Buying business email is the easy part. The part that decides whether it works is what happens in your DNS records afterwards, and that is where most Delhi businesses quietly lose mail for days after announcing the change.
Choosing between Gmail and Outlook
Both do the job. Pick on workflow, not on feature lists.
Choose Google Workspace when your team is browser-based, works in shared documents, and you want the simplest administration. Choose Microsoft 365 when your team lives in Outlook and Excel, when you need a shared mailbox that behaves like a real account, or when your IT provider already supports one.
For an Indian office of 10 to 30 people running Tally, GST filing and a website, the deciding question is usually: does your team already use desktop Office every day? If yes, Microsoft 365. If no, Workspace.
Indicative per-user-per-month ranges, which change and should be confirmed: Business Starter roughly ₹120 to ₹170, Business Standard roughly ₹650 to ₹850 on Google; Business Basic roughly ₹130 to ₹200, Business Standard roughly ₹650 to ₹850 on Microsoft. Annual commitment is cheaper. GST applies on top.
Why deliverability matters more than you think
In India, business email is judged by one thing: does it arrive. A quotation that lands in spam does not arrive.
The email system uses three DNS records, and you will be shown exactly what to enter for each. In plain language:
- SPF is a list of which servers are allowed to send mail claiming to be from your domain
- DKIM is a digital signature your mail carries so the receiving server can verify it really came from you
- DMARC tells receiving servers what to do when a message claims to be from your domain but does not pass those checks
Both providers set these up for you during configuration. You paste them into your domain registrar and remove any old ones. The failure is nearly always duplication: adding the new record without deleting the previous provider’s, which leaves two conflicting declarations and gets mail rejected or dropped.
What failure looks like
| Symptom | Usual cause |
|---|---|
| Sends fine, replies never arrive | MX records still pointing at the old provider, or propagation incomplete |
| Replies land in recipient spam | SPF or DKIM misconfigured, or both records present |
| Some staff can send, some cannot | Admin not allowed to send as that shared address |
| Mail goes to spam only on hotmail and outlook.com | Missing or broken DMARC policy |
| Everything worked, then stopped a week later | Old provider’s records still in place and now conflicting |
The third row catches people. In both suites, sending from a shared address like info@ or sales@ requires that shared address to be set up properly. If it is just a nickname, replies from external senders go to the wrong place.
Setup steps
- Buy the subscription with a reseller who issues a GST invoice. Business Starter and Business Basic cover email only; Standard adds the document tools most teams end up wanting.
- Verify the domain with the TXT record provided. Take up to an hour, occasionally longer.
- Add the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. Remove every record belonging to the old provider first. This is the step to do carefully.
- Lower your existing DNS TTL to 300 at least 24 hours beforehand. Otherwise you wait a day to find out you made a typo.
- Create the accounts, including aliases for the company address and shared mailboxes for accounts and support.
- Migrate existing mail using the provider’s migration tool. Export from the old system first if it is not Gmail or Outlook.
- Check the records from outside. Send yourself a test, and use a mail testing tool to see the authentication result.
- Tell customers. A change of email address mid-tender cycle loses replies that nobody is watching for.
What to watch after launch
For the first two weeks, check the admin console’s email health report daily. It lists authentication failures by recipient domain, which is how you find the one client whose server is unusually strict.
Then stop. Deliverability degrades when records go stale or a new marketing tool starts sending without being added to SPF.
FAQ
How long until the new email works? DNS verification takes up to an hour, MX propagation commonly takes 24 to 48 hours, and some recipient servers cache old records beyond that. Plan for two full working days.
Can we keep our current email addresses? Yes, if you add the domain rather than creating fresh accounts. Existing staff keep their addresses.
Do we need DMARC if we are a small business? Yes, and it takes twenty minutes. It is the difference between mail being delivered and mail being quietly filed as spam.
What about the phone number in the signature?
Formatting it as +91 78400 02466 rather than a raw digit string keeps mobile scanners from misreading it.
Is a free Gmail account acceptable for a business? Technically yes, practically no. You cannot enforce MFA on staff, you cannot get mail back when someone leaves, and you have no audit trail.
Who should handle this for us? For a business with no in-house admin, a managed deployment is worth paying for. See email services or the platform-specific guides for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
Get business email set up
24Bit System provisions business email for Delhi NCR businesses, including domain verification, DNS configuration, migration and deliverability checks. Call +91 7840002466.
