
Ask HN: Professional email address - bendmorris
I've been using my University e-mail address for everything for years now, but with graduation nearing, I'd like to start transitioning to a more long-term professional address. Unfortunately, a quick perusal of gmail shows that every permutation of my name, initials, etc. are taken.<p>Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get a good professional email address in a world where nearly everything on gmail is taken? Should I try some other email service (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.?) Are there clever but still professional combinations I haven't thought of?
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patio11
I would create a web presence (starting with a resume, portfolio, blog,
whatever) and be ben@ or ben.morris@ that domain, with the actual mail
provided by Google Apps.

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jamesbritt
This is amazingly simple to do, and you get nice spam filtering to boot.

The one tricky part seems to be finding the option to get the free version.

I tried using the pro version, and did not see any real benefits, but perhaps
it's worth it for large companies.

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sp4rki
Professional almost always equals having your own domain. There is pretty much
no way around that this days. Unless your already famous.

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brk
I don't think that most people truly consider gmail to be a 'professional'
email address in a sense that it's any better than a university account.

As others have said, get your own domain name. It's cheap and guarantees you
full control of accounts, plus an easy way to setup demo playgrounds for
hacks/apps you may decide to play around with.

