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Use a custom domain to send emails with Gmail using Cloudflare email routing

166 points by Gadiguibou 4y ago

doctoboggan 4y ago
I’ve tried various versions of this and have always had deliverability issues. Never tried with Cloudflare though. Can anyone who has done this exact setup report on their experience with deliverability?
- blahgeek 4y ago
  By deliverability issues, I believe you mean outbound mails? I have the same concern but I don’t think that’s related to the cloudflare though. Its only about using gmail SMTP server to send custom domain emails without correct signing
  - doctoboggan 4y ago
    Yes I mean outbound email being marked as spam or otherwise not being delivered to my recipient’s email.
- computerfriend 4y ago
  I think I tried exactly this configuration a few months ago. I also had deliverability issues.
- mmarquezs 4y ago
  I haven't used it much, but personally I replaced the Gmail Outbound server for Sendgrid. Inbound I still use the CloudFare system.
- weird-eye-issue 4y ago
  Cloudflare will have nothing to do with you deliverability because that is only being used for receiving emails
- kweks 4y ago
  I do this with MailGun across a multitude of professional / company domains. Never has a problem with deliverability. MailGun has a very nice option where you can use RegEx in your routing rules, even across domains (and subjects, recipient, etc)
sideproject 4y ago
I do something similar with a tool I made & use https://newsy.co https://newsy.co It works great. I don't use Cloudflare email routing service but use something else. But I did a manual test with Cloudflare and it worked really well (thinking of changing it actually).
amatecha 4y ago
I went the opposite direction and am now paying for Proton and have set up my domains there. For me personally, a better approach than increasing my reliance on a second cloud service (Cloudflare) while continuing to benefit the original (Google) and experience its extreme degree of privacy invasion. This might not be the perfect solution, but for me it's definitely a step in the right direction, even if I move onto something else later. Further, considering I am regularly inexplicably blocked from accessing websites because they use Cloudflare "protection" (which doesn't like OpenBSD + Firefox strict privacy setting), and considering their recent conduct, there's zero way I'd ever consider using Cloudflare's services regardless of potential usefulness. Not to mention giving up even more control of the internet to these "superpowers" seems like a terrible idea for everyone's sake, IMO.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  As someone privacy minded, how do you manage domain ownership? I've recently jumped into this world myself and I feel as though most registrars are unsavory in some way.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Oddly enough, Google Domains is the least bad in this regard. They have an interest in not compromising their control of .dev and it's enough of a small potatoes activity that it can escape subversion into a profit center.
  - amatecha 4y ago
    Oh, what aspect of domain ownership? I mean, yeah it's true, the whole market around domains is super sketchy and basically unethical IMO, domains should be like $5-10/year at most, for any TLD. I'm using NameCheap, which I fortunately haven't heard any horror stories about, but yeah, I don't have any more faith in them than anyone else, I just got an awesome deal to move my domains over years ago and they seemed to have a good reputation at the time.
    - vanilla_nut 4y ago
Arcuru 4y ago
All these articles really need to clearly layout the downside. You can't send emails as the custom domain. At best, your emails will say "sent by x@gmail.com on behalf of officialdomain.org"
- hnthrow10282910 4y ago
  Like within the header? It will show the custom domain in the from field of the email. Im not sure what the big deal is, but I’m curious.
  - rnk 4y ago
    It doesn't look professional, it could beore likely to be rejected as spam.
    - esperent 4y ago
      My personal email for years has shown "abc@mysite.com via forwardmail.net". I've never had any problems with deliverability. The "via forwardmail" part is subtle enough that it's not a big deal for me and if you start looking out for it, you'll see it a lot. EDIT: I was trying out Cloudflare email routing yesterday so I checked one of the test emails I sent. There's no "via Cloudflare" visible, and actually it's sent from smtp.gmail.com so that's probably reputable enough to get high deliverability. All I see in the from field is "abc@mysite.com".
ignoramous 4y ago
One can in fact send emails from Workers with their Cloudflare-registered domain name through MailChannels [0]. We use it to send MagicLinks [1]. And intend to impl DKIM signing, soon [2]. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/sending-email-from-workers-with-mailchannels/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/sending-email-from-workers-with-... [1] https://github.com/celzero/otp/blob/f6bb5593c5173a284417863806ad6d5a57b19539/src/core/magic.js#L105-L132 https://github.com/celzero/otp/blob/f6bb5593c5173a2844178638... [2] https://mailchannels.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/7122849237389 https://mailchannels.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/712284923...
- icy 4y ago
  This is neat. I've been using Oracle's Email Delivery service because it's dirt cheap -- I didn't know I could do it for free using Workers. I'm going to try this.
- modernerd 4y ago
  I’m using the MailChannels integration for contact forms on Cloudflare Pages (including Cloudflare’s Turnstile CAPTCHA alternative [1]). It works really well. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/turnstile/ https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/turnstile/
- truetraveller 4y ago
  Can MailChannels be used for commercial purposes. Any limits? Can I create a "newsletter" SaaS, like MailChimp? Seems too good to be true.
  - xmorse 4y ago
    I think SendGrid uses MailChannels to send newsletter emails and probably most other email marketing tools too
- ttul 4y ago
  MailChannels CEO here. We love to hear use case stories like this. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn [1]. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksimpson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksimpson/
saagarjha 4y ago
This seems far more complicated than it had to be? My email (saagar@saagarjha.com) is backed by a personal Gmail account. When I receive mail my domain registrar has some aliases set up to catch it and forward it to my Gmail inbox. When I send mail it goes through an alias: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157 https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157. No need to set up a mailserver at all.
- weird-eye-issue 4y ago
  I think you completely misread the post, or maybe you didn't read it at all They aren't setting up a mailserver They are just using Cloudflare's email routing to do what your registrar is doing It seems like everything else is mostly the same except your alias approach has some downsides that the OP's maybe doesn't: "Important: While these directions let you send emails from a custom email alias at your domain, email recipients can still find your personal Gmail address if they inspect the email headers. Emails from your alias are not digitally signed and are more likely to be flagged as spam."
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    I know they aren't, they're trying to avoid doing that. I suggested another way they could. Based on what other people are saying, about how Cloudflare messes up the sender field for you, I feel like having a Gmail address in the headers might be better.
    - weird-eye-issue 4y ago
      > about how Cloudflare messes up the sender field for you ... What? Cloudflare has nothing to do with the email sending so it doesn't mess up any sender fields. If you mean for receiving emails, the sender field has always been totally fine for me. I don't see anybody complaining about it, I think you are misunderstanding other comments
      - saagarjha 4y ago
zfa 4y ago
Can someone with more knowledge on this subject explain if there's a technical reason Cloudflare can't 'properly' MITM the inbound email. That is you have your MX records pointing to `mx.example.com` in your example.com zone config, and enable the Cloudflare proxying of it (usual orange cloud in the UI). Now, once it's proxied, Cloudflare returns the IP of their mailserver instead of yours on public lookup, just as they do when returing the IP of a proxied webserver. So this Cloudflare MX server gets your mail, and then as it knows your 'real' MX server it connects to that server and delivers it to you, maybe adding some header or other on the way. I don't like the fact they use bog-standard forwarding as it necessitates messing with your SPF records, getting crazy forwarding headers and having to navigate ARC etc. There just seems to be a cleverer way to do this than just do what everyone else does, and they're generally ahead of the curve technically. Must be something I'm missing.
- robjan 4y ago
  For that to work the destination server, in this case Gmail, would have to know to deliver mail addressed to me@domain.com into your Gmail mailbox. In this example it's a limitation on the Gmail side. Domains and subdomains are handled by DNS which is why Cloudflare can E2E proxy them. Email mailboxes are handled by an application running on a server.
  - zfa 4y ago
    Sorry - just had to clarify elsewhere too so I obviously wasn't clear... I meant in situations where the backend MX has a mailbox which matches to mail recipient as in the case where you're running your own mail server and would like Cloudflare sat in fonrt of it just like they sit in front of your own webserver. Obviously if there's any recipient address trranslation in play forwarding becomes necessary.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > Cloudflare can't 'properly' MITM the inbound email. Define 'properly'. It's a bog-standard forwarding specifically because this is the only way to have to separate systems to operate. Gmail doesn't know what `yourdomain.tld`[0] is yours and what if it receives anyhting to *@yourdomain.tld it should route it to yourmailboxname@gmail.com. If you don't point yourdomain.tld MX records to Cloudflare then Cloudflare would never receive anything to @yourdomain.tld, because MX doesn't point at them. [0] the only way to for it know that is to run some Google Business or whatever it called now, where you actually ... point yourdomain.tld MX records to Gmail and it would process them... but it would not deliver them to yourmailboxname@gmail.com! BTW it would be absolutely the same idea if instead of Cloudflare you would use Google Business (again, whatsitsname). You would setup 'Send As' in yourmailboxname@gmail.com as a usual SMTP identity which would allow you to use Gmail interface to send from somename@yourdomain.tld, and similar you need some way to explain to Google/Gmail what all mails at *@yourdomain.tld should be forwarded to yourmailboxname@gmail.com.
evolve2k 4y ago
I see the use case as being for all my side project domains. After doing stuff like this for years, I’ve ended up going to Migadu, unlimited domains for under $100 year (cheapest plan is $19/yr for almost unlimited domains) https://www.migadu.com https://www.migadu.com The Missing Email Service For Domains
zeusly 4y ago
There's also https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net which I really love
- _nalply 4y ago
  Did you configure DKIM?
rdsubhas 4y ago
I've tried this. Most of my emails land in either "Promotions" or "Updates", or worse – Spam. If you really want your emails to be delivered to most recipients Inbox – I would not recommend this. To validate – please go to https://www.mail-tester.com https://www.mail-tester.com – in 15 seconds it will evaluate and print your email score (you send it a dummy email). The main thing I see with using free gmail as a custom domain proxy SMTP is: It does not do DKIM (email signatures) except for @gmail.com or google workspace accounts. This reduces the sender score by a LOT. Edit: The same is also true with forwardemail.net or any "incoming" email routing (free or paid). Because incoming email is just one step of using a custom domain. The main thing is the "Outgoing" email server. Unless outgoing email has full DKIM support for your custom domain, your emails are going to struggle reaching the recipient.
- jaygooby 4y ago
  Post author here - I sent an email to mail-tester.com from an email alias I've set up as described in my post; it's gets a "Good stuff. Your email is almost perfect" and a score of 7.5/10 -0.5 from SpamAssassin (FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN & HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS) -1 for not being DKIM signed -1 Because Google is in some blacklists The critical steps, which I think people often gloss over are the SPF (https://jay.gooby.org/2022/05/06/use-a-basic-gmail-account-to-send-mail-as-with-a-domain-that-uses-cloudflare-email-routing#11-edit-your-spf-record https://jay.gooby.org/2022/05/06/use-a-basic-gmail-account-t...) and DKIM ones (https://jay.gooby.org/2022/05/06/use-a-basic-gmail-account-to-send-mail-as-with-a-domain-that-uses-cloudflare-email-routing#12-edit-your-dmarc-record https://jay.gooby.org/2022/05/06/use-a-basic-gmail-account-t...) without these, you'll definitely have deliverability issues.
sethd 4y ago
I love Cloudflare and really want to use this but I need the ability to route to multiple (2-3) destinations. :)
RileyJames 4y ago
Interesting setup. I use https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net for this use case. It’s certainly easier to setup, and it’s cheap ($18 for 6 months). It means I have email setup for all my side/small projects and spare domains, all forwarding to the few active inboxes I keep.
- esperent 4y ago
  I'm in the process of switching from forwardmail to mxroute. It's $45/yr for unlimited domains and email accounts, 10gb storage. Have not tested it yet, but it looks good. Their customer service is salty though. Definitely a service geared towards people who already know what they are doing, so ah... wish me luck! Along the way I did evaluate Cloudflare email routing and it's great, for what it does (no opinion on whether your emails will end up in spam though, I guess we'll find out as more people use it). For personal email on a custom domain through a gmail account, I set everything up in 15 minutes. You end up using the gmail smtp server. Presumably you can use any provider with smtp if you don't like gmail. However... No pop/imap which was a deal breaker for me and why I'm moving on from forwardmail in the first place, hence moving to Mxroute. I also tested Zoho mail. Not great, not awful. Very confusing UI.
jacooper 4y ago
Or you can just use full email aliasing service, like Simplelogin.io which is included with Proton Unlimited.

166 points by Gadiguibou 4y ago

I’ve tried various versions of this and have always had deliverability issues. Never tried with Cloudflare though. Can anyone who has done this exact setup report on their experience with deliverability?

blahgeek 4y ago
By deliverability issues, I believe you mean outbound mails? I have the same concern but I don’t think that’s related to the cloudflare though. Its only about using gmail SMTP server to send custom domain emails without correct signing
- doctoboggan 4y ago
  Yes I mean outbound email being marked as spam or otherwise not being delivered to my recipient’s email.
computerfriend 4y ago
I think I tried exactly this configuration a few months ago. I also had deliverability issues.
mmarquezs 4y ago
I haven't used it much, but personally I replaced the Gmail Outbound server for Sendgrid. Inbound I still use the CloudFare system.
weird-eye-issue 4y ago
Cloudflare will have nothing to do with you deliverability because that is only being used for receiving emails
kweks 4y ago
I do this with MailGun across a multitude of professional / company domains. Never has a problem with deliverability. MailGun has a very nice option where you can use RegEx in your routing rules, even across domains (and subjects, recipient, etc)

sideproject 4y ago

I do something similar with a tool I made & use https://newsy.co https://newsy.co It works great. I don't use Cloudflare email routing service but use something else. But I did a manual test with Cloudflare and it worked really well (thinking of changing it actually).

amatecha 4y ago

I went the opposite direction and am now paying for Proton and have set up my domains there. For me personally, a better approach than increasing my reliance on a second cloud service (Cloudflare) while continuing to benefit the original (Google) and experience its extreme degree of privacy invasion. This might not be the perfect solution, but for me it's definitely a step in the right direction, even if I move onto something else later. Further, considering I am regularly inexplicably blocked from accessing websites because they use Cloudflare "protection" (which doesn't like OpenBSD + Firefox strict privacy setting), and considering their recent conduct, there's zero way I'd ever consider using Cloudflare's services regardless of potential usefulness. Not to mention giving up even more control of the internet to these "superpowers" seems like a terrible idea for everyone's sake, IMO.

vanilla_nut 4y ago
As someone privacy minded, how do you manage domain ownership? I've recently jumped into this world myself and I feel as though most registrars are unsavory in some way.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Oddly enough, Google Domains is the least bad in this regard. They have an interest in not compromising their control of .dev and it's enough of a small potatoes activity that it can escape subversion into a profit center.
- amatecha 4y ago
  Oh, what aspect of domain ownership? I mean, yeah it's true, the whole market around domains is super sketchy and basically unethical IMO, domains should be like $5-10/year at most, for any TLD. I'm using NameCheap, which I fortunately haven't heard any horror stories about, but yeah, I don't have any more faith in them than anyone else, I just got an awesome deal to move my domains over years ago and they seemed to have a good reputation at the time.
  - vanilla_nut 4y ago

Arcuru 4y ago

All these articles really need to clearly layout the downside. You can't send emails as the custom domain. At best, your emails will say "sent by x@gmail.com on behalf of officialdomain.org"

hnthrow10282910 4y ago
Like within the header? It will show the custom domain in the from field of the email. Im not sure what the big deal is, but I’m curious.
- rnk 4y ago
  It doesn't look professional, it could beore likely to be rejected as spam.
  - esperent 4y ago
    My personal email for years has shown "abc@mysite.com via forwardmail.net". I've never had any problems with deliverability. The "via forwardmail" part is subtle enough that it's not a big deal for me and if you start looking out for it, you'll see it a lot. EDIT: I was trying out Cloudflare email routing yesterday so I checked one of the test emails I sent. There's no "via Cloudflare" visible, and actually it's sent from smtp.gmail.com so that's probably reputable enough to get high deliverability. All I see in the from field is "abc@mysite.com".

ignoramous 4y ago

One can in fact send emails from Workers with their Cloudflare-registered domain name through MailChannels [0]. We use it to send MagicLinks [1]. And intend to impl DKIM signing, soon [2]. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/sending-email-from-workers-with-mailchannels/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/sending-email-from-workers-with-... [1] https://github.com/celzero/otp/blob/f6bb5593c5173a284417863806ad6d5a57b19539/src/core/magic.js#L105-L132 https://github.com/celzero/otp/blob/f6bb5593c5173a2844178638... [2] https://mailchannels.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/7122849237389 https://mailchannels.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/712284923...

icy 4y ago
This is neat. I've been using Oracle's Email Delivery service because it's dirt cheap -- I didn't know I could do it for free using Workers. I'm going to try this.
modernerd 4y ago
I’m using the MailChannels integration for contact forms on Cloudflare Pages (including Cloudflare’s Turnstile CAPTCHA alternative [1]). It works really well. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/turnstile/ https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/turnstile/
truetraveller 4y ago
Can MailChannels be used for commercial purposes. Any limits? Can I create a "newsletter" SaaS, like MailChimp? Seems too good to be true.
- xmorse 4y ago
  I think SendGrid uses MailChannels to send newsletter emails and probably most other email marketing tools too
ttul 4y ago
MailChannels CEO here. We love to hear use case stories like this. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn [1]. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksimpson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksimpson/

saagarjha 4y ago

This seems far more complicated than it had to be? My email (saagar@saagarjha.com) is backed by a personal Gmail account. When I receive mail my domain registrar has some aliases set up to catch it and forward it to my Gmail inbox. When I send mail it goes through an alias: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157 https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157. No need to set up a mailserver at all.

weird-eye-issue 4y ago
I think you completely misread the post, or maybe you didn't read it at all They aren't setting up a mailserver They are just using Cloudflare's email routing to do what your registrar is doing It seems like everything else is mostly the same except your alias approach has some downsides that the OP's maybe doesn't: "Important: While these directions let you send emails from a custom email alias at your domain, email recipients can still find your personal Gmail address if they inspect the email headers. Emails from your alias are not digitally signed and are more likely to be flagged as spam."
- saagarjha 4y ago
  I know they aren't, they're trying to avoid doing that. I suggested another way they could. Based on what other people are saying, about how Cloudflare messes up the sender field for you, I feel like having a Gmail address in the headers might be better.
  - weird-eye-issue 4y ago
    > about how Cloudflare messes up the sender field for you ... What? Cloudflare has nothing to do with the email sending so it doesn't mess up any sender fields. If you mean for receiving emails, the sender field has always been totally fine for me. I don't see anybody complaining about it, I think you are misunderstanding other comments
    - saagarjha 4y ago

zfa 4y ago

Can someone with more knowledge on this subject explain if there's a technical reason Cloudflare can't 'properly' MITM the inbound email. That is you have your MX records pointing to `mx.example.com` in your example.com zone config, and enable the Cloudflare proxying of it (usual orange cloud in the UI). Now, once it's proxied, Cloudflare returns the IP of their mailserver instead of yours on public lookup, just as they do when returing the IP of a proxied webserver. So this Cloudflare MX server gets your mail, and then as it knows your 'real' MX server it connects to that server and delivers it to you, maybe adding some header or other on the way. I don't like the fact they use bog-standard forwarding as it necessitates messing with your SPF records, getting crazy forwarding headers and having to navigate ARC etc. There just seems to be a cleverer way to do this than just do what everyone else does, and they're generally ahead of the curve technically. Must be something I'm missing.

robjan 4y ago
For that to work the destination server, in this case Gmail, would have to know to deliver mail addressed to me@domain.com into your Gmail mailbox. In this example it's a limitation on the Gmail side. Domains and subdomains are handled by DNS which is why Cloudflare can E2E proxy them. Email mailboxes are handled by an application running on a server.
- zfa 4y ago
  Sorry - just had to clarify elsewhere too so I obviously wasn't clear... I meant in situations where the backend MX has a mailbox which matches to mail recipient as in the case where you're running your own mail server and would like Cloudflare sat in fonrt of it just like they sit in front of your own webserver. Obviously if there's any recipient address trranslation in play forwarding becomes necessary.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
> Cloudflare can't 'properly' MITM the inbound email. Define 'properly'. It's a bog-standard forwarding specifically because this is the only way to have to separate systems to operate. Gmail doesn't know what `yourdomain.tld`[0] is yours and what if it receives anyhting to *@yourdomain.tld it should route it to yourmailboxname@gmail.com. If you don't point yourdomain.tld MX records to Cloudflare then Cloudflare would never receive anything to @yourdomain.tld, because MX doesn't point at them. [0] the only way to for it know that is to run some Google Business or whatever it called now, where you actually ... point yourdomain.tld MX records to Gmail and it would process them... but it would not deliver them to yourmailboxname@gmail.com! BTW it would be absolutely the same idea if instead of Cloudflare you would use Google Business (again, whatsitsname). You would setup 'Send As' in yourmailboxname@gmail.com as a usual SMTP identity which would allow you to use Gmail interface to send from somename@yourdomain.tld, and similar you need some way to explain to Google/Gmail what all mails at *@yourdomain.tld should be forwarded to yourmailboxname@gmail.com.

evolve2k 4y ago

I see the use case as being for all my side project domains. After doing stuff like this for years, I’ve ended up going to Migadu, unlimited domains for under $100 year (cheapest plan is $19/yr for almost unlimited domains) https://www.migadu.com https://www.migadu.com The Missing Email Service For Domains

zeusly 4y ago

There's also https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net which I really love

_nalply 4y ago
Did you configure DKIM?

rdsubhas 4y ago

I've tried this. Most of my emails land in either "Promotions" or "Updates", or worse – Spam. If you really want your emails to be delivered to most recipients Inbox – I would not recommend this. To validate – please go to https://www.mail-tester.com https://www.mail-tester.com – in 15 seconds it will evaluate and print your email score (you send it a dummy email). The main thing I see with using free gmail as a custom domain proxy SMTP is: It does not do DKIM (email signatures) except for @gmail.com or google workspace accounts. This reduces the sender score by a LOT. Edit: The same is also true with forwardemail.net or any "incoming" email routing (free or paid). Because incoming email is just one step of using a custom domain. The main thing is the "Outgoing" email server. Unless outgoing email has full DKIM support for your custom domain, your emails are going to struggle reaching the recipient.

jaygooby 4y ago
Post author here - I sent an email to mail-tester.com from an email alias I've set up as described in my post; it's gets a "Good stuff. Your email is almost perfect" and a score of 7.5/10 -0.5 from SpamAssassin (FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN & HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS) -1 for not being DKIM signed -1 Because Google is in some blacklists The critical steps, which I think people often gloss over are the SPF (https://jay.gooby.org/2022/05/06/use-a-basic-gmail-account-to-send-mail-as-with-a-domain-that-uses-cloudflare-email-routing#11-edit-your-spf-record https://jay.gooby.org/2022/05/06/use-a-basic-gmail-account-t...) and DKIM ones (https://jay.gooby.org/2022/05/06/use-a-basic-gmail-account-to-send-mail-as-with-a-domain-that-uses-cloudflare-email-routing#12-edit-your-dmarc-record https://jay.gooby.org/2022/05/06/use-a-basic-gmail-account-t...) without these, you'll definitely have deliverability issues.

sethd 4y ago

I love Cloudflare and really want to use this but I need the ability to route to multiple (2-3) destinations. :)

RileyJames 4y ago

Interesting setup. I use https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net for this use case. It’s certainly easier to setup, and it’s cheap ($18 for 6 months). It means I have email setup for all my side/small projects and spare domains, all forwarding to the few active inboxes I keep.

esperent 4y ago
I'm in the process of switching from forwardmail to mxroute. It's $45/yr for unlimited domains and email accounts, 10gb storage. Have not tested it yet, but it looks good. Their customer service is salty though. Definitely a service geared towards people who already know what they are doing, so ah... wish me luck! Along the way I did evaluate Cloudflare email routing and it's great, for what it does (no opinion on whether your emails will end up in spam though, I guess we'll find out as more people use it). For personal email on a custom domain through a gmail account, I set everything up in 15 minutes. You end up using the gmail smtp server. Presumably you can use any provider with smtp if you don't like gmail. However... No pop/imap which was a deal breaker for me and why I'm moving on from forwardmail in the first place, hence moving to Mxroute. I also tested Zoho mail. Not great, not awful. Very confusing UI.

jacooper 4y ago

Or you can just use full email aliasing service, like Simplelogin.io which is included with Proton Unlimited.