Setting up a custom email ID for free

[lauris]

If you have a domain name for your business like site-name.com, you can use a custom email ID for sending and receiving emails for free. There's 2 parts to it:

1. Forward emails sent to a custom email like your-name@site-name.com to a personal email ID like firstname.lastname@gmail.com
2. Send emails from your personal email ID but the recipient sees the email as coming from your-name@site-name.com.

Create custom forwarding address​

Most domain registrars allow free email forwarding i.e. if you bought a domain from say GoDaddy or NameCheap, you can get emails to your-name@site-name.com forwarded to your personal email address. I use GMail for my personal email because I get all the features of GSuite for free (Email, Drive, Calendar etc.). I use namesilo for my domain because it's the cheapest domain registrar and has tons of templates (the UI is a bit ugly but it works much better!).

So I've added instructions on using namesilo and GMail. The actual UI and specific values of MX records may change according to the domain registrar you use but the steps remain the same which are:

1. Add the right MX records in the DNS management section of your domain provider
2. Configure the custom email ID and forwarding address you want to use

Detailed steps:​

• Update DNS records
  Go to the Domain Console for Domain Manager in namesilo and click on the 'Update' link next to DNS records

https://imgur.com/IM0jBYn

• Add MX records

Find the Email Forwarding template and click "Apply Template"

https://imgur.com/KSTy0wv

• Add email forwarding

Finally, go to email forwarding and follow instructions on this page reproduced below

You can configure email forwarding for your domain by going to the Domain Manager page and then clicking the envelope icon under the "Options" column.

https://imgur.com/aHOmY8s

To create a new email forward, simply scroll down to the "Add/Change an Email Forward" box. In the "Email" field enter in the email forward you would like to create. Let's say you want to use your-name@site-name.com, then enter your-name in the empty text box.

https://imgur.com/Pzx7d2F

It may take some time for the changes to propagate. It should not be more than 24 hours usually. You can send an email to your custom email ID an hour after setting up email forwarding to test.

IMPORTANT: Only after you have email forwarding working, you can configure GMail to send emails with your custom email ID.

"Send email as" in GMail​

Setting up an alias in GMail allows you to use gmail to send emails as your-name@site-name.com. i.e. Your recipients will see this email ID and not the GMail ID. It is a simple workaround to get a free custom email ID!

1. Setup Gmail's Two-Factor Authentication
2. Create an app password. When prompted for Select the app and device you want to generate the app password for:
   • Select Mail under the drop-down for Select app
   • Select Other under the drop-down for Select device
   • When prompted for text input, enter a descriptive name like "site-name" and click "Generate"
     

     https://imgur.com/ZWNX2u8

3. Copy the password that is automatically generated and save it somewhere for now
4. Go to Gmail and under Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as, click Add another email address
5. When prompted for Name, enter the name that you want your email to be seen as "From" (e.g. Firstname Lastname)
6. When prompted for Email address, enter the email address with the custom domain you used above (e.g. your-name@site-name.com)
7. Click Next Step to proceed
   https://i.imgur.com/enDCkzC.png
8. When prompted for SMTP Server, enter smtp.gmail.com and leave the port as 587
9. When prompted for Username, enter the portion of your Gmail address without the @gmail.com part (e.g. username if my email is username@gmail.com)
10. When prompted for Password, paste from your clipboard the password you generated in step 3 above
11. Leave the radio button checked to Secured connection using TLS
12. Click Add Account to proceed
    https://i.imgur.com/9ZrKIGd.png
13. At this point, you will be asked for a verification code. Keep this window open.
14. Open Gmail in a new window and wait for your verification email to arrive (you will receive a verification code that confirms you are the owner of the email address you are attempting to "Send Mail As")
15. Once it arrives, copy and paste the verification code at the prompt you received in step 13
16. Once you've done that, go back to the email and click the link to "confirm the request". You need to do this step and the previous step for the email to be correctly configured.
    https://i.imgur.com/O0Kot3q.png

Done!

Source for the instructions

It may seem like a lot of steps but it won't take much time. I was able to do this in under an hour.

 

[anonymoususer]

@lauris I know you’re hitting the free angle and this is good write up but how much time to people want to spend on things like this that aren’t their main business function? 5/mo gets you gsuite and the ability to do this in like 5 mins so you can use the remaining 55 to build your business.

 

[lauris]

@anonymoususer That's a good point. Usually, people I talk to are bloggers so email is a large part of their business.

Regarding costs, they multiply with each employee and month. If you have 10 employees, you might spend an hour setting up all of their email IDs. It's just a one-time investment, instead of paying 5x10 = $50 each month.

Maybe it won't help if you're a single employee business but as you have more, this can save you on recurring costs.

 

[bmh3d]

@anonymoususer More importantly, business live and die on email.

You don't want to glue it together with smoke and mirrors because when it breaks you'll have no idea what's wrong.

If you want to spend a little time and learn the stuff listed in the above post, you can put together a mail server on Linode for $5/month that will handle anything a small business needs, and it will be private and all your own.

 

[delphinecaron]

@lauris Is it possible to do this with a company that’s not google?

I know zoho has it but I’m not sure if I’m able to set up multiple email accounts for different domains with a free zoho account.

 

[lauris]

@delphinecaron You can have your personal email with any company. They might have a different process to "send email as" but the forwarding part remains the same.

 

[delphinecaron]

@lauris Oh ok I see, thanks!

 

[trixiefire]

@lauris Reminder that Yandex still offers free email like the old free version of gsuite. For those who want custom email including multiple mailboxes for free.

 

[shirleyholmes]

@lauris Great. Now Google has all your business related communication.