I recently got my custom domain, but I now need help setting up the email part of it.

Between Zoho, Proton, Tutanota, and Google Workspace, which hosting service is the best for personal use and managing emails?

Will any of these hosts also allow me to make as many custom email addresses as I want with my domain?

Thanks!

Hello everyone!

For personal email, I've been using Gmail for > 10 years, and I've been quite satisfied with it so far. However, I feel a bit creeped out that all of my digital identity relies on this single email address, which uses a corporate-owned domain... (yes, yes, call me paranoid all you want)

I was thinking of buying a custom domain on Namecheap (seems like a decent alternative to Google Domains and GoDaddy), and then setting up an email address with this custom domain.

Ideally, I would just have Gmail with a custom domain, as I don't have a strong incentive to move away right now, but I want the flexibility of switching to a different email provider at any time without having to change my contact info / credentials on 285737 websites and online services.

I tried to do some research, and I found the following options:

1. I subscribe to Google Workspace for the custom domain (~70$) and follow this guide, but IIUC this will be a separate account from my personal Gmail (I couldn't find a way to upgrade my personal Gmail to a Workspace one?).

2. I subscribe to a Namecheap private email inbox (~12$ / year) and follow one of the dozens of guides to add this email to my personal Gmail. IIUC, this means Gmail will retrieve emails from my Namecheap inbox, and send emails to Namecheap, which will then forward them from the custom domain email. While this seems like the cheapest and best option for me, I've seen many complaints that Namecheap emails end up in spam or are blacklisted ([1], [2], [3]), and that'd be really bad if I were replying to my bank or health insurance provider...

3. I subscribe to something like ProtonMail Plus (~50$ / year), follow this guide, and then add this account to my Gmail just like in option 2 (however, not sure if / how well this would work). Or I just import my Gmail inbox to ProtonMail and ditch Gmail now (I'd prefer not to make the move for now though).

4. Same as 3, but with SimpleLogin (~30$ / year) with this guide. IIUC, SimpleLogin would use my Gmail as the inbox, and just act as a forwarder. I'm not sure how feasible this is (I've seen others have issues with this setup).

I'd prefer something that optimizes for simplicity and would allow me to keep my current Gmail as the primary inbox. Did I get anything wrong? What would you recommend? What were your experiences in setting up a custom domain for your email?

Thanks!

Hey all,

I’m planning to get a custom domain (10 years via Cloudflare) and use it for personal email only, something like: [email protected] for main/personal use [email protected] for logins/newsletters Maybe a wildcard or spam@ for other stuff

Still deciding between self-hosting (Mailcow, Mail-in-a-Box) vs. using services like Migadu, Proton, or iCloud+.

Curious to know: Do you use a custom domain just for personal email? Are you self-hosting or using a provider? Any issues with deliverability, spam, or maintenance? Do you think it’s worth the efforts?

Would love to hear your setups and thoughts before I jump in.

I am currently using Microsoft 365 with a custom domain for email service. I would like to move away from M365 because of cost (i.e., I get it at no cost today but will have to start paying for it later next year). I am looking for email service recommendations where I can have a custom domain (e.g., [email protected]). It doesn't have to be free but something a lot more affordable (for personal/family use) is desired. I am aware of Google Workspace but am looking for other options as well. Thanks!

So I just bit the bullet and bought lastname.io for myself. I've done a little research and people seem to through around people like Zoho, Mxroute, and Purelymail. My main concern I suppose would be inferior spam filtering versus gmail and risks of emails being bounced/sent to spam because they aren't from 'established' sources.

I see a lot of people saying that you shouldn’t host your own mailserver. That’s fine with me, i’m not looking for a new project. My hosting provider doesn’t have 2fa for the e-mail accounts and recently i had to change my e-mail password multiple times because of guessed password (or so my hosting provider say). I use already random generated password of 20 characters so i think it’s highly unlikely that they guessed it. But having it behind a 2fa would give me a little bit of peace of mind.

What are the other options for using your own domain as een e-mailadress?

Edit:

This blew up! I have a lot of options to look into. I’m thinking of using iCloud for my personal email. Don’t know what i’m gonna you use for my services and work but enough to choose from! I like the cloudflare routing options. I guess it still a bit of a tiny project.

TL;DR: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Gu8FFyNY1Y9X69kHmJvkI0fLv8GaK-5B6HnQZZzo1Nw/edit?usp=sharing

Like many migrating away from Google Workspace, my main concern has been finding a new email provider for my 5 users across 3 domains. The GSuite email host alternatives with prices? thread on r/gsuite was a good starting point, but I found myself needing more information than was provided there.

I decided to record my findings in a spreadsheet covering everything I could find answers for, complete with links to the source of the information as far as possible.

It's still a work in progress, and I welcome corrections, updates, and requests. I hope you find it helpful :)

Could anyone recommend email providers that let you use your own domain. This isn't for a business account so I don't need anything crazy, I just want a personal email provider that will let me create my own email address using my custom domain I've purchased

Just curious what people might be using for email hosting for their custom domains. This won't be my main personal email account. Mostly I want to use it for sending outbound notifications from my server so that they actually come from my custom domain rather then sending them out via my personal Gmail account.

Maybe setup a couple inbound addresses for generic stuff as well, but I could handle those via Cloudflare's Email routing beta as well.

Edit: Thanks All, ended up setting up Zoho. One thing that's disappointing with it is that the sender email needs to match the users account. So I needed to create a generic user email account for all my no-reply emails, and in theory those addresses could also receive emails. But not a deal breaker by any means.

I'm currently using improvmx free plan to forward emails from my custom domain but recently I've been told by companies that emails sent to my custom domain are being returned as "undelieverable".

I was wondering if people have faced this issue and if there what recommendations their are out there. I've never had a problem with improvmx in the past 3 years but with the number of emails being returned recently, I can't ignore this. I don't mind paying a little bit of money for a good host but I am on a student budget. I would also like the ability to send emails via my domain too.

I only need 1 alias, I am based in the UK and my domain is with namecheap if that makes a difference. I also forwarded to gmail and would like that sort of functionality too but it's not a dealbreaker.

Thanks :)

Hello!

I am struggling to find what I need, and I am thinking that actually the service I am looking for does not exist for free.

I am setting up a business and am looking for a free email and calendar hosting service that allow me to also use my custom domain.

Above that, it would be nice to have the ability to use third-party apps like Gmail, Outlook or Mail (iOS), but mainly Gmail because that's where my personal email is.

I think this is a lot to ask for free and couldn't find a service yet that has all these things together. So far I came accross:

Hostinger: free, up to 100 accounts, but it seems to not have the calendar functionality. If anyone knows how to "solve" this, I would appreciate.

Zoho: free, up to 5 accounts, has email and calendar, but I can't connect it to third-party apps (correct me if I'm wrong).

Thanks! Would love to hear your inputs.

I am a freelance web developer and I am starting to get into the world of providing custom domain email addresses for my clients. I know that Google Workspace is a great service, and so far that has been my go-to recommendation. For some clients it works great, but there are two downsides: (1) since it’s quite expensive, it tends to only make sense for them to set it up themselves, and I simply incorporate the MX records, etc into my site. For me to make money off it, it would end up being prohibitively expensive for most of my clients. (2) because they’re setting it up, it tends to cause all sorts of logistical issues. They typically need me to come in to their account and get the domain key, and there are just a lot of parts that, for some users, is too complicated.

I have other options, such as the built-in email in my cPanel, as well as private email provided by my hosting provider, and they are of course much cheaper, but they tend to be much harder for the client to work with. Additionally, it is impossible for me to let them truly manage their own account (I have to set their password, etc). This also works for some clients, but it just doesn’t feel very smooth or intuitive for them, albeit the cost is much more reasonable.

What is the standard practice for this among other freelancers? I want to incorporate this long-term into my system. Most of my clients are lower-scale businesses and can’t afford to spend a lot of money on email. I’ve been able to in coats cheap solutions for them for hosting and design, but I’m struggling with email.

So I have researched about self hosting your own email server such as Mailcow but it seems pretty divided on whether or not you should do it due emails potentially not getting delivered due to spam filters and such. So I'm kinda not interested in self hosting so I'm wondering what is the next best option to get my own email ideally for free but maybe settle for really cheap?

Edit: I have my own domain already.

Edit2: Thank you all! I have my domain with Cloudflare so I have tried their email routing but would like to be able to send from it too. I'll check out some other suggestions.

Edit3: Wow this got a lot of replies. Again thanks all for the recommendations. I haven't had a chance to actually check any out yet (busy weekend) but I will get to it.

Edit4: So I've had a little time to look at some of the options and it looks like maybe Zoho, onepoundemail or PurelyMail. They are both fairly cheap and around the same price. Anyone know how they compare?

Edit5: I ended up paying for Zoho for $12/year. So far it's doing everything I wanted and more. Very happy with it! Thank you all!!!

Hi guys, I'm having some problems with either the reliability or the reputation of my email address for my use case on the alternatives I tried.

TL;DR: what is a reputable and reliable way to configure a custom domain email address, so it will forward to Gmail, and I will be able to send from Gmail with an external SMTP server? My main priority is domain reputation

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I have a custom domain email address, that I use for the important stuff (bank, bills, taxes, government stuff), so I want it to be reliable in both, receiving and sending. But I also want to be able to check it from Gmail along my @gmail.com address.

So far, I configured my custom domain email address on iCloud+, and configured iCloud to forward all the email I get to my Gmail address. Also, on Gmail side, I configured my custom domain email address as a sending address, with iCloud SMTP.

However, this approach has some problems:

• If I configure iCloud to delete emails after forwarding, I can miss some emails, as the emails that iCloud consider SPAM won't be forwarded, but will be also deleted and won't appear on iCloud junk folder.

• If I configure iCloud to NOT delete emails after forwarding, ALL emails to my domain goes directly to SPAM on Gmail, and I see near the sender name "to [email protected] via mydomain.com". From Google support page, it seems something in how iCloud handles the email with that option affects the DMARC, and it's probably harming my domain reputation.

So it seems the iCloud approach won't work. Do you have some alternatives in mind? I worry about self-hosting it as it could affect more my reputation (I think), so I don't know what providers could I use.

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Edit: I took a look at forwardemail.net as some other suggested, it seems to fit my use case. I already opened a 3$/month account on forwardemail.net and so far I'm happy with what I got. Let's see how it works during the following days. Thanks!

Hey everyone!

I know this is probably not all that relevant to self-hosting, but I'm not too sure where else to ask this.

So basically, I recently bought myself a custom email domain for my website, but I want to be able to have a custom email with it.

I initially set up Cloudflare email forwarding, but the issue I have with that is I cannot reply to emails I receive through it. I tried to set up a custom email server, but ultimately it was beyond my skill level.

ProtonMail is my main email provider, but I only have the free plan. Although I am thinking about upgrading, I am wondering if there are any email services out there that have custom domain support for free. I know there are a lot of cheap services out there, like MXroute, but I have decided that if I am going to pay for something, I am just going to get a ProtonMail Plus plan. However, I do want to look into all the free options.

If there are ones that support IMAP/SMTP, then that is a plus, but if a free service doesn't offer that, then it doesn't bother me.

I have heard a fair amount of talk about Zoho Mail, but it doesn't seem to have a free plan as far as I have looked. Skiff would have been an amazing option, but it doesn't exist anymore.

Are there any free services out there that match what I am looking for?

Hi! I don't know if this is the correct place, but is the /r that can be most close.

I've my custom domain, and suppose that is "myname.com". Furthermore, I've some self-hosted services, like a blog, my webpage, n8n, Plausible, Home Assistant... and the idea is that this services use a specific email to send emails. My domain provider gets me only 1 custom email for free, but as you can send an email "as another email", my idea is to configure the SMTP with this main free email, and set "from:" in every service. For example, for my blog, I send emails as "[email protected]", for my HA, "[email protected]" ... Of course, this emails only can send emails, but not receive.

But... I want to use the main email for my personal communication, mostly for "serious" emails like work or professional stuff. So, my question is, taking into account that the domain have my name, and I'm not a company, but just a person, what would be a good "name" for this email? [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]...

Thanks in advance for your ideas!

Edit: thanks to all for your comments! I think the best way will be use "contact@..." as main address (more general) and then maybe just pay for a dedicated email server to use all the other addresses.

Edit2: after all the comments, I checked the options for my mail service, and I found that I can create "redirects", that is a new email address but without dedicated space, so with this I can redirect this addresses to my main address. I didn't know this functionality, and I though to receive (accept) emails to an address you need to have a dedicated space. So, many thanks again to all :)

Looking to slowly ditch gmail and im hoping to get peoples experience with email providers. I would like to use my own custom domain. I would also like a moderate amount of privacy. Proton sort of freaks me out, I also have their VPN and im not the biggest fan of it.

Some options Ive seen:

Startmail, Fastmail, Tutamail, mailbox.org, zoho, purelymail (though this one looks a little sketchy), posteo (would have to use an alias service to use custom domain)

There is so many options which vary so widely on price.

I have a domain but I would wanna avoid paying 15 euros per month to google just to make an email. What do you recommend me?

Is there some kind of convention to be followed here? Clearly admin or webmaster work for a site.

But what about when it's for personal email and as an alternative to using [email protected]?

I don't know if this is the correct place to post.

I'm starting a small business and I need a domain name + business email hosting (I don't need web hosting for now).

My issue is a lot of service providers do the "It's extremely cheap the first year, but it renews at 5 times the initial price" crap. What are good options?

I don't need fancy features, I just need 1 mailbox and being able to use it on my phone and PC.