By Orion Stewart - October 7, 2025
Starting a business is exciting, but when it comes to IT, especially domains and email, the setup process can get confusing fast. Most people rush to buy a domain, sign up for Google or GoDaddy email, and sort the rest out later.
There’s a better way.
By taking a few extra steps upfront and starting with a properly configured Microsoft Business tenant, you’ll get a secure, scalable foundation without headaches down the road.
Here’s our recommended order to set things up:
Buy your domain under your personal account (temporarily)
Create your Microsoft 365 tenant
Purchase and assign your business license
Set up your business email
Add your domain to Microsoft
Transfer your domain to your business-owned registrar account
The order matters more than most people realize. If you start by buying a domain and setting up email through a quick online service, you can accidentally tie critical parts of your business to the wrong account. This makes future changes, growth, and even simple fixes much harder.
Setting things up in the right sequence ensures:
Your business, not you personally, owns key accounts.
Your email and systems stay secure and compliant.
You avoid messy migrations later.
You can scale easily as your business grows.
It’s a small amount of work now that saves you major time, cost, and frustration later.
Start by registering your domain with a trusted provider. Our top pick:
Cloudflare – easy to use, no upsells, great DNS controls.
While GoDaddy or HostGator work too, avoid this mistake:
Never buy Microsoft licenses through GoDaddy. This ties your Microsoft account to GoDaddy’s system, which limits control and complicates migrations.
Use your personal email for this step. You’ll transfer ownership to your business email later.
Go to the Microsoft 365 site and:
Select a Business Standard or Business Premium plan.
Sign up using your personal email address.
This creates your Microsoft tenant, which becomes your central hub for email, apps, storage, and security.
Once your tenant is created:
Buy a Microsoft 365 license (Standard or Premium).
Assign it to your admin account, which is still your personal email at this point.
You’ll now have access to Outlook (email), Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, and key security features.
Now that you're licensed:
Log into the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
Create a new user: owner@yourdomain.com.
Assign the license to this new user account.
Rename your admin account to use this business email instead of your personal one.
This becomes your official login and business identity.
In the Admin Center:
Go to Settings → Domains.
Click “Add Domain.”
Follow the instructions to verify domain ownership via DNS records from your registrar (Cloudflare, etc.).
Time to make it official:
Create a new registrar account with the provider you used to buy your domain, using your business email owner@yourdomain.com.
Transfer the domain from your personal registrar account into this new business-owned one.
Now the domain belongs to the business, not you personally.
Skipping or reordering these steps might seem faster now, but can lead to major issues later like losing access, messy migrations, or unclear ownership. This approach avoids that entirely.
Your Business Owns Everything
The domain, email, and Microsoft account are tied to the company, not to you or any one person.
Professional Presence from Day One
Using owner@yourdomain.com builds immediate trust with customers, partners, and banks.
Security and Compliance from the Start
Microsoft Business Premium gives you enterprise-grade tools including:
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Endpoint and device protection
Data loss prevention
Secure file sharing
You get the same security tools used by large companies, right out of the box.
Avoid Migrations and Rework
If you set things up piecemeal, you'll eventually need to migrate email, users, and files. That gets messy and time-consuming.
This way, you start clean and stay clean.
Ready to Grow
Whether you stay solo or build a 50-person team, your IT infrastructure is ready to scale with you.
Too many business owners treat IT setup as an afterthought. But getting it right from the beginning saves time, reduces risk, and sets your business up for smooth growth.
If this still feels overwhelming, we’re here to help.
At MSP Shift, we specialize in setting up Microsoft 365, domains, and secure IT foundations for new businesses.
No confusion. No wasting time in support chats. Just a clean, secure setup done right the first time.