Contact email: which address to publish, and where

One mailbox, with every address as an alias#

Say you groom dogs on your own. Clients find hello@ on your website, booking confirmations go out from bookings@, and replies to both land in the one inbox you read on your phone. That is one mailbox with two aliases.

A mailbox is where mail is stored and what you log in to, and hosted email usually charges for each user who has one. An alias is an extra address that delivers into a mailbox you already have, and aliases are free: Google Workspace allows up to 30 per user at no extra cost,^[1] and Microsoft 365 up to 400 with “no additional fees or licenses”.^[2]

The company that stores your mailbox is your email host, and what you pay it for is email hosting. That is a different job from a sending service, which sends the mail your shop, booking system or app produces (confirmations, reminders, newsletters) but gives you no inbox to read. A small business needs email hosting for its contact addresses; the sending is often built into its shop or booking software.

Add a second user mailbox when a second person needs to read a different set of mail. When several people answer the same address, use a shared mailbox rather than sharing one login. In Microsoft 365 a shared mailbox needs no licence of its own up to 50 GB.^[3]

Getting an address on your own domain#

1. Own the domain. You pay a yearly fee to the company you bought it from, called the registrar.
2. Pick a mailbox host. Paid suites charge per user each month. In October 2026, in the US, Google Workspace’s cheapest plan, Business Starter, is $7.00 a user a month on a one-year plan, before tax,^[4] and Microsoft 365 Business Basic is $7.00 a user a month, paid yearly.^[5] Paying month to month costs more. At those prices one person pays $84 a year, and a team of five $420, with every role address free on top. Our default, as a starting point rather than a ranking: pick the suite whose apps you already use (Gmail or Outlook), because moving later means changing DNS records and exporting your mail.
3. Paste the host’s records into your DNS. DNS is your domain’s public list of settings, and adding mail records to it leaves your website alone. Sign in at your registrar, open your list of domains, choose yours, and look for a tab called DNS, DNS records or Manage DNS. Your host shows the exact values to copy. The MX record names the server that accepts your mail.^[6] The SPF record lists who may send as you, and DKIM adds a hidden signature that proves a message came from your domain unchanged. Gmail and Yahoo check them, and mail that fails can land in spam or be refused, as their sender rules explain. Our step-by-step move to a new mail host shows each field of the form and how to roll back.
4. Create the aliases. In Google Workspace: Admin console, Directory, Users, pick the user, Add Alternate Emails.^[1] In Microsoft 365: admin center, Users, Active users, pick the user, Manage username and email.^[2]
5. Test it. Send a message to each new address from a personal account and check it arrives. Reply to one and check the reply lands in the inbox, not in spam. If it reaches a Gmail account, open the message’s menu, choose Show original, and look for PASS beside SPF and DKIM.

Which addresses to create#

These names are a long-standing convention. The internet standard that lists them encourages an organisation to support the name for each job that “exists within the organization”.^[7] In practice, in the order to set them up:

hello@ or info@?#

The difference is history. The standard files info@ under marketing, as an address “often tied to an autoresponder”.^[7] hello@ is a newer habit that reads as an invitation to write to a person. Publish one, and keep the other working as an alias, because people guess info@.

postmaster@ and abuse@: who writes to them, and how to set them up#

These are the two addresses outsiders use to tell you something is wrong with your mail. Mail administrators write to postmaster@ when your mail is failing to reach them; every mail server must accept that name.^[6] Networks that receive spam from your domain may send reports to abuse@, the name the role-address standard gives that job.^[7][8] If either bounces, you don’t hear that someone is sending spam in your name, or that your invoices have stopped arriving.

You need them even when Google or Microsoft runs your mail, because the reports are about your domain and only you can act on them. On Google Workspace both names are reserved: you create them as groups in the Admin console and add yourself.^[9] On most other hosts, add them as aliases of the mailbox you read.

Where to publish each address#

• Your website’s footer and contact page. The general address and support@, as text a visitor can copy. UK and EU rules for businesses that sell or serve online ask for an email address that lets people contact you “rapidly” and “in a direct and effective manner”.^[10][11] The rules where you trade may differ. A contact form is a good addition, because it can ask for an order number, but keep the address beside it: where a law names an email address, a form alone may not be enough.
• Directory listings and your map profile. Give each its own alias, such as hello-maps@. When one starts drawing spam you can see which, and close that alias without touching the main address.
• Your app store listings. Apple and Google Play both ask for a way to contact you.^[12][13] Use support@, not a developer’s own address.
• Your domain registrar. ICANN requires you to keep your registrar contact details current and to answer the registrar within fifteen days.^[14] Where the public record of your domain hides that address, the registrar shows a relay address or a web form that still reaches you.^[15] Use an address you will still read in five years, so a renewal notice doesn’t go to someone who has left.
• A security.txt file, if you make software. It is a small text file on your website that tells people who find a security bug where to report it. It needs a Contact: line, typically mailto:security@yourdomain, and an Expires: date.^[16]
• Your marketing email footers. US law asks for a postal address and a working opt-out there, not a contact address.^[17] The rest is in the marketing email rules.

Which From and Reply-To your order, booking and newsletter emails use#

Customers reply to confirmations: “wrong size”, “can I move my appointment to Friday?”. A reply goes to the Reply-To address when the message has one, and to the From address otherwise.^[18] A rule for each kind of business:

• A shop: From orders@, with your store’s name as the sender name, and Reply-To support@, where someone reads it.
• A service business: From bookings@, with your business name, and Reply-To the address whoever takes bookings reads, which can be bookings@ itself.
• An app or software product: From notifications@ with the product’s name, and Reply-To support@, on password resets too, so a stuck user reaches a person.
• Never a no-reply@ address that bounces the customer’s question.

Newsletters follow the same rule. Your shop or email tool usually calls the setting “Reply-To” or “customer reply address”.

Can your shop or booking software send as support@ or bookings@? Yes, once it has proved the domain is yours. Add the address in its email or notification settings, and it shows you a few DNS records to paste in, usually for DKIM. If it also asks for a change to your SPF record, add its part to the record you already have rather than creating a second one, because a domain with two SPF records gets an error instead of a pass. One record naming Google and a booking tool reads v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:spf.bookingtool.example ~all. Keep the list short: each tool you add makes receivers look up more records, past ten lookups the check fails, and a tool you stopped using should come out.^[19]

Who answers, and how fast#

Give every address an owner who makes sure nothing sits unanswered, even if the owner is you. Write the response time on the contact page, beside the address, and pick one you meet: “within one working day, Monday to Friday” for a small team, or “within two working days” if it is just you.

Reply as the shared address, not from your own. Otherwise the customer’s next message goes to you alone, and nobody else can see it. In Google Workspace, each person who answers adds the address in Gmail as a custom From address.^[1] In Microsoft 365, Microsoft says Outlook on the web replies from the alias the mail came to, while Outlook on the desktop uses the main address.^[2]

Shared mailbox or helpdesk tool?#

A simple rule: a shared mailbox is enough while a handful of people answer and you can see at a glance who is handling what. Move to a helpdesk tool when you need ticket numbers, a queue split across many people, or reports on how fast each one answers.

Should you sign up for services with a role address?#

Yes, for accounts the business owns: your registrar, your email host, your shop platform, your bank. An address such as accounts@ keeps them reachable when someone leaves. But anyone who reads that mailbox can reset those passwords, so keep it in a mailbox only the owners open, and turn on two-step sign-in for every account.

Auto-replies: what to switch on and what to write#

Use your mailbox host’s auto-reply or vacation setting. Your job is the words: when a person will answer, where the help pages are, and nothing the team can’t deliver. For example:

“Thanks, we have your message. Someone on our team replies within one working day, Monday to Friday. Many questions are answered at example.com/help.”

Protect it from spam and spoofing#

• Publish it as plain text. Writing “support [at] example [dot] com”, or showing the address as a picture, may slow some address-collecting bots, but it breaks copying, mailto: links and screen readers for every real customer. We would rather let the mailbox’s spam filter do the filtering.
• Never publish a person’s own address. A role address can be filtered harder, moved or retired; a person’s address follows them everywhere.
• Stop others sending as your addresses. Anyone can put support@yourdomain in the From line of a scam. A DMARC record, one more DNS entry, is your instruction to mailbox providers: if a message says it is from you but your SPF and DKIM checks don’t vouch for it, put it in spam or turn it away. It does not cover look-alike domains a scammer registers. Set up SPF and DKIM first, then DMARC; the DMARC guide takes you from watching to blocking.

Setting it up in Rasket Inbox#

If you already have mailboxes with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, you don’t need a new tool for any of this: their aliases and shared mailboxes do the job. If you are starting out, Rasket Inbox includes 1 mailbox on its Free plan, and each extra mailbox is $5 a month.^[21] Its docs say aliases are free: “extra names on a mailbox you already have are never counted”. A customer who wrote to billing@ gets the answer from billing@.^[22]

One warning before you connect a domain. Pointing its MX record at Rasket moves all of that domain’s incoming mail away from the host that has it today. If Google or Microsoft still holds your mailboxes, keep them there. Rasket could then receive only on a subdomain, an extra name under your domain such as inbound.yourdomain.com, so its addresses would read help@inbound.yourdomain.com: rarely what a small business wants to publish. The receiving docs cover that setup.^[23]