Custom domain with gmail for free

3 min read
guide

Remember when email addresses looks like [email protected]? Or maybe you have a more professional one like [email protected]. When I made my first email address I didn't think too much about it, but when you're older, having a simple email address looks more professional. Even more professional is an email with your own domain. jane.doe@<your-domain>.com.

Today you can get branded emails from most domain registrars either for free or for a small fee, but if you want the integration and convenience of gmail, you'll have to pay monthly.

Let me show you how to set this up for free. You'll need a gmail account, domain name, and a Resend account.

Note

At the time of writing, the limits for Resend are 100 emails per day and 3000 per month. I've never sent that many emails in a day, but depending on your needs you may choose a different SMTP provider.

Receiving emails to your domain

Some domain registrars have email forwarding built-in. If it does I suggest using it.

For myself, I use Cloudflare's email routing to forward my emails since I also use them to manage my DNS. If your domain registrar doesn't offer email forwarding then we can set this up for free with Cloudflare.

Using Cloudflare email routing

You'll need a Cloudflare account, and your gmail address for this part.

  1. Add a domain in Cloudflare.
  2. Copy the nameserver information into your domain registrar. They look something like NS *.ns.cloudflare.com.

Now your domain's DNS is managed by Cloudflare, so we can setup Email routing.

  1. Select your domain and go to Email > Email Routing section in Cloudflare. Cloudflare email routing
  2. Hit the "Get Started" button and follow the steps to setup your destination email address.

By the end of this step you will have added 4 DNS records to your domain, which allows Cloudflare to forward emails to your gmail address.

Note

I like to add the comment cloudflare: email routing to the DNS records so future me knows why the record exists. Especially since the TXT record is not locked.

Check if you can receive emails.

Your domain should now be setup to receive emails. Send yourself an email from another account or ask someone to send you an email and check that it works.

Send emails with your custom domain

Next, let's send emails with our domains. To do this we have to go into gmail and configure a sending alias with an smtp server (they no longer let you send on behalf of a domain from their server).

  1. Go to https://mail.google.com
  2. Click the gear on the top right and select See all settings.
  3. Under the Accounts and Import tab, there is a section called Send mail as. Send mail as
  4. Clicking Add another email address and follow the steps.

Form: Enter information about your other email address

  • Name: recipient will see this in their inbox
  • Email address: use the same one setup for receving emails
  • Treat as an alias: keep it checked unless you are sending on behalf of someone else

Form: Send mail through your SMTP server

For this form we need to have an SMTP server. We'll use Resend for the example, but you could use AWS SES.

Note

Configuring Resend SMTP

  1. Go to https://resend.com/domains and your domain.
  2. Take the DNS records and add them to your DNS provider. In this guide we're using Cloudflare, so we can copy the four DNS records into Cloudflare DNS.
  3. Hit the verify button.

Create an API key

  1. Navigate to the the API Keys https://resend.com/api-keys
  2. Create API Key with a name like gmail_send, limit the permissions to sending only, and also limit the domain (if you're in a pro plan)
  3. Keep this window open or save the key somewhere temporarily (clipboard or text editor).

Okay, back to the form. Fill it out with this info and submit.

Field Value
SMTP Server smtp.resend.com
Port 587
Username resend
Password <RESEND API KEY>
Secured connection using TLS true

Try to send an email

We're done! Let's test. Send someone an email from your domain. When composing an email, you'll see a select option for your new email.

select email

Final notes

Although you can send and receive emails with that domain, Google apps like Calendar, YouTube, and Drive will still be connected to your gmail account. If you want to have a dedicated email account for those, you'll need to pay for Google workspace.

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