé or on a business card makes a good impact without sticking out as an eyesore. While there’s no law that’s stopping you from using your high-school email account, it’ll almost certainly do you more harm than good and is very likely to be dismissed by recruiters and hiring managers. In this article, we’ll explain what makes for a good professional email address format and also give you some great ideas and examples of how to create a professional email address.
How to Create a Professional Email Address?
There are several email service providers available on the internet today that will let you sign up for a professional email address. While you can create a professional email account on services like Gmail, iCloud, Outlook and Yahoo, there are some other fantastic options like FastMail, ProtonMail, Zoho Mail as well. Many of these email service providers offer paid plans that allow the use of a custom domain name, which is especially useful when you’re running your own business. Using a professional email address with a custom domain name gives your business a lot more clout. Scroll down a bit to read more about using a custom domain for a professional email address.
Unfortunately, the internet has several billions of people online. This makes it very difficult to get a professional email address of your choice. These days, it is almost impossible to get an email address with the firstname.lastname@domain.tld format. If you’re stuck on the same boat, here are some different ways you can try getting an email account that looks professional.
Tips to Create a Professional Email Address
Although creating a professional email address isn’t a tough task, here are some things that you should keep in mind:
- Keep it Short — Don’t make your professional email address too long. If you have a very long name (like in my case), use a shorter version that’s easy to recall.
- Make it Pronounceable — There will be times when you’ll have to read your email address out loud to someone, either on the phone or in person and hence, you should try to make your professional email address as pronounceable as possible. There’s no way that anyone can understand my last name, so I shortened it to “DRK” in one of my email accounts.
- Avoid Diacritics — Even if the spelling of your full name uses a Diacritic or accents, you should avoid using the in your email address.
Professional Email Address Format
The most standard and recommended form of a professional email address is of course the firstname.lastname@domain.tld format. But there are some other ways you can get a professional email address, such as:
- firstnameinitial.lastname@domain.tld
- firstnameinitiallastname@domain.tld
- firstname.lastnameinitial@domain.tld
- firstnamelastnameinitial@domain.tld
- firstname@domain.tld
- lastname.firstname@domain.tld
You can also use an underscore to separate the names, although a period is more commonly used these days. Generally, it is best to avoid numeric characters in your professional email address, but you can use it if the situation demands it. Additionally, some websites recommend including your city, profession or skill set in your professional email address. We don’t think this is a good idea, and generally discourage this practice. Your professional career may take you to different places and your skill set will evolve over time, so jason.newyork@gmail.com and jason_accountant@gmail.com will quickly become undesirable.
Professional Email Address Examples
Here are some good examples of professional email addresses that you can take inspiration from. Although there are no fixed set of rules to follow, it’s recommended that you follow one of these formats. Let’s take the example of two imaginary persons — Jason Smith and Jessica Graham-Cumming
- jason.smith@domain.tld
- jasons@domain.tld
- jsmith@domain.tld
- smith.jason@domain.tld
- smithj@domain.tld
- jessicagrahamcumming@domain.tld
- jessica.gc@domain.tld
- j.grahamc@domain.tld
- jgcumming@domain.tld
- gc.jessica@domain.tld
- jgc_jessica@domain.tld
Using a Custom Domain for a Business Email Address
If you’re running a successful business or just starting off with one, it is considered a good idea to use a custom domain name for your email account. Think about it, if you’re selling a service or any product to a prospective customer, what would you rather have printed on your business card? yourbusinessname222@gmail.com or sales@yourbusinessname.com? A custom domain name instills confidence in your prospective customers that you are serious about your business and not some fly-by-night popup.
More often than not, the custom domain name used for the professional email address is just the primary domain name that you use for your business website, but could be different in some cases. These days, it is pretty easy to set up an email account with a custom domain name and most email service providers will offer you the choice of a custom domain when you sign up for a paid plan.
There are several good email providers that offer Business Email hosting. Google’s G Suite offering is arguably the most popular business email service, along with Microsoft’s Office 365, FastMail, Zoho Mail, etc.
If you have several departments within your company, your business email address format will be along the lines of:
- sales@yourbusinessname.com
- support@yourbusinessname.com
- hr@yourbusinessname.com
- jobs@yourbusinessname.com
For employee email accounts, just as we explained the format for professional email addresses, it’s a good idea to follow one of the following formats
- firstname.lastname@yourbusinessname.com
- flastname@yourbusinessname.com
- firstname@yourbusinessname.com
However, if you’re a small business and don’t need an abundance of email accounts, we recommend just setting up hello@yourbusinessname.com which can be used as an all-purpose email account for general enquiries, sales queries, support emails, etc. “Hello” is a universally recognized greeting and works well here.
Once you’re all set up with a professional email address, you can start using it to the full potential with the Spark email app.
Download Spark for Free and switch to the best email experience. If you’re running a business with two or more people, check out Spark for Teams.
Preshit Deorukhkar 
