Free email on your own domain with Cloudflare Email Routing (receive-only)

A website needs a contact address, and yourname@gmail.com on a public page isn’t great for privacy. Cloudflare Email Routing gives you addresses on your own domain, like hello@realfin.dev, that forward to your existing inbox for free.

Self-hosting a real mail server at home is a different story. Residential IPs land in spam folders, and keeping a mail server secure is a job of its own. Forwarding gets you 90% of the value for 0% of that.

What it is (and isn’t)

• ✅ Receive mail at any address on your domain, forwarded to one or more inboxes
• ✅ Catch-all (anything@yourdomain), or only specific addresses
• ❌ It doesn’t send mail. Replies go out from your normal address (see the catch below).

Setup

1. Cloudflare dashboard → your domain → Email → Email Routing → Get started.
2. Cloudflare shows the DNS records it will add. Click Add records and enable:
   • 3 × MX records (route1/2/3.mx.cloudflare.net) that send mail for your domain to Cloudflare
   • TXT cf2024-1._domainkey, a DKIM key, so forwarded mail is signed and doesn’t land in spam
   • TXT SPF (v=spf1 include:_spf.mx.cloudflare.net ~all)
3. Destination addresses → Add: your real inbox. Cloudflare sends a verification link, and forwarding stays inactive until you click it.
4. Routing rules → Create address: e.g. hello → send to your verified inbox.

The dashboard briefly shows “Routing status: Syncing” and “DNS records: Locked”. Both are normal. The lock just stops you from deleting the mail records by accident.

You can check that the records are live from any terminal:

dig +short MX yourdomain.dev
dig +short TXT yourdomain.dev

Then send a test mail to the new address from a different account.

The privacy catch: replying

Forwarding is one-way. When you hit reply in Gmail, the other person sees your real Gmail address. If you’re keeping a pseudonymous project separate from your personal identity, that leaks it.

Options:

• Create a separate inbox for the project (a new free account) and forward there.
• Set up “Send mail as” with an outgoing mail service so replies come from hello@yourdomain. That’s more work, but it’s the clean solution.

Add DMARC while you’re there

Cloudflare’s DNS page will suggest a DMARC record (“Block fake emails sent from @yourdomain”). If you never send mail from the domain, a strict policy tells receivers to reject anything claiming to be from it:

_dmarc.yourdomain.dev   TXT   "v=DMARC1; p=reject;"

That stops spammers from using your domain in their From: line. If you later send mail from the domain, loosen it to p=none first and add reporting.