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How to set up Google Workspace business email

Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) is the simple, scalable and cost effective way to set up professional email for your business – and it’s powered by 100% renewable energy!

In this article we illustrate how to set it up – you can optionally purchase a new domain as part of the process too.

1. Start by opening the Google Workspace sign up page here, then click the Get Started button for the plan that suits you best. The Business Starter plan is usually sufficient for most people.

2. You’ll be guided through some simple steps to enter your account information.

3. After creating the account, you’ll be asked if you’d like to add any additional people to your account. You generally only need to do this if you have more than one actual person (user) that should be given an email account and their own private inbox.

You don’t need to create (or pay for) additional users simply to set up additional email addresses – this is a common misunderstanding! Google Workspace allows you to create up to 30 email addresses per user, without having to pay for 30 licences.

For example, you could set up email addresses for info@yourdomain, support@yourdomain, billing@your domain etc, and send/receive emails as any of these identities, while paying for a single Google Workspace user licence only. Google calls these ‘alias’ email addresses of your primary email address. There’s more information about this available in their help page on the topic.

4. Next you’ll need to verify ownership of your domain, but only if you’ve chosen to use your existing domain rather than creating a new one through Google Domains during the setup process. If you’ve bought a new domain through Google using the instructions on this page, you won’t need to do this verification.

Follow the instructions that Google provides, which usually involves adding new records into your DNS. If you’re an erjjio client and you’re not sure how to do any of this, feel free to ask and we can do it for you if you prefer. We’ll also be able to help you with the MX records in the following step too.

5. Once the domain verification is complete, if you previously used email on your existing domain with a different hosting provider, then this will need to be redirected so it starts arriving in your new Google Workspace inbox(es) instead, by adjusting the ‘MX’ (Mail eXchange) records in the DNS for your domain name. Steps are provided in the setup wizard, and there’s also a help page with relevant details here.

If your hosting account uses a cPanel dashboard, you’ll be able to adjust these DNS records via Zone Editor > Manage. Again if you’re an erjjio client and you’re not sure about doing this yourself, we’ll be happy to do it on your behalf.

6. You can import your email history from your previous email account(s). Google has a data migration system available for this which is explained in their help page on the topic here.

7. Google will give you a free 14 day trial (at the time of writing) to try out Google Workspace. At any point during or after this trial, you can login to your new Google Admin Console and follow the prompts to set up Billing.

8. All done! We hope these steps have been simple enough to follow – please let us know if you have any questions or need help.

How to add an email signature in Gmail

Now that you’ve set up Google Workspace for the first time, you will probably want to set up an email signature, and this process is quick and simple.

The first step is click the cog icon in the upper-right, then click See all settings:

Next, scroll down until you find the Signature section and click Create new, enter a signature name and click the Create button.

You can insert your logo (generally best to use either a .jpg or .png file) using the button circled on the toolbar:

After uploading your logo into your signature, you can left-click it to choose which size you’d like it to be:

A common question at this point, is how to add a link behind the logo in the Gmail signature, so that someone can click it and go to your website, for example.

We’ve found that this is surprisingly fiddly and not very obvious, but there’s a little trick to make it work.

Instead of simply left-clicking, click and drag your mouse over the logo from the right to left, so it becomes highlighted as shown below. Once it’s highlighted in this way, you can click the link icon on the toolbar to add the URL (website address) you’d like your logo to open when someone clicks it in your email signature.