My wife is starting a small business venture from home and would like to create a vanity email address through gmail. Does anyone know how this can be done?

AFAIK, Gmail doesn't do that. You would need some sort of outside email host, which you could then link to your Gmail inbox.

One option would be Google Business Email. There's plenty of others out there though. Just google "email host provider" or similar.

EDIT: Ok, wait, are you talking about her wanting a herbusiness@gmail.com address? Or name@herbusiness.com address?

[This message has been edited by 99CentBeer (edited 11/16/2010 12:58p).]

If she already has someone hosting her website, she can redirect her e-mail to Google Apps (linked above) and then use the Gmail backend for her e-mail. I've been using it for a few years now with several ventures and it works great.

99cent,

She currently as businessname@gmail.com but she would rather have xxx@businessname.com.

Ok. Does she already have a domain name registered that she's hosting a website off of? If so, like dave said above, it's likely that her web host will provide some sort of email capabilities as well.

If she doesn't have a domain registered, she will have to do that first. You can get domains for $5-10 a year, sometimes even cheaper. Then she would need to sign up for email hosting with something like Google Business in the link I posted above, or another provider, such as FuseHost for example. This will allow them to link the domain with an email server. If she doesn't use the Google Business and chooses another email host, make sure they offer POP3 and SMTP access, which will enable her to add the email into her Gmail account so that she doesn't have to check two different email accounts.

I have my mail hosted on google apps and love it.

1) Buy domain x.com from godaddy or another registrar.
2) Register for google apps.
3) Google will ask you to verify that you own the domain and give you several choices. I choose the dns option where they tell you to forward something lsadfjldskj2398234.x.com to google.com. They give you instructions on how to do this but you'd log into godaddy or your registrar and do it.
4) Forward your mx records (again google tells you how for most registrars)
5) Manage mail settings on google apps and set up other email accounts.

It costs about $7 a year and you'll have up to 100 email accounts.

[This message has been edited by unleashed85 (edited 11/16/2010 3:24p).]

the $7 a year for the domain or for google? thought google's free edition only gives you 50 users.

Most small businesses can get by with the free edition.