Professional email on your own domain, configured so it actually reaches the inbox.
Email is still where most business gets done, and it is the system most small companies are quietly running badly. Archway Point sets up, migrates, secures, and manages business email for firms across St. Charles County and the greater St. Louis area.
An @gmail address is costing you work you never hear about
When a prospective client compares two firms and one writes from a company domain while the other writes from a free consumer address, the comparison is already partly decided. Domain email is the cheapest credibility a business can buy, and setting it up correctly takes hours, not weeks.
It also protects you. Email tied to your own domain belongs to the business, not to whichever staff member created the account. When someone leaves, the mailbox and its client history stay with you.
Deliverability: the part most providers skip
Setting up mailboxes is easy. Making sure the mail arrives is the actual work, and it is where most small business email is broken. Three DNS records do the heavy lifting:
- SPF lists the servers permitted to send mail as your domain. Most businesses have one that is either missing, duplicated, or has quietly exceeded its lookup limit after years of adding tools.
- DKIM attaches a cryptographic signature to each message so a receiving server can confirm the mail was not altered and genuinely came from you.
- DMARC tells receiving servers what to do with mail that fails the first two, and reports back on who is sending as your domain.
Gmail and Microsoft have both tightened enforcement of these standards, and the trend is one direction only. If your invoices, quotes, and proposals are landing in junk folders, this is almost certainly why, and it is a fixable problem rather than a permanent condition.
Migration without losing history
Moving email providers makes people nervous for good reason: a botched migration loses mail. We run them in stages so the old system keeps receiving while the new one fills up in the background, then cut over during a quiet window with both live until we confirm nothing is still arriving at the old host. Mailboxes, folders, calendars, contacts, and shared aliases all come across.
Ongoing management, so it stays working
Email is not a set-and-forget system. Staff change, tools get connected, DNS records drift, and a forwarding rule set up two years ago starts silently dropping messages. Ongoing management covers mailbox provisioning and removal, alias and distribution list changes, DNS record maintenance, deliverability monitoring, security policy, and being the person you call when something stops working.
Typical engagements
Scoped individually, but most email work falls into one of these.
| Engagement | What it covers | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| New email setup | Platform selection, domain and DNS configuration, mailbox creation, aliases, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, device and mobile setup | 2–5 days |
| Platform migration | Staged migration of mail, calendars, and contacts to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, with parallel running and cutover | 1–2 weeks |
| Deliverability repair | Audit of existing records, SPF flattening and cleanup, DKIM signing, staged DMARC rollout, blacklist checks and reporting | 2–7 days |
| Security hardening | Multi-factor authentication rollout, admin access review, retention and archiving policy, phishing and spoofing protections | 3–7 days |
| Ongoing email management | Mailbox onboarding and offboarding, alias and group changes, DNS maintenance, deliverability monitoring, user support | Ongoing, monthly |
Common questions
Why is our business email going to spam?
Almost always because the sending domain is missing or misconfiguring its authentication records. SPF says which servers may send as you, DKIM cryptographically signs your messages, and DMARC tells receiving servers what to do when a message fails those checks. If any of the three is wrong, Gmail and Outlook increasingly route your mail to junk or reject it outright. This is fixable, usually within a day, and the fix is permanent.
Should we use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?
If your team already lives in Word, Excel, and Teams, Microsoft 365 is the lower-friction choice. If your team works in browsers and shared documents, Google Workspace tends to be simpler to administer. Both are reliable and similarly priced. The bigger factor is usually which one your staff will actually use without complaining, so we ask about your workflow before recommending one.
Can you move our email without downtime?
Yes. A migration runs in stages: we provision the new platform, copy mail and calendars in the background while the old system keeps receiving, then cut DNS over during a quiet window and run both in parallel until nothing is arriving at the old host. Users keep their addresses and their history. Most small office migrations complete over a weekend.
What is DMARC and do we actually need it?
DMARC is a DNS record that tells receiving mail servers how to handle messages that fail authentication, and it can send you reports on who is sending mail using your domain. You need it for two reasons. It materially improves whether your legitimate mail reaches the inbox, and it is the only mechanism that stops someone spoofing your domain to invoice your clients. Google and Yahoo now require it for bulk senders, and the direction of travel is toward requiring it for everyone.
We use shared or hosting-bundled email. Is that a problem?
It can be. Email bundled with cheap web hosting typically shares an IP address with hundreds of other sites, so someone else's spam problem becomes your deliverability problem. It also usually lacks proper archiving, mobile sync, and admin controls. If email matters to your business, it belongs on a real mail platform rather than as a hosting add-on.
What happens when an employee leaves?
We handle offboarding properly: reset credentials, convert the mailbox to a shared or forwarded address so client mail keeps arriving, export an archive of the account, remove the person's access from connected services, and document what changed. Skipping this step is one of the most common ways small businesses lose access to important client history.
Related services
Email, websites, and infrastructure usually need to be handled together.
Get your business email sorted out.
Tell us what platform you are on now and what is going wrong. If mail is landing in spam, say so, and we will start with a deliverability audit.