The Website Waiter

You should be able to easily use email addresses that are linked to your website domain name, an example being This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for the website here. You have whatever name or description before the famous ‘at’ symbol and then the rest of your website name.

It looks the business; clearly connected to the website itself, and therefore as well as looking great it is clearly part of the website purpose.
 
They’re actually more straight forward nowadays to create and manage, however you need to watch out for the detail, in order to make sure they are correctly selected, set-up, and then managed and actually going forward. I’ll therefore always get this bottomed out with clients at the beginning of any new website, with a quick summary below of the main 4 factors to consider when you go through this process:

 1. Decide Which ‘General’ and ‘Named’ Email Addresses You Need

So general ones typically are things like info@ and enquiries@, with maybe more function-specific ones like accounts@ or sales@, and even more trendy-looking ones like hello@.

Named ones are actual people’s names, for example JohnSmith@, and obviously dependent upon individual people.

My advice is normally have at least one each, only have essential ones to begin with as you can always add others afterwards, and make the distinction between a role which may have different or numerous individuals actually doing the role, as opposed to key individuals where you want to communicate the personal element.

 2. Get the Right Names

Not so much for the general ones as they are straightforward, although I do advise to keep it simple with popular handles like info@ rather than, say, hello@, simply because day-to-day users are familiar with this. For the individual names, think about whether you need a surname as well, any middle names, and whether you want things like full stops and dashes splitting them, or abbreviations of them.

Personally I’d go for just first names for small websites wanting to be personable, otherwise the Christian name then surname with a full stop in between, like john.smith@.

 3. Set Up a Webmail Account for Each Email Address

Okay, so this starts getting technical, but in effect it means that you’re going to have a separate email account on the internet for each email address, just like you would with ones like Hotmail or Gmail.

You can then log in, and ta-da, you have your own inbox, and sent items box, and folders there to send and receive emails from that email address.

The good news is that technology is available to easily set these up nowadays with any good website’s hosting package, but the less good news is that you need to get the detail right to firstly get people to understand them, and secondly to then actually make use of them. You can then set up a standard login page that all emails can use, ideally with a clear link related to the website such as www.thewebsitewaiter.com/webmail.

 The other important thing here is to clarify what password you set for each email account, which is actually harder than you might think. General emails are more straightforward, but with individual ones you want to make sure people choose one they can actually remember, and secondly be clear on who else may need to know this to also gain access in an emergency but still maintaining correct Data Protection procedures.

 4. Arrange Diverts to People’s Own Email Where Needed

This is a completely separate way to deal with emails to the webmail option above, and can be in addition or as an alternative to webmail. In effect, an email just pings across to someone’s own personal email without the faff of any middle-man webmail account.

For example, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. may simply ‘divert’ emails to John Smith’s own personal email in Gmail, so it looks like he receives ones direct to his own email account. This is great for having the right impression of a website email, when in actual fact there is the convenience of having it direct to your own email account to read and deal with.

The down sides are that when you reply it will come from your own email account which people will know about, and also you can’t allow multiple users on it, although you can arrange for one standard email like accounts@ to be sent to more than one person’s one email, so maybe 3 key people within an accounts team.
 
In conclusion, make sure you chat through this detail right at the beginning of any new website, or even any existing website because even if the current website does not have the capacity for this it may be worth changing the hosting package so that it can.

You then need to think through how your business, interest, or website purpose works day to day, as in who needs to be involved with emails and how they control them. Once this is bottomed-out, you just need information like names and passwords and you’ll soon be on track to getting set up.