
Ask HN: What's the best "Contact Us" email address for a startup? - magsafe
Some choices:<p>contact@mydomain.com, support@mydomain.com, help@mydomain.com, hello@mydomain.com, team@mydomain.com<p>Anything else?
I&#x27;d like it to be friendly, informal and generic enough for any question a customer might have.
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agwa
I prefer _companyname_ @ _domain_.com because I've noticed that sometimes in
gmail and other mail clients the email address is rendered as just the local
part (the part before the @ sign), and I want customers to see something
meaningful instead of just "hello" or "contact".

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corin_
If you are sending mails correctly (i.e. with a name not just an email
address) then that isn't an issue.

    
    
      From: Company Name <support@domain.com>
    

vs.

    
    
      From: support@domain.com

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agwa
That's true for emails the company sends the customer, but not true for emails
the customer sends the company (unless they're replying to an email or using
their address book). Point is, I've seen only the local part get rendered even
when I send from a From: address that properly includes the name.

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skram
Depending on your structure and size, I'd suggest just doing a catch-all so
any of these will work and so emails to the wrong email address
(anything@mydomain.com) will get to the general inbox.

That being said, I think hello@ or team@ are most friendly and general enough.
Help@ and support@ seem to not welcome sales or pre-sales inquiries.

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Aaronn
Yeah Hi or Hello are defiantly the best if you want to be friendly.

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dmckeon
In theory, RFC 2142 answers this:

    
    
        http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2142
    

but in practice, any of the addresses listed there will be the targets of a
lot of spam - so I would avoid using those as live working addressses.

You could perhaps put a powerful spam filter in front of sales@ and info@ and
see if any pearls pass through it - if anyone at your company can spare the
time for that - up to you.

Otherwise, the exact addresses you use are less important, as long as Joe
Random customer/vendor/outsider can understand which address (or contact form)
to use.

If your company is in an established niche, you might follow any patterns that
exist in that niche - check your own address book for ideas.

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poulsbohemian
Personally I use "howdy@domain.com" because it is just so darn friendly ;-)

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blendergasket
As an urbanite myself I find this quite endearing.

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poulsbohemian
I find it interesting that marketing tactics of the past few years have been
very focused on "telling a story" and humanizing the creators behind the
website (photos of the team on the "about" page, etc) yet we continue to use
email addresses like "contact" and "sales" and generic contact form pages,
"submit a support ticket" pages, etc. My selection of "howdy" was the most
basic thing I could do to create that kind of endearing outstretched hand.
That said, the _right_ answer to the OP's question is probably to create
"contact","support", "company name", "webmaster" etc -- all of the above, and
route them to some common mailbox. That way if the customer can't figure out
the right email address and takes a guess, it should get to the right place.
The related question is "is putting an email address on the site enough?" or
"if I put a contact us form on the site, do I also need a catch-all email
address?" I'd say, you need a minimum of both.

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codegeek
I would divide it up by business functions. "Contact", "team" etc are very
generic. For example, both an exisiting customer and a prospective customer
could tehcnically be "contacting" you. But you want to differentiate there. I
would go for something like:

    
    
        Sales: sales@xyz.com
    
        Customer Support: customersupport@xyz.com
    
        Press release/inquiry: press@xyz.com
    
        Partners/vendors etc: partner@xyz.com
    
        Anything else: hello@xyz.com (This can be creative as you like)

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agwa
I think such a scheme is customer-unfriendly, especially for a small company
where there isn't a compelling organizational need to have separate email
addresses. For example, if an existing customer wants to both place a new
order and get customer support, should they be expected to send two emails,
one to sales and another to support? Also, I've noticed that once a customer
gets a company's email address in their address book, that's the only email
address they ever use. I've seen this first hand with customers emailing the
support address to place new orders.

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vinothgopi
Well it is a little unfriendly (many emails to remember?) but I think it does
help. While in a small company we tend to have overlapping roles, slowly our
roles become more concrete. When that happens, a mail to say payments@ will
immediately tell the payments guy that he has to do something although many
others may be cc-ed. Or it may tell the customer that sending a mail to the
specific topic email address might get a faster response.

Secondly, like how we all know that company.com/about usually takes us to the
team page, the press might try to hit up press@. There is always a fallback -
the contactus@ but when the number of emails start exploding, it helps when
tagging emails by purpose.

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ecesena
[partially related] Do you reply as, e.g., support@mydomain.com, or from you
personal email myname@domain.com? Do you use a real or fake person to address
customer support queries?

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Aaronn
Maybe realname@companydomain.com?

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ecesena
I also do that :) But I've heard on using fake accounts, that sounds insane to
me...

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somethingcoolio
Personally I would go with: askcompanyname@mydomain.com Because as JacobH
stated, "contact" feels to formal.

Everything else has all ready been recommended, ie: support@mydomain.com for
CUSTOMER support. press@mydomain.com for dealing with vultures.
partners.partnername@mydomain.com for partners.

I'd make my catch-all something like "generalinfo@mydomain.com"

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hobo_mark
How about ask@domain? It clearly states that you're open to answer any kind of
question from customers and/or partners, and it's neither too formal (like
sales@, support@, accounting@) nor hipster-casual (say, hello@, howdy@,
yourfriends@ and so on).

Then you might also want to use team@domain for announcements but that's it.

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MichaelTieso
Keep it as simple as possible. One email address for everything and expand as
time goes on. I usually do contact@.

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jtheory
The problem with this is that as you expand, most of your customers will not
expand with you.

So they may start using contact@ to communicate directly with the founding
team; two years later they will use contact@ and get the intern who is
supposed to redirect email (and may not do a great job of it).

If you start out with the 4 or 5 standard options (at least splitting tech
support from sales), they may initially all be mailing lists that go to all
founders -- then you can direct them appropriately later as you specialize...
and your clients/customers won't need to change anything.

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tansey
If you really just want one email for everything, go with team@mydomain.com.
All the other choices imply a purpose for the email (e.g., first contact or
help with a problem).

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simantel
Yeah, I agree about using just one email. I like Medium's approach of using
yourfriends@medium.com.

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j45
You could pick one, publish it, and set an alias for all the other ones to go
there and not fret about it much more. I've used help@ for a long time.

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mustafab
We are using 42@ for our contact address. It's fun & short, it's meaningful,
and for sure it's for every (ultimate) question :)

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27182818284
I prefer team@domain.com,

but when responding I always respond

first name, personalemail@company.com

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kurtle
I always assume I can reach someone at support@domain.com. That's the only one
I assume.

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ChikkaChiChi
general inquiries usually go to info@. if you are that concerned, use
actionable verbs.

we're past the point where setting up email us trivial, so endlessly splitting
up your email addresses is more self serving than customer centric.

PS: contact forms are way more important.

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gothep
I Love Mediums: yourfriends @ medium.com. Feels just a tiny bit more personal.

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poulsbohemian
nice!

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KC8ZKF
Pick an easy to spell first name e.g. pat@mydomain.com

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tobykier
questions@domain.com

most of the time people are mailing you unsolicited it's because there's
something they want to know.

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tobykier
questions@domain.com

most of the time people are mailing you unsolicited it's because there's
something they want to know

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JacobH
support - if you are helping customers

team - if you want to get to know the team or make a general inquiry

contact - feels kind of too formal

Just my take on it.

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ninh
info@domain.com for general inquiries.

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ikonos_de
I usually use office@....

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fredgrott
HiHowCanIHelpYou@anydomain.com

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saaaaaam
If you think about it, that doesn't really make sense; it's as though the
person emailing is asking how they can help.

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adidash
connect@mydomain.com

