Can I Shorten My Business Email Address?

Yes. A business can add a second, shorter domain name and use it for email while the old address keeps working. The trick is choosing a name nobody can take off you, and setting it up so that nothing sent to the old address is ever lost.

Why people ask

A long business name makes a long email address. Reading it out over the phone, typing it on a tablet at a counter, or fitting it on a business card gets old fast. The question we hear is simple. Can we make it shorter without breaking anything?

How it works

Your email runs on your domain name, the part after the @ sign. You are not limited to one. A business can own several domain names and point them all at the same mailboxes. So the usual approach is to register a short second name, add it to your Microsoft 365 or Google account, and give each person a short address as an extra alias. They can send from the short one and still receive on the long one. Nothing has to change on the day, and customers who have the old address saved are not affected.

Protect the name before you use it

In Australia a .com.au domain name has to match a registered business name, company name or trade mark that you hold. That rule is a feature, not a nuisance. If you register the matching business name first, nobody else can register the short domain out from under you, and nobody can later claim you are trading on their name.

So the order is

1. Decide on the short name and check that no other business already trades under something close to it.
2. Register it as a business name under your existing ABN.
3. Register the matching .com.au domain name, in your business name, with the renewal set to automatic.
4. Add the domain to your email service and create the short aliases.

We have seen a business spend a great deal of money defending a name that was too close to someone else’s. A few minutes of checking before you register avoids that.

.com.au or .com

For an Australian business we recommend .com.au, and we explain why in Friday’s post. The short version is that search engines treat it as a local signal, and the business name rule above gives you real protection that a .com does not.

What happens to the old address

Nothing bad. Keep the old domain name registered and renewing, keep the old addresses as aliases on the same mailboxes, and every message sent to them still arrives. Over time people move to the short address naturally. There is no need to tell anyone to change anything.

What to do next

If you want a shorter address, start with the business name check and the domain registration, both of which we handle as part of domain names and DNS management. Then the email side is a few settings in Microsoft 365.

Will my old email address stop working?
No. Both addresses stay on the same mailbox. Mail to either one arrives in the same place.

Do I need a new website for the short name?
No. The short domain can simply point visitors to your existing website, or be used for email only.

Can someone else take the short name later?
Not while you hold the matching registered business name and keep the domain renewing. That is the whole point of registering the business name first.

If this is happening in your business and you would like it sorted, call DM1 on (08) 6202 6012 or send us a message. We look after IT, Microsoft 365, websites and domain names for Perth small businesses.