Email on your own domain
Your site is live on your own address, but info@yourdomain.com didn't appear along with it. Here's why — and what to do about it. It's simpler than it looks; nobody just explains it plainly.
First, the thing that explains everything else
Your website and your email are two completely separate things. They use the same domain name, but they point at two different places and are set up independently.
Think of the domain as the address of a house. In DNS — the list that tells the internet where to send what — that address has two separate lines:
| What | Record | Points at |
|---|---|---|
| Where the site runs | A / CNAME | Cloudflare, Netlify, your host… |
| Where the mail goes | MX | somewhere else entirely |
That's why your site can run for free on Cloudflare while your mail goes wherever you keep it. And it's why free hosting gave you no mailbox — its job ends at the website.
You choose your email independently of where your website lives. Nothing that already works has to change — you're only adding one line to DNS.
One decision: forwarding or a mailbox
Everything else is detail. This is the question:
| Forwarding | Mailbox | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | €0 | from ~€1/mo |
Does mail to info@ reach you? | yes, in your current inbox | yes |
| Can you reply from that address? | no | yes |
| Where mail is stored | nowhere — it just passes through | on a server, still there years later |
| Setup | a few minutes | half an hour |
A customer writes to info@yourdomain.com. You reply — and what lands in their inbox comes from johnsmith74@gmail.com. On a ten-thousand-euro quote, that doesn't read well.
Forwarding is fine to start with, and fine for addresses that only collect mail. For an address you do business from, it isn't enough.
There's a temptation: keep the forwarding and just change the "from" address in your mail program to info@yourdomain.com. Don't. The server the message actually leaves from has no authority over that domain — and modern mail servers treat such a message as a forgery. It lands in spam, or never arrives at all. And nobody tells you.
Where to buy the domain — decide this before you buy it
This is the biggest shortcut in the whole guide, and most people miss it, because they buy the domain first and think about email afterwards.
When the domain and the mailbox are with the same provider, the whole records step disappears. The MX is set for you, SPF and DKIM are added for you, and you get one account, one bill and one support desk. You never need to know what MX means, because you never touch it.
Buying the domain in one place and the mail in another works too — but then you copy records by hand, and that is exactly where mistakes happen.
Six questions that let you judge anyone
There are hundreds of providers and they differ in every country. Instead of a list that won't be true in a year, remember these six questions — you'll find the answers on any provider's site in two minutes:
- Do they sell both domains and mailboxes? If so, everything else gets easier.
- What is the domain's renewal price? Not the one on the banner. You pay it every year.
- Does the mailbox have IMAP? Without it you can't add the mail to your phone or to Outlook. This is never in the headline — you have to go looking.
- How much storage? Five gigabytes lasts years; one doesn't.
- Do they set the MX records for you? If so, you skip step 5 entirely.
- What language is support in? One day you'll need it.
Two routes, depending on what matters more to you
The cheapest route
~€10–15 / yearYou pay for the domain only; the email costs nothing. This works anywhere in the world.
- A domain with a provider that includes a mailbox. Infomaniak (Switzerland) states on its own pages that every domain comes with one mailbox, 20 GB, with IMAP — a real mailbox you can reply from. A domain is around €9–12 a year and renewal costs the same as registration.
- The cheapest domain anywhere is Cloudflare Registrar. They sell at cost with no markup — a
.comworks out around $9–10 — and add nothing at renewal. They have no mailboxes at all, though; only free forwarding. - Or a domain anywhere plus free forwarding. Porkbun includes 20 free forwards with every domain; Cloudflare's forwarding is unlimited.
All three share one property: you won't be replying from that address. Except Infomaniak — and that free mailbox of theirs is something they state themselves while one independent price guide says otherwise. Look at what's in your basket before you pay.
The best route
~€25–55 / yearDomain and a real mailbox in one place, with someone who speaks your language.
When something breaks — and one day it will — there's a difference between writing to support in your own language and doing it in broken English to another country.
Verified prices
| Provider | Mailbox | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Namecheap (US, worldwide) | ~$14.9/year | 1 mailbox, 5 GB, IMAP, 30-day trial |
| Infomaniak (Switzerland) | €0 or ~€1.5/mo | 20 GB, IMAP; free with a domain, per their own pages |
| Porkbun (US, worldwide) | ~$36/year | 10 GB, IMAP, 20 free forwards |
Where to look, by country
We haven't verified prices for these — run them through the six questions above.
| Where you work | Domain and mailbox in one place |
|---|---|
| Anywhere | Namecheap · Infomaniak · Porkbun · Hostinger · IONOS · GoDaddy · OVHcloud |
| US and Canada | Namecheap · Porkbun · Hover · GoDaddy · Squarespace Domains |
| UK and Ireland | 123-reg · Krystal · Namecheap |
| Germany, Austria, Switzerland | IONOS · Strato · Hetzner · Infomaniak · one.com |
| France | OVHcloud · Gandi · Infomaniak |
| Netherlands and Belgium | TransIP · Antagonist · Hostnet · Vimexx · Combell |
| Italy and Spain | Aruba · Register.it · DonDominio |
| Poland, Czechia, Slovakia | home.pl · nazwa.pl · Wedos · Forpsi · Websupport · Active24 |
| Scandinavia | one.com · Loopia · Domeneshop |
With most of them you simply tick the mail option when ordering the domain. A mailbox is usually €1–3 a month and the provider sets the MX for you.
Then buy nothing. You almost certainly have mailboxes included — see situation A below.
The free tier of Zoho Mail looks like the best deal in the world — your own domain, five addresses, nothing to pay. It has a property you won't find in the offer, though: no IMAP. That means you cannot add it to the Mail app on your phone or to Outlook — only their own app and website. For a tradesman reading mail on a phone between two jobs, that matters.
And promotional domain prices. A euro for the first year and full price from the second is routine. You pay for a domain every year — what counts is the renewal price, not the one on the poster.
Find yourself in one of three situations
A — You already pay for web hosting
cheapestIf you took route C in the hosting guide — hosting with Hostinger, IONOS, GoDaddy, Antagonist or anyone else — you almost certainly have mailboxes included. Don't buy anything until you've looked.
- In your control panel look for Email, Email Accounts or Mail Accounts
- Create
info@yourdomain.comand set a password - The panel will show you the connection details — incoming server (IMAP), outgoing server (SMTP) and ports. Keep them.
- Add the mailbox to your phone and computer using those details
The MX record usually already points to the right place, because the domain and the mail are in the same house. Done.
Most panels offer aliases as well as mailboxes (sometimes called "forwarders" or "virtual emails"). They're free and useful: one info@ mailbox that also receives quotes@, invoices@ and whatever else you invent.
B — Your domain is on Cloudflare and forwarding is enough
freeIf you switched your nameservers to Cloudflare when connecting the domain, you have Email Routing there for free.
- In Cloudflare open your domain and find Email in the left menu
- Turn on Email Routing — Cloudflare adds the MX records itself
- Add an address:
info@→ your existing inbox - Cloudflare sends a verification email to that inbox. Nothing works until you confirm it.
The limits are generous: 200 addresses per domain, messages up to 25 MB.
Cloudflare only forwards mail. Sending is a separate service, it's in beta and needs a paid plan — don't build a working business mailbox on it. If you want to reply, go to situation C.
C — You want a real mailbox and pay for no hosting
costs a few eurosThe typical case: site free on Cloudflare or Netlify, domain at a registrar, and you want to reply from info@.
| Where | Cost | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| A mailbox at your registrar | ~€1–3/mo | Simplest — domain and mail in one place, the MX is set for you |
| Zoho Mail — free tier | €0 | No IMAP, so it's their own app and website only. You can't add it to the Mail app on your phone or to Outlook. |
| Migadu | ~$19/year | Priced per account, not per mailbox — good if you want several addresses |
| Infomaniak | ~CHF 2.3/mo | Switzerland, plenty of addresses |
| mailbox.org | ~€4/mo | Germany, the strongest data-protection argument |
| Google Workspace / Microsoft 365 | from ~€6/mo | When you also want calendar, documents and shared drives |
If you don't know, take the mailbox at your registrar. It's a few euros a year more than the cheapest option and it saves you all of step 4 — the MX record is set for you, because the domain is already there.
How it goes
- Create the mailbox with the provider you chose
- They give you DNS records — typically one or two MX records and one TXT (that's SPF)
- Enter them wherever you manage your domain's DNS (at the registrar, or in Cloudflare if you moved your nameservers there)
- Wait — usually a few minutes, sometimes hours
- Send a test message in both directions (step 6)
Three records that decide whether your mail arrives
Mail servers today trust nobody. When these records are missing or wrong, your messages land in spam — and you won't find out, because from your side they leave perfectly normally.
| Record | What it says | Who gives it to you |
|---|---|---|
| SPF | "Only these servers may send mail for my domain." | your mail provider |
| DKIM | A signature proving the message wasn't altered on the way. | your mail provider |
| DMARC | "When something doesn't match, do this with the message." | you set it yourself |
You don't have to understand them. You only have to copy them exactly as your provider gives them — character for character, quotes and dots included.
A domain may have only one SPF record. Add a second and neither one applies — and your mail starts landing in spam for no visible reason.
So if you already have an SPF record (from an old host, say) and a new one arrives, you don't add a second line — you merge them into one. If you're unsure, send both to your new provider and ask; they do it every day.
When you switch nameservers at your registrar — to Cloudflare, for instance — every DNS record starts being read from the new place. Including MX. If they aren't there, mail stops arriving immediately and without warning.
So before any nameserver switch, photograph or write down every MX and TXT record and enter them in the new DNS afterwards. The hosting guide says the same thing in step 4 — it's the same trap from the other side.
Test it — both directions
Almost everyone tests one direction and not the other. The fault is usually in the other one.
- Send a message TO
info@yourdomain.comfrom a private address. It must arrive. - Reply from
info@to that private address. That must arrive too. - Check the spam folder — on both sides. If it arrived but landed in spam, something is missing from SPF or DKIM.
- Send one message to Gmail and one to Outlook. They are the strictest and will find a fault a smaller provider forgives.
In Gmail, open the message you received, click the three dots at the top right and choose Show original. At the top you'll see SPF, DKIM and DMARC, each marked PASS or FAIL. Three PASSes means you're done.
When something goes wrong
No mail arrives at all
The MX record is missing or wrong. Check it where you manage DNS and compare it character for character with what your provider gave you. If you've just switched nameservers, the MX almost certainly didn't come across.
It arrives, but everything lands in spam
SPF or DKIM is missing — or you have two SPF records. Use "Show original" in Gmail to see which one reports FAIL.
I can receive but not send
Either you only have forwarding (which can't send), or your mail program is missing the SMTP details. Ask your provider for them — server, port and username.
It works on the computer but not on the phone
With Zoho's free tier that isn't a fault but a limitation — there's no IMAP, so it can't be added to the phone's Mail app. You have to use their app, or move to a paid tier.
The first messages are slow or land in spam
A new domain has no reputation with mail servers. It usually settles by itself within a few days. Don't send bulk mail from a new address — that damages the reputation permanently.
Write to support@maxitemplates.com and tell us where your domain is and where your site is. Working out which of the three situations is yours takes two minutes — and it saves you an evening lost in DNS settings.