Business email

Email is the one thing most businesses cannot go a day without, and it is usually the thing set up in the biggest hurry. A free address from the broadband provider, or a Gmail account with the business name in front of it, put together in ten minutes years ago and never looked at since.

Why the free address costs you

It works right up until it does not. The address belongs to somebody else, so you cannot take it with you. It lands in junk folders because nothing was ever configured to prove it came from you. There is one password, no second step, and it is written on a note beside the till.

What proper email looks like

Proper email means the address ends in your own domain, the mailbox lives with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and the business owns both. Which of the two you end up on depends on how you already work — if your accountant sends Excel files all day, one of them is obviously right, and I will tell you which rather than selling you the one I prefer.

The move, without the bad morning

Moving over is the part people dread, and fairly so: a bad migration loses calendar entries, breaks the shared mailbox everybody actually uses, and leaves half the team on the old address for a fortnight. I move the mail, the contacts and the calendars, get the phones reconnected the same day, and keep the old address collecting for as long as you need it, so nothing sent to it quietly disappears.

Two-factor goes on at the start, not after something happens. It is the single change that stops the most common attack on a small Irish business, and it takes about a minute per person.

I do not mark up licences. You pay Microsoft or Google exactly what I pay them, and my time is separate and itemised, so you can always see which is which.