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Ask HN: What's the best "Contact Us" email address for a startup?

16 points by magsafe ↗ HN
Some choices:

contact@mydomain.com, support@mydomain.com, help@mydomain.com, hello@mydomain.com, team@mydomain.com

Anything else? I'd like it to be friendly, informal and generic enough for any question a customer might have.

44 comments

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skram
Depending on your structure and size, I'd suggest just doing a catch-all so any of these will work and so emails to the wrong email address (anything@mydomain.com) will get to the general inbox.

That being said, I think hello@ or team@ are most friendly and general enough. Help@ and support@ seem to not welcome sales or pre-sales inquiries.

Aaronn
Yeah Hi or Hello are defiantly the best if you want to be friendly.
fredgrott
HiHowCanIHelpYou@anydomain.com
saaaaaam
If you think about it, that doesn't really make sense; it's as though the person emailing is asking how they can help.
JacobH
support - if you are helping customers

team - if you want to get to know the team or make a general inquiry

contact - feels kind of too formal

Just my take on it.

codegeek
I would divide it up by business functions. "Contact", "team" etc are very generic. For example, both an exisiting customer and a prospective customer could tehcnically be "contacting" you. But you want to differentiate there. I would go for something like:

    Sales: sales@xyz.com

    Customer Support: customersupport@xyz.com

    Press release/inquiry: press@xyz.com

    Partners/vendors etc: partner@xyz.com

    Anything else: hello@xyz.com (This can be creative as you like)
magsafe
I posted this question precisely to avoid having too many aliases. I'd like the equivalent of "dialing 0" from your hotel room phone, and getting redirected by the front desk based on your request.
simpleAJ
how about reachout@example.com
agwa
I think such a scheme is customer-unfriendly, especially for a small company where there isn't a compelling organizational need to have separate email addresses. For example, if an existing customer wants to both place a new order and get customer support, should they be expected to send two emails, one to sales and another to support? Also, I've noticed that once a customer gets a company's email address in their address book, that's the only email address they ever use. I've seen this first hand with customers emailing the support address to place new orders.
vinothgopi
Well it is a little unfriendly (many emails to remember?) but I think it does help. While in a small company we tend to have overlapping roles, slowly our roles become more concrete. When that happens, a mail to say payments@ will immediately tell the payments guy that he has to do something although many others may be cc-ed. Or it may tell the customer that sending a mail to the specific topic email address might get a faster response.

Secondly, like how we all know that company.com/about usually takes us to the team page, the press might try to hit up press@. There is always a fallback - the contactus@ but when the number of emails start exploding, it helps when tagging emails by purpose.

poulsbohemian
Personally I use "howdy@domain.com" because it is just so darn friendly ;-)
magsafe
It has a bit of a southern connotation that might be awkward for urban customers.
blendergasket
As an urbanite myself I find this quite endearing.
poulsbohemian
I find it interesting that marketing tactics of the past few years have been very focused on "telling a story" and humanizing the creators behind the website (photos of the team on the "about" page, etc) yet we continue to use email addresses like "contact" and "sales" and generic contact form pages, "submit a support ticket" pages, etc. My selection of "howdy" was the most basic thing I could do to create that kind of endearing outstretched hand. That said, the right answer to the OP's question is probably to create "contact","support", "company name", "webmaster" etc -- all of the above, and route them to some common mailbox. That way if the customer can't figure out the right email address and takes a guess, it should get to the right place. The related question is "is putting an email address on the site enough?" or "if I put a contact us form on the site, do I also need a catch-all email address?" I'd say, you need a minimum of both.
pliptvo
As a non-American I find this rather grating.
poulsbohemian
Grating? Really? Would "hello@domain.com" have any better connotation? I use funny greetings like "howdy" in regular conversation because it has the effect of disarming people. You can often do the same thing with an overly formal greeting "Good Day, Mr. Jones" - people can't help but crack a smile. So I'm curious as a non-American (non-native English speaker?) what you would find an actually welcoming, non-trite greeting? "Howdy" is an old, informal rural greeting found everywhere in the US, somewhat like what I suppose "g'day" is in Australia. Would you find "g'day" grating as well?
flipchart
I also dislike "howdy" (and "g'day"), but I wouldn't necessarily go to "grating". Depends on my mood.

I think the issue partially stems from the fact that the internet can be seen as culturally removed. So if I visit someone in the US I expect to encounter their culture, and I am prepared for it. Same for Australia. However, on the internet I expect something more culturally neutral like "hello".

But then again, maybe it's just that certain words/phrases/accents annoy certain people, and you can't please all the people all the time

ninh
info@domain.com for general inquiries.
MichaelTieso
Keep it as simple as possible. One email address for everything and expand as time goes on. I usually do contact@.
jtheory
The problem with this is that as you expand, most of your customers will not expand with you.

So they may start using contact@ to communicate directly with the founding team; two years later they will use contact@ and get the intern who is supposed to redirect email (and may not do a great job of it).

If you start out with the 4 or 5 standard options (at least splitting tech support from sales), they may initially all be mailing lists that go to all founders -- then you can direct them appropriately later as you specialize... and your clients/customers won't need to change anything.

tansey
If you really just want one email for everything, go with team@mydomain.com. All the other choices imply a purpose for the email (e.g., first contact or help with a problem).
simantel
Yeah, I agree about using just one email. I like Medium's approach of using yourfriends@medium.com.
KC8ZKF
Pick an easy to spell first name e.g. pat@mydomain.com
agwa
I prefer companyname@domain.com because I've noticed that sometimes in gmail and other mail clients the email address is rendered as just the local part (the part before the @ sign), and I want customers to see something meaningful instead of just "hello" or "contact".
corin_
If you are sending mails correctly (i.e. with a name not just an email address) then that isn't an issue.

  From: Company Name <support@domain.com>
vs.

  From: support@domain.com
agwa
That's true for emails the company sends the customer, but not true for emails the customer sends the company (unless they're replying to an email or using their address book). Point is, I've seen only the local part get rendered even when I send from a From: address that properly includes the name.
kurtle
I always assume I can reach someone at support@domain.com. That's the only one I assume.
ecesena
[partially related] Do you reply as, e.g., support@mydomain.com, or from you personal email myname@domain.com? Do you use a real or fake person to address customer support queries?
Aaronn
Maybe realname@companydomain.com?
ecesena
I also do that :) But I've heard on using fake accounts, that sounds insane to me...
gothep
I Love Mediums: yourfriends @ medium.com. Feels just a tiny bit more personal.
hobo_mark
How about ask@domain? It clearly states that you're open to answer any kind of question from customers and/or partners, and it's neither too formal (like sales@, support@, accounting@) nor hipster-casual (say, hello@, howdy@, yourfriends@ and so on).

Then you might also want to use team@domain for announcements but that's it.

somethingcoolio
Personally I would go with: askcompanyname@mydomain.com Because as JacobH stated, "contact" feels to formal.

Everything else has all ready been recommended, ie: support@mydomain.com for CUSTOMER support. press@mydomain.com for dealing with vultures. partners.partnername@mydomain.com for partners.

I'd make my catch-all something like "generalinfo@mydomain.com"

ChikkaChiChi
general inquiries usually go to info@. if you are that concerned, use actionable verbs.

we're past the point where setting up email us trivial, so endlessly splitting up your email addresses is more self serving than customer centric.

PS: contact forms are way more important.

tobykier
questions@domain.com

most of the time people are mailing you unsolicited it's because there's something they want to know

tobykier
questions@domain.com

most of the time people are mailing you unsolicited it's because there's something they want to know.

27182818284
I prefer team@domain.com,

but when responding I always respond

first name, personalemail@company.com

mustafab
We are using 42@ for our contact address. It's fun & short, it's meaningful, and for sure it's for every (ultimate) question :)
j45
You could pick one, publish it, and set an alias for all the other ones to go there and not fret about it much more. I've used help@ for a long time.
dmckeon
In theory, RFC 2142 answers this:

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2142
but in practice, any of the addresses listed there will be the targets of a lot of spam - so I would avoid using those as live working addressses.

You could perhaps put a powerful spam filter in front of sales@ and info@ and see if any pearls pass through it - if anyone at your company can spare the time for that - up to you.

Otherwise, the exact addresses you use are less important, as long as Joe Random customer/vendor/outsider can understand which address (or contact form) to use.

If your company is in an established niche, you might follow any patterns that exist in that niche - check your own address book for ideas.

[dead] helloamar
I've been using wecare@mydomain.com since 2002