Use your own name in your email address

Free email accounts are great, but a personalised address looks so much better. We explain how to get one

Many of us use free email addresses, which are great for communicating with friends and family, but there are cases when you might want something that looks a little more professional.

Fortunately, getting hold of an email address with a customised domain name, ­ something like you@yourname.co.uk, ­ is cheaper and easier than ever. In this article we will show you how.

Master of your domain The first step in creating a personalised email address is getting your hands on your own domain name: that’s the bit of an email address that comes after the @ sign.

Here at Computeractive we use computeractive.co.uk, and you can choose almost anything, whether it’s your name (johnadamsmith.co.uk), a company or society (stmarthaschurch.co.uk) or something different (ilovepetlabradors.co.uk).

Domains always end with a Top-Level Domain ­ the bit at the end that looks like .co.uk or .com. We will focus on .co.uk names as they are ideal for personal email addresses.

The first step is to find a name that has not been used. A huge number of domain names have already been registered and, as each domain name has to be unique, the majority of the obvious ones are taken.

The good news is that domain name registration services let you search for the domain name you had in mind to see if it’s available and, if it’s taken, they will offer suggestions for phrases or words you could add to find an available domain.

Rather than buying a name outright you must lease it from a company called a Domain Registry. These companies book names on your behalf. Some of the biggest are Fasthosts, 1and1 and Easyspace.

First we will explain how to buy a domain name and use it with an existing email account provided by your Internet Service Provider (the type you access using either Outlook Express or Thunderbird).

We will use the Fasthosts service to register the name, but the process is similar for other services.