Email Done Cheap
Posted on 10 May, 2024
One thing that I've missed since moving from BlueHost has been not having my custom email. Fixing that has been on the to-do list for a while ...
Whilst I previously had an 'actual' mailbox (so could send from, as well as receive, emails on my custom domain), I only really need to receive emails. And lo and behold, Cloudflare has that covered with email routing.
It's ridiculously easy to set up — just go to your domain in the Cloudflare dashboard, go to
Email > Email Routing, click on get started and follow the instructions.
The steps are basically:
- Give the email address you want to create on your custom domain
- Provide an existing email where forwarded messages will be delivered
- Confirm that email address
- Set up some DNS records (which can be done with a one-click operation)
And that's it, emails working.
What if you want to be able to send messages?
In my case I'm not at all bothered (for this domain) about being able to send email from the new (old) address, but if you are there's a couple options to do so on the cheap ...
If you have an iCloud account, you can set up a custom domain (I think there's a limit of five in
total). Messages are received in your iCloud email (you can confirm which address they were actually
sent to), and you can select your custom address as from when sending an email. That's exactly how
I have email set up for my Dolwen Solution email (and with a custom
email signature in Airmail, my favourite email client). If you want to
try it, here's a video that
I followed.
Alternatively there's a way to combine Cloudflare and Mailgun with an existing email account to be able to send emails on the custom domain. I've not tried it, but there's an article on FreeCodeCamp that walks you through it.
Or, of course, you can always just set up a real email account ...
Posted in code
