What happens to your email when you sell your business
When a business is sold, the new owner typically takes over the domain name and hosting — and that includes all the email addresses that go with it. If your personal life has been mixed into your business inbox, that’s a problem worth sorting out well before settlement day.
What the buyer gets
When a business changes hands, the buyer usually receives:
- The domain name (e.g.
yourbusiness.com.au) - Web hosting and the website
- All email addresses on that domain
If you’ve been using yourname@yourbusiness.com.au for personal emails,
social accounts, banking, and contacts over the years, the new owner will
have access to all of that. Migrating away can take months or even years if
you haven’t started early.
Separate personal and business emails now
The best time to start is before you have any plans to sell. Keep personal correspondence — family, friends, your own finances, your own subscriptions — in an address that belongs to you personally, not the business.
If you haven’t done this yet, start the process now:
- Identify the personal accounts and contacts in your business inbox.
- Update those contacts with a new personal address.
- Change the email address on personal online accounts (banking, social media, subscriptions) to your new address.
Your options for a personal email address
A free account (Gmail, Outlook.com) is fine for most people. Both have plenty of storage and work on any device. The downside is you get no support if something goes wrong, and you’re tied to a shared domain.
A paid account with your own domain gives you an address like
yourname@smith.net.au that nobody can take from you — it follows you
regardless of any business you own or work for. Register a domain in your
own name, not the business’s, and host email separately. This is worth doing
if you deal with clients or suppliers in your own right.
Make it clear in the contract
If you want to retain use of your business email address for a period after the sale, or take any email data with you, get that written into the sale contract. Don’t assume the buyer will be flexible once the sale is done.
We can help
If you’d like to set up a personal email address on your own domain, or you need help migrating contacts and email history before a sale, email us or call 1300 024 766 and we’ll work out the best approach for your situation.
Didn't work, or not sure?
No worries — that's what we're here for. Tell us what step you got up to and what you saw, and we'll sort it with you.