What’s in a name? Choosing your Hushmail email address.

How many email addresses do you have that end in a string of numbers? Do you have an address from years ago that contains a not-so-professional moniker?  

Choosing an email address can be a hassle, especially if you’re going with a big email service such as Gmail. If you have your own domain, however, you can choose a professional-sounding email address without having to compromise. Even if you don’t have your own domain, when you sign up with Hushmail, you’ll have the option of using one of our Hushmail domains or Hushmail subdomains. 

So what do these different options look like and how do you choose the one that’s right for you? That’s what we’re looking at in today’s post. Our goal is to give you a clear picture of the pros and cons of each type of Hushmail email address so that you can confidently choose the perfect one to use with your new Hushmail account. 

Use your own domain

If you already have a domain for your practice, either because you have a practice website, or because you purchased one so you could have a professional-looking email address, this domain name is likely the best bet for your new Hushmail account. 

Or you might decide you want to use a subdomain of your main domain so you can have a more descriptive email address. You can achieve this by adding a subdomain through your domain registrar and using it with your new Hushmail account. For example, if you want to use secure.yourcompany.com and your domain registrar is GoDaddy, you can add that subdomain by following the instructions found here. 

There are some big pros to using your own domain or subdomain. For one, the domain can be completely customized to your practice as long as you had this in mind when you selected your domain. Most likely, your domain is your practice name or has the name in it. You’re also much more likely to be able to use your entire name and not a derivative. For example, your email address might be yourname@yourpractice.com. You can’t get more professional than that. 

Another big plus is that you’ll be able to take the email address with you should you ever decide to cancel your Hushmail account. All you have to do is go through the setup process with another email service. 

The cons are the cost involved with purchasing a domain name (you can do this at sites like Squarespace, Godaddy, or Bluehost) and the setup involved to make sure your account is effectively sending and receiving email. 

This setup includes the following steps:

• Set up your MX records. Mail Exchanger (MX) records are a set of entries that can be configured on the site where your domain name is registered. When someone sends an email to an address on your domain, the MX records tell the email servers where the email is supposed to go. In order for the email to come to your Hushmail account, the MX records need to point to our servers at Hushmail. Hushmail will provide you with the MX record settings and instructions when you sign up.
• Create an SPF record. SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. By setting an SPF record for your email provider (in this case Hushmail), it helps receiving email providers verify that we are allowed to send email on your domain’s behalf. Read our blog post Make sure your emails get through with SPF records for a full understanding of how they work and how you can set them up.

Use a Hushmail domain

If you don’t have your own domain, we offer several Hushmail domains that are hosted on Hushmail servers. You can customize one by choosing a unique name to put in front of the @. Here are the Hushmail domains we currently offer:

• @hushmail.com
• @hush.com
• @therapyemail.com
• @counselingmail.com
• @therapysecure.com
• @counselingsecure.com

For example, if you are a therapist, using your name with a therapysecure.com ending could work for you. 

The big pro of using a Hushmail domain is that it’s ready to go out of the box – no MX record setup necessary. Another pro is that several of them are reflective of the behavioral health profession. However, this might also prove to be a con if you feel an email address such as yourname@therapysecure.com gives away too much information and compromises your clients’ privacy. Such an email address is also likely to be more generic than a domain of your own. 

If you decide to go with a Hushmail domain, there are a few things to consider. The privacy concern is one. Consider your typical client. If an email address appears in their potentially unsecured inbox, would the fact that it’s obviously from a therapist present a problem? If so, it might be better to select either hush.com or hushmail.com as your Hushmail domain. However, you might also decide that using @therapysecure.com or @counselingsecure.com is useful because it states the security of your practice right up front in your email address. 

The next question to ask yourself is what you want to put in front of the @. This depends on the types of emails you plan to send. If you plan to do a lot of personal follow-up with clients after their sessions, then placing your name in front of the @ makes a lot of sense. If you plan to only use the email account to communicate administrative information such as appointment reminders, then placing “frontdesk” in front of the @ might look better. 

However, keep in mind that you can use aliases if you need extra email addresses, which we’ll talk more about later in the post. 

Use a Hushmail subdomain

There is another option. A little bit like your own domain, a little bit like a Hushmail domain, it’s the Hushmail subdomain that allows you to use your company name with .hush.com at the end (@yourcompany.hush.com). If your name is Raymond Rogers, your email address might look like raymond@raymondrogers.hush.com. 

The pro to using a Hushmail subdomain is that it allows more customization and branding than a Hushmail domain. Plus, we set the MX records for you, so there’s no hassle with setting up the account. However, subdomains are subject to approval. They can’t consist of generic terms or be mistaken for official Hushmail company domains. We give you some examples of what works and what doesn’t in the table below.

If you decide to go with a subdomain for your new account, choose a descriptive or distinctive name to go before the .hush.com. The name should describe your company, organization, individual, location, type of business, or something else that describes you or your business.

Here are some examples of acceptable and unacceptable subdomains:

A word about aliases and forwarding addresses

No matter what option you choose, you can make use of either forwarding addresses or aliases if you need extra email addresses to send email from and receive email to your primary Hushmail account. Of course, you can also get extra email addresses by upgrading your plan and getting extra users accounts. Our healthcare plan that comes with e-signatures includes five user accounts, so you might find that this meets your need for extra addresses. 

However, you can also use forwarding addresses or aliases. Here’s how these work:

If you’re using your own domain or a Hushmail subdomain, you can use email forwarding, which is when an email is sent to one address and gets forwarded to another. Once you designate a forwarding address, you can compose an email in webmail and use that address as the sending address. When your client replies to the email, they will see only the forwarding address. However, the email will arrive in your primary email inbox.

You can set up forwarding addresses on your own if you’re the administrator of your Hushmail account. To do this, follow the steps in our blog post Use forwarding addresses with your own domain to manage your email.

If you’re using a Hushmail domain, you can make use of Hushmail aliases if you need extra addresses. You can think of a Hushmail alias as a mask for your primary Hushmail address. Aliases end in @nym.hush.com, but you can choose anything you want to put in front of the @ as long as it’s available. 

Our customers use aliases for a number of reasons. They can be a big help in organizing your email, protecting yourself from email scams, and preventing unnecessary clutter in your inbox. You can read more about how to use aliases and set them up in our blog post Resolve to organize your emails with Hushmail aliases. 

Have a name in mind for your new Hushmail account?