You look established everywhere except your inbox.
The sign, the truck, the website — all of it says real business. Then the reply comes from a gmail.com address. Real mailboxes on your own domain, set up correctly, migrated without losing anything, and managed.
Your domain, your account, your billing — always in your name.
The gap nobody tells you about
You own the domain. You just are not using the half of it customers reply to.
Your signature undoes your website.
You paid for the logo, the truck lettering, and the website. Then the reply comes from bobsdoggrooming@gmail.com, and the customer quietly re-rates how big your business is. The address is the part they actually type back to.
Your quote went to junk.
You sent it. They never saw it. Free-mail addresses and unauthenticated domains get filtered hardest, and nobody sends you a notice when it happens — you just lose the job and never learn why.
You cannot hand out an address.
A new hire needs an email. So does the front desk, and billing. From a personal account there is nothing to hand them, so everything routes through your phone and stays there.
You are already paying for the domain.
You own bobsdoggrooming.com. It points at a website and does nothing else. The mail side of a domain you already bought is sitting unused.
The part worth paying for
Anyone can point a DNS record. Deliverability is the job.
Creating a mailbox takes ten minutes and a credit card. Making sure the mail you send actually reaches an inbox is a different skill, and it is the reason to hire someone. Three DNS records do the work, and they have to agree with each other:
- SPF — lists which servers are allowed to send mail as your domain. Miss one and that system's mail gets treated as forged. Most businesses send from more places than they realize: the mail provider, the website contact form, the invoicing tool, the scheduling app.
- DKIM — cryptographically signs your outgoing mail so a receiving server can prove it was not tampered with in transit. Unsigned mail from a domain that could be signing is a mark against you.
- DMARC — tells receiving servers what to do when a message fails the first two, and asks them to report back. It is also what stops someone spoofing your domain to invoice your customers.
Set up wrong, these fail silently. There is no bounce, no warning, and no notice — your mail simply lands in junk and you find out when a customer says they never heard back. I configure all three, verify them against real delivery, and leave you the documentation.
“I have twelve years of email and a phone that works.”
That is the real reason most businesses never switch. So here is the direct answer.
- Your history moves. Messages, folders, attachments, contacts, and calendars are copied into the new mailbox. Not summarized, not archived to a file you will never open — copied, searchable, where you expect them.
- Your old account is not deleted. It stays exactly where it is. The move is a copy, so there is never a point where your mail exists in only one place.
- Your phone gets set up. Yours, and everyone else's. Mail arrives in the app you already use, sending from the new address, without you learning a new inbox.
- Nothing goes dark. Your current email keeps running while the new mailboxes are built and tested. The cutover happens when it is ready, not on day one.
- Mail sent to the old address still reaches you. Forwarding stays in place for as long as you want it, so a customer with a five-year-old business card still gets through.
What is included
Every plan below starts here. The packages differ in what gets added on top.
- ✓Mailboxes on your own domain — yourname@yourbusiness.com, plus shared addresses like info@ or billing@
- ✓Migration of your existing mail, contacts, and calendar — messages and folders come across intact
- ✓SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured and verified, so receiving servers trust your domain
- ✓DNS records set up and documented, including the MX records that route your mail
- ✓Your phone, laptop, and tablet configured, so mail arrives where you already read it
- ✓Aliases, forwarding, and group addresses that route to the right person
- ✓Ongoing management — changes, additions, and someone to call when something looks wrong
- ✓The account, domain, and billing in your name, with Lawn Dart! as administrator
Three ways to do this
Most businesses need the first one. Take the third only if the middle column of your week actually looks like the third one.
Email Essentials
PRICING TBD
setup + monthly management
- ✓Mailboxes on your domain for everyone who needs one
- ✓Migration from Gmail, Outlook, GoDaddy, or wherever mail lives today
- ✓SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up and verified
- ✓Mobile and desktop setup for each person
- ✓Ongoing management and support
Best for 1–5 people who just need email that looks right.
Email + Web Presence
PRICING TBD
setup + monthly management
- ✓Everything in Email Essentials
- ✓A fast one-page website — hours, services, contact form, and a map
- ✓Structured data so Google has something real to point at
- ✓Your domain finally doing both jobs: mail and web
- ✓Hosting, SSL, and security updates handled
Best for businesses with no website, or a Facebook page that stopped being updated in 2019.
Managed Business Suite
PRICING TBD
management fee; your subscription is billed by the vendor
- ✓Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, set up on your own account
- ✓Shared calendars, video meetings, cloud storage and file sharing
- ✓Per-user accounts with real security policies
- ✓Staff onboarding and offboarding handled properly
- ✓Ongoing administration as a delegated admin
Best for roughly 10–20 employees with no IT staff — when a suite is genuinely warranted.
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 subscriptions are billed to you by the vendor at the vendor's published price. Those are not included above and are never marked up.
You probably do not need Google Workspace. You need three mailboxes.
A full productivity suite is a real answer to a real problem — but it is not the problem most small businesses have. If four people need email and nothing else, paying per user for shared drives, admin consoles, and collaboration tools nobody opens is money going out for features you will never use. Start with mailboxes. Add the suite when it earns its keep.
It earns its keep when the answer to these turns to yes: staff who need shared calendars, video meetings you host rather than join, files that live somewhere other than one laptop, per-user accounts you can turn off the day someone leaves, and security policies you can actually enforce. That is usually somewhere around ten employees.
How the suite tier works: you buy the Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 subscription directly and the account is yours. I handle domain verification, tenant configuration, user provisioning, migration, security settings, and ongoing administration as a delegated administrator on your account. You pay the vendor what the vendor charges — there is no license resale and no markup in between.
Already know you want the full suite plus files, security monitoring, and IT support? That is the Managed Services lane — same work, priced monthly per user.
How it works
Pick a plan
A short call about how many people need mail, where it lives today, and whether you genuinely need a full suite. If you do not, I will say so.
DNS and mailboxes
I configure your domain records and create the mailboxes and shared addresses. Your current email keeps running the whole time — nothing is switched off first.
Mail moves across
Existing messages, folders, contacts, and calendars are copied into the new mailboxes. Your old account is left intact, so there is no moment where your history only exists in one place.
Devices set up
Your phone, laptop, and tablet get configured, along with anyone else on the team. Mail shows up in the app you already use, sending from the right address.
You own everything
Account, domain, and billing in your name, documented and handed over. I stay on as administrator for as long as you want one — and only for as long as you want one.
You own it. All of it. Including the exit.
The domain, the email account, and the billing stay in your name. Lawn Dart! is set up as an administrator on your account — not as the owner of it. You can remove that access yourself, at any time, and everything keeps working.
No hostage domain, no export fee, no re-migration to get your own mail back. Most of this industry is built the other way around, which is exactly why it is worth saying out loud.
Questions people actually ask
- Do I keep my Gmail?
- Yes, if you want it. Your personal Gmail is yours and stays exactly as it is. What changes is the address your customers see: business mail moves to your domain. Plenty of owners keep the old inbox open for a while out of habit — that is fine, and it is not a problem to leave it running.
- Will I lose my old email?
- No. Migration copies your existing mail — messages, folders, and attachments — into the new mailbox, along with your contacts and calendar. Your old account is not deleted as part of the move, so the original stays where it is until you decide otherwise. Nothing is thrown away to make room.
- Who owns the domain and the account?
- You do. The domain registration, the email account, and the billing all stay in your name. Lawn Dart! is set up as an administrator on your account, not as the owner of it. You can see exactly what you are paying for, and you can revoke administrator access yourself at any time.
- What if I want to leave?
- You keep everything and it keeps working. Because the account and domain are already yours, leaving means removing an administrator — not migrating again. Your mailboxes, your history, and your address are untouched. There is no lock-in, no hostage domain, and no export fee.
- How long does setup take?
- For a small business with a handful of mailboxes, the setup itself is typically done within a week, and the DNS changes propagate in hours rather than days. Large mailboxes, many years of archived mail, or an unusual current setup take longer — I will tell you which one you are before we start, not after.
- Do I need Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?
- Often, no. If you need three mailboxes and nothing else, a full productivity suite is money spent on features you will not open. A suite earns its cost when you need shared calendars, video meetings, real cloud storage, per-user accounts, and security policies you can enforce — which usually shows up somewhere around ten employees. Below that, you probably just need email that works.
- Can you set up Google Workspace for us?
- Yes. You buy the Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 subscription directly and the account is yours; I handle domain verification, tenant configuration, user provisioning, migration, security settings, and ongoing administration as a delegated administrator. You pay the vendor what the vendor charges — there is no license resale or markup in between.
- Why does my email go to spam right now?
- Almost always because your domain is not telling receiving mail servers which senders are legitimate. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are three DNS records that do exactly that, and if they are missing, wrong, or contradict each other, filters treat your mail as suspicious — no matter how ordinary the message is. Getting those three right is the single biggest thing that moves quotes and invoices out of junk folders.
Where this usually leads
One thing tends to lead to the next
Most projects start in one place and open a door to another. Follow whichever one sounds like you — no wrong turn.
“Honestly, my whole setup is held together with tape.”
Email, files, identity, and security handled monthly — the full lane this page sits under.
Take me there →“If we are fixing the address, the website is worse.”
A real site or app from the same person who runs your email and your DNS.
Take me there →“I am not sure which of these I actually need.”
A straight answer on what is worth doing, what is not, and in what order.
Take me there →Want an address that matches your business?
Tell me your domain, how many people need mail, and where it lives today. I'll give you a real number — plus an honest answer about whether you need a full suite at all.