A business email address uses your own domain: [email protected], or info@, accounts@, or a person’s name. Customers see the business in the From line. A free Gmail or Outlook.com address is fine for personal mail. On a quote, an invoice, or a job application it reads as a personal account.
This is the setup path we walk Australian owners through. You need a domain you control, then a mailbox on shared hosting or a Microsoft 365 licence. The steps below cover creating the mailbox, putting it on a phone, and the DNS change that usually breaks delivery when the website lives somewhere else.
What has to exist first
The domain comes first. If you do not have one, search for a .com.au or .au name on Find a Domain. .com.au has eligibility rules, which are set out on Australian domain names. You can register the name and point mail at it the same day the registration finishes.
The mailbox has to live somewhere. A domain by itself does not receive mail. On HSJ Host the two places are a mailbox included with shared cPanel hosting, or a Microsoft 365 licence from Office 365. Pick one for incoming mail. Running both at once, with two sets of MX records, splits delivery so some messages land in one inbox and some in the other.
Mailbox on shared hosting, or Microsoft 365
Shared cPanel hosting is the usual start when the website and the mail belong together. The shared servers are in Sydney. Plans start from $8.79 a month, GST inclusive, with no setup fee. Email is included. Basic includes 10 mailboxes, Standard includes 25, and Advanced lists unlimited email accounts. You also get webmail, forwarding, spam filtering, and virus filtering. What is cPanel explains the panel those mailboxes live in. For a small business site that needs the name, the hosting, and the mail in one account, the plan details are on web hosting for small business.
Microsoft 365 is the other path, and the licence is separate from the website. Office 365 on this site is Microsoft 365 Business, billed in Australian dollars, GST inclusive, month to month. Business Basic is $15.35 per user per month and covers Exchange email, Teams, and the Word, Excel, and Outlook apps in the browser and on mobile. Business Standard is $29.65 and adds the desktop apps. Business Premium is $49.45 and adds Defender and Intune. The website can stay on cPanel hosting. You change where mail is delivered. You do not have to move the site.
Create the mailbox in cPanel
Open cPanel from your hosting account. In Email Accounts, create an address on the domain. info@ suits a one-person business that wants a public address. A personal name suits a mailbox only that person should read. Set a long password and keep a copy somewhere the business can reach if you are away. The password on the mailbox is what the phone and webmail will ask for.
- Open cPanel and go to Email Accounts.
- Create the address on the right domain. If the account has more than one domain, check the dropdown before you save.
- Set the password. Avoid a password you already use for the client portal or for banking.
- Open webmail, send a message to a personal address you already use, and reply to it. Both directions should work before you print the address on a card.
The plan limit is how many mailboxes you can create. It is not a promise about how large each mailbox can grow. When a mailbox fills, new mail stops arriving. Clear old mail, or move that mailbox to Microsoft 365 if the history has to stay and the person needs a larger Exchange mailbox.
Forwarding is useful for a public address such as accounts@ that should land in someone’s real inbox. Forwarding is a copy or a redirect. It does not give that person their own mailbox, their own password, or their own sent folder. If two people need to send as themselves, create two mailboxes.
Open it on a phone
Webmail proves the mailbox works. For day-to-day mail, add the account on the phone and in the mail app on the computer. cPanel shows the incoming and outgoing server names on that mailbox, usually under the mail client or connect-devices settings. Copy those names. Typing a guessed server is how a phone sits on “connecting” after the mailbox itself is fine.
- Username is the full email address, not the part before the @.
- Password is the mailbox password, not the cPanel password, unless you set them the same.
- Turn on SSL if the phone asks. The ports are on the same cPanel settings screen. Use those, rather than a list from an old blog.
- On iPhone and Mac, add the account as Other, then Mail, then IMAP. On Android, the stock mail app and Outlook both accept those same server names.
Send one message from the phone after it connects. If webmail receives it, the phone is using the right mailbox. If it only receives and never sends, the outgoing server name or the outgoing password is the part to fix.
When the domain is registered somewhere else
Mail follows the domain’s MX records. If the domain already uses the hosting nameservers, creating the mailbox is usually enough, because those records are already on the hosting account. Give DNS a short while, then send the test again.
If the website stays with another host and you only want the mail on HSJ Host, change the MX records to the mail server cPanel shows you. Leave the website address record alone. Changing nameservers would move the whole domain, including the site, which is a different job.
If you want the domain in the same account as the hosting, transfer the domain first. You need the domain unlocked and an auth code from the current registrar. Do the transfer, wait until it is in your account, then create the mailbox. Editing DNS at the old registrar on the same afternoon as a transfer is how mail goes quiet for a day.
When a team outgrows a simple mailbox
cPanel mail fits a few people who need an inbox, forwarding, and webmail, with the website on the same hosting. It gets awkward when the office needs a shared calendar, a mailbox several people open together, or Outlook on more than one computer with the same Exchange mailbox underneath.
That is what Microsoft 365 is for. Match the licence to the work. Business Basic is enough for email, Teams, and the browser apps. Standard is the one when people need desktop Word, Excel, and Outlook. Premium is the one when you also want Defender, Intune, and the extra device controls. Prices are per user, per month, GST inclusive, for 1 to 300 users.
Moving mail you already have is separate from buying the licence. A standard cPanel mailbox migration is $120 per mailbox, GST inclusive. We copy the mail first, then switch delivery at an agreed time. The website stays where it is when the site’s nameservers stay put. Large mailboxes, shared mailboxes, and mail coming from Gmail or another Microsoft 365 tenant are quoted separately. The order of work is on Microsoft 365 migration.
After the cutover, ongoing tenant administration is optional. Microsoft 365 support is $110 per user per month, GST inclusive, for everyday work such as users, licences, Exchange mailboxes, and common sign-in issues. It is a support add-on, not a full managed IT contract. Licences are billed on top. You can add support in the same order as the licences.
If new mail goes to junk
A new domain has no sending history, so the first weeks are stricter at Gmail, Outlook.com, and big corporate inboxes. Send ordinary mail to real people. A large blast from a mailbox created that morning is the fastest way to train those filters against you.
Keep the SPF record the hosting account creates. SPF tells other servers which systems are allowed to send as your domain. If you later send through Microsoft 365, that record has to include Microsoft, which is part of the DNS change in a migration. Replacing the hosting SPF with a record copied from a Gmail help page, while you still send from cPanel, makes legitimate mail look forged.
Check the From address on the way out. Mail that leaves your business mailbox but claims to be a free Gmail address fails the checks inboxes use for junk. The other way around fails too. Send as the address you created.
Next step
If you are starting out, order shared cPanel hosting, create the mailbox, and send the test from webmail before you add the phone. If the team already lives in Outlook, Teams, and shared calendars, compare the plans on Office 365 and sort the mailbox move on Microsoft 365 migration before you change the MX records.
