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Your website and your email are separate things

Your website lives at yourbusiness.com. Your email is yourname@yourbusiness.com. Same name, so it feels like one system. It isn't. Behind that one name sit three separate services, often run by three separate companies. Knowing the difference will save you real stress the day something goes wrong.

The three services

1. Your domain. The name itself, yourbusiness.com or yourbusiness.com.my. You rent it yearly from a registrar. On its own, a domain does nothing. It is a signpost that tells the internet where to find your website and where to deliver your email.

2. Website hosting. The service that stores your web pages and shows them when someone visits. This is what WebX does.

3. Email hosting. The service that receives, stores and sends mail for addresses at your domain. Google, Microsoft and Zoho are the usual names here. WebX is never this.

How one name points to two places

Every domain has a settings sheet called DNS. Two kinds of records matter for this article. Web records (A and CNAME records) say "the website lives over there". Mail records (MX records) say "the email goes over there". They are separate lines on the same sheet, and they can point at completely different companies. Most of the time, they should.

This is why your website and your email can break independently. One can go down while the other carries on as if nothing happened.

What WebX touches, and what we never touch

WebX builds and hosts your website. That is the whole job.

If you connect a domain you already own, our instructions change the web records only. If we manage the domain for you, same rule: we handle the web records and SSL, and your MX records stay exactly as they are. Connecting your domain to a WebX site does not move, interrupt or change your email in any way.

WebX does not offer email hosting, and we never will. That is a deliberate line, not a missing feature. Email is a specialist's job with its own failure modes, and the companies below do it far better than any website company could.

Do you need a professional email address?

Eventually, yes. hello@yourbusiness.com on a quotation reads like a company. bizname2024@gmail.com reads like a side project. An address at your own domain also stays under your control: staff come and go, but the domain is yours.

It is not urgent on day one, though. Plenty of Malaysian businesses start on free Gmail and upgrade once the business settles. Reply speed matters more to customers than the address.

Your real options

  • Free Gmail (or any free email). Completely fine when you are starting out. Reliable and costs nothing. The only price is the impression, and early on, that price is small.
  • Google Workspace. Gmail at your own domain, plus Drive, Calendar and Meet. The easiest step up if you already live in Gmail. Paid per user, per month.
  • Microsoft 365. The pick if your business runs on Outlook, Word and Excel. Also paid per user, per month.
  • Zoho Mail. The budget option. Less known in Malaysia, but solid, and its plans cost noticeably less than Google's or Microsoft's. Worth a look when you need several staff addresses without the per-user bill stinging.

All four work with a WebX website. Whichever you choose, the provider gives you MX records to add wherever your domain's DNS lives, and their setup guide walks you through it. None of that touches your website.

If your email breaks, who do you ask?

Quick triage:

  • Email down and website down too. Almost always the domain itself, usually an expired registration. Check with your registrar first. An expired .com or .my takes the website and the email dark together.
  • Email down, website fine. That is your email provider's territory: Google, Microsoft or Zoho support, or whoever set the service up for you. WebX has no access to your email and cannot fix it, however much we would like to.
  • Genuinely not sure. Ask us. We will look at what we can see and tell you honestly which door to knock on, even when the answer is "not us".

The short version

Domain, website, email: three services sharing one name. WebX does the website and only the website. Your email lives with an email company, we never touch it, and connecting your domain to WebX will not disturb it.

Sorting out a domain and not sure where email fits? Message us on WhatsApp or email michael@webx.my and we will point you in the right direction.