I don’t need all the stuff they offer.
I ONLY need email@mydomain.blah…
Anything out there thats free or self hosted just for this.
Porkbun is pretty decent but actually is 25 USD a year, and so same as a single Google workspace account.
Or self host email with a basic web email gui.
If you don’t need a dedicated mailbox, just buy the domain from a provider like cloudflare or Google that supports email forwarding. Google forwards all emails to @mydomain to my Gmail account for free.
If you also need outgoing email, sign up for an SMTP relay. I use mailjet, and their free tier offers high enough limits for my personal use. Within Gmail, I added the SMTP settings from mailjet, and I can now send email from my custom email address by just selecting it in the compose page.
This. Cloudflare also has this relay option that I use for my domain. We have got to start telling people to stop hosting their own mail server and just use a relay. It’s far too much of a headache.
You don’t even need to register the domain through Cloudflare, you can just set up Cloudflare as the DNS master, and they’ll put in the right DNS records when you configure Email forwarding.
YES it does setup the right MX SPF records for me
BUT I had to do it from within a “website” as they call it.
You’re saying something slightly different ? If you have a URL to the GUI to this DNS master thingy I would be grateful. Very curious
No, that is exactly how you do it. It’s not a great name but you add a site, set up your registrar with what you need to point it at CF, and you’re up and running. Considering Cloudflare is mostly used to protect websites the names… clunky.
Thats genius !!!
thanks for the tip. I have Cloudflare account and saw email routing in there somewhere.
https://community.cloudflare.com/t/solved-how-to-use-gmail-smtp-to-send-from-an-email-address-which-uses-cloudflare-email-routing/382769/2 looks like the setup ?
Then in gmail when I reply to an email, it will however show its coming my my gmail ? thats always been the tricky one eh ?
I sent it up in 10 seconds
then tested it
when I reply it and check it from a dummy email account, its from my gmail, NOT my domain name. Figured it would not really work.
If anyone knows how to reply and it to fully hide that its going from your gmail, it would be great
If you want to send mail from your custom domain from within Gmail, you need to use an SMTP relay like mailjet, mailgun, sendgrid, etc. Most have free tiers with high enough sending limits per month that are more than enough for personal use.
Once you have signed up and get your SMTP credentials, you can add it to Gmail like here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en#:~:text=Step 1%3A Add an address you own 1,username and password on that account. See More.
Your SMTP relay will also provide instructions to setup dkim/spf records with your dns.