I have spent HOURS trying to set up email

[lamandler]

That's all, just a simple email address! I have ben using a crappy gmail account address which doubles as my personal (spammy) email address so today decided to be more professional.

I registered a domain name with godaddy, then googled for an hour to find where I could get a free business email address.

Settled on Zoha, set it up (somehow) and now can't sync it with gmail/macmail which I use on my laptop.

I know there is a simple answer but I can't believe how long I have spent fanning! Does anyone know if there's sole trader IT advice anywhere online - or how on earth do you manage if you are working with a laptop on your kitchen table like me?!

Do you mean you want to be able to view your new business email in your macmail?

Then you need to add an account. File Add Account. Imap?
Incoming mail will be mail.whateveryourdomainis.com
Outgoing smtp.your domain.com

Did that according to Zoha instructions. I think it's just my first experience (freelancing two months) of not having an IT person on hand at all times in an office....

Godaddy often includes some email capacity with domain names. Double check that first!

I have had this. Sometimes you need to use a different port. I contacted my provider (so Zoha in your case) and they told me which ones to try. Setting up the accounts can be quite fiddly so do try all the troubleshooting steps etc. I use Thunderbird for mail now as I find it is very intuitive to set up new accounts, and it is always being updated (mac user but I found Mail less powerful and less clear - it might be worth looking at a few mail managers before you get too committed as this is a pain to change later).

More generally, I am a freelance and I have found that careful googling will usually bring up someone who has had the same problem and solved it (not for email accounts as that is so specific, but for eg file conversions, sharing).

The main thing I miss is people who fix the printer!

I bought email management and support from go-daddy and its been invaluable. I don't know what you earn in a day but for me it's econominsl to outsource this to go daddy. Their online and telephone support was fantastic and sorted me out with pointing my new domain to my existing Wordpress site.

I use Thunderbird and it lets me manage all of my different emails : aol / gmail / my two domain names
doddle