Domain names and business email: register, connect and transfer
Choose a domain registrar and extension, set up email on your own domain, and transfer or recover a domain without breaking mail.
Start with the basics guide if you have not yet bought a domain: it explains how the domain, website and email address fit together. Then answer two questions: which extension you want, and whether you need a full mailbox on your domain or only forwarding to an inbox you already use. Those choices narrow the registrar and email options considerably.
When choosing a registrar, compare multi-year renewal cost, privacy and transfer rules rather than first-year price; the registrar comparisons and the WHOIS privacy explainer cover those points. For email, read the mailbox suite comparison and the free mailbox and forwarding guides to see where each option stops.
If you already own a domain, the transfer checklist, the expired domain guide and the Google Domains shutdown page explain how to move or recover a domain without interrupting email. After any DNS change, check your sending records with the guides in the Email authentication hub.
Compare the entry plans for a 1-5 person business email at your own domain using only the prices shown on Google's and Microsoft's official pages on October 13, 2026.
At-cost pricing versus listed retail pricing, Cloudflare's nameserver requirement, transfer prerequisites, privacy, email forwarding and account security, from both providers' documentation.
Three-year .com cost at each registrar from official price pages, Porkbun's listed prices for other common extensions, transfer-in cost, and the extras each includes.
Renewal prices over ten years, the email typo problem with .co, registry rules for .io and .co, and a decision table for picking an extension your customers will type correctly.
Stellar renews at $55.88 a year, Stellar Plus at $85.44 and Stellar Business at $128.88 on invoices from May 19, 2026. Plan the post-trial bill and keep the domain decision separate.
How Cloudflare Email Routing forwards an address like hello at your domain to an existing inbox, which DNS records it adds, its documented limits, and why replies do not come from your domain.
A step-by-step checklist for moving a domain between registrars: transfer eligibility, unlocking, the auth code, ICANN's 60-day rules, and how to keep DNS and email running.
The ICANN rules for expired gTLD domains, what Namecheap documents about its grace and redemption stages, and a checklist to prevent losing your website and email.
A checklist of what matters when choosing a registrar (renewal price, free privacy, DNS, two-factor authentication, domain lock, transfer rules) and a table comparing Cloudflare Registrar, Porkbun and Namecheap from their documentation.
What the public lookup shows about your domain under ICANN's current redaction rules, which registrars include privacy at no charge, and the extensions such as .us, .uk and .ca where it works differently or not at all.
The DNS records beehiiv asks for when you connect a website domain and a sending domain, the plan question, a Namecheap walkthrough with the exact Host field entries, and how to verify everything before your first send.
Google sold its Google Domains registrations to Squarespace in 2023 and finished migrating them in July 2024. What moved, what broke (dynamic DNS, ACME certificates, some forwarding), and how to transfer to another registrar without losing email.
A plain-language glossary of the DNS records a website or email setup uses, with realistic example values, the Host field explained for Namecheap, and what breaks when each record is wrong.
The difference between changing nameservers and editing DNS records, why switching nameservers leaves your old records behind, how to copy MX and TXT records first, and a decision table for Namecheap BasicDNS, custom DNS and Cloudflare.
What TTL really controls, why a nameserver change takes longer than a record edit, how to lower TTL before a move, and the command-line and web checks that confirm a change has landed.
The three Namecheap URL Redirect record types, how each behaves over HTTPS, what Google says about permanent and temporary redirects, how the redirect interacts with email, and a worked example of pointing an old brand domain at a new one.
Setting up Namecheap Private Email from mailbox creation to working phone and desktop apps: which DNS records are added for you and which you add yourself, the SPF, DKIM and DMARC values, and the exact IMAP, POP3 and SMTP settings.
How to set up Namecheap's free forwarders and catch-all, the MX switch it depends on, the documented limits, why replying as your domain needs a separate SMTP server, and when a real mailbox is the better buy.
Why the bare domain cannot be a CNAME, what ALIAS, A records and URL redirects do at Namecheap, and the exact records GitHub Pages, Netlify and Vercel ask for, with a rule for which name should be primary.
Root domain or subdomain, the exact A, CNAME and TXT records MailerLite asks for, how to enter them at Namecheap, SSL timing, the Comfort or Power plan requirement, and what happens to the domain if you cancel.
Check the registrant contact, account login holder, two-factor authentication, auto-renew card, transfer lock and recovery email, and move a domain into a company-owned Namecheap account using its Change Ownership process.