Cloudflare has created a free email routing service that can create a free professional email address.
It is perfect for people who want to use an email address like “JohnDoe@example.com” and forward email something like “JohnDoe1232@gmail.com”.
You can set up a professional custom email address to forward email messages to your personal or any other email address, such as Gmail.
This guide will show you how to create a free professional email address with CloudFlare’s routing service.
Introduction
Individuals can make different custom email addresses for their different needs, so they don’t have to give out their personal email to every newsletter and business.
If you’ve got a family domain, or want to create one with Cloudflare Registrar, you can make unique email addresses for each family member or specific purposes like a custom address for your monthly bills.
For businesses, it’s essential to have different email addresses for various types of inquiries like sales and support, but managing who gets those emails can be a pain.
As your business grows, tasks that used to be handled by the owner often have to be passed on to others, which can be challenging to configure.
Luckily, Email Routing from Cloudflare makes it easy to create any number of email addresses that get redirected to the mailbox you, your family, or your team are already using.
Cloudflare Email Routing Features
Here are some of the features that Email Routing has to offer:
Privacy First
Email Routing is completely private. Cloudflare won’t snoop on or store the contents of the emails that get routed to your inbox.
Easy and Free
Creating custom addresses and forwarding messages to your preferred mailbox is free. DNS records are automatically created, and they’re safeguarded from accidental changes to make sure Email Routing doesn’t go haywire.
Superior Anti-Spam
We use advanced phishing detection technology to identify spam and prevent it from getting forwarded to your inbox.
Advanced Analytics
Get access to insights on the number of emails that were sent to you, whether they were forwarded or dropped, and delivery success at your destination mailbox.
Leverage the Cloudflare Network
Email Routing takes advantage of the Cloudflare network, which covers more than 285 cities in over 100 countries.
Programmatic Email Processing
You can route your emails to Cloudflare Workers to program any logic you want to apply to processing your emails.
Video Guide
Why Use Business Email?
The pain points of not having a professional business email can be summed up in two words: lost opportunities.
A professional email address is an essential part of business branding and often the first impression that potential customers or partners will have of your company.
It can also help establish credibility and trust.
Potential customers could be put off if your email address looks unassociated with your business.
Having custom business email on your website or Internet is a better option than personal or generic email addresses like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.
It also helps you reduce spam, protect your privacy, look professional, avoid data scraping of main email addresses, and more.
Business email means personalized, professional, and custom email addresses on a custom domain.
For example, you can have JaneDoe@yourbusiness.com instead of JaneDoe1234@gmail.com.
Most of the business email solutions available on the Internet come at a cost.
But what if you don’t pay for one.
That’s where the Cloudflare email routing service is suited to you.
What is Cloudflare’s Email Routing Service?
Cloudflare is a DNS and DDoS protection service that offers a range of services, including domain registration features & email routing.
Cloudflare Email Routing service can be used to create custom email addresses which you can use to forward email messages to any other existing email address like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.
No need for complicated web hosting control panels or email hosting setup processes. Just set up a custom email address on CloudFlare, and it will forward all the mail sent to that address to your existing email account.
How to Setup Cloudflare Email Routing Service?
Requesting Email Routing Service
To create a free professional email address with Cloudflare, you need to have a Cloudflare account.
The next step is to visit your Cloudflare Dashboard and click on Email Routing from your domain Settings section.
There you can request to be approved for the Email routing feature.
Cloudflare Verification
Cloudflare will need some time to verify your domain. This can take up to 48 hours, but you should receive an update on the status of your request within 24 hours.
Once it’s ready, they will send an email.
Creating Custom Email Forwarders
The next step is to create a custom email address associated with your domain.
Visit Cloudflare Dashboard -> Email Routing from your domain settings section and click on “Add custom name.”
Then you need to enter your existing email address where CloudFlare should send all email messages.
You can use Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or any other email service that doesn’t require additional setup work on a web hosting control panel.
Verify Destination Email Address
Click on Verify Destination Email Address button next to the line “Enter a Destination Email Address” and wait for Cloudflare to verify your email address.
Go to your email account and check if you received a verification email from Cloudflare.
After You Verify the Destination email address, go back to the Email options in Cloudflare.
Setup Email MX Records
The next step is to set up email MX records.
MX records mean Mail Exchanger records, and they tell email servers which hostname should receive incoming emails sent to the domain.
It will show existing MX records for your domain.
You need to replace existing MX records with Cloudflare custom MX records.
Delete existing records and add all Cloudflare records with a button push.
Note 1: As soon you delete existing MX records, your domain will stop receiving new emails, so you need to add Cloudflare MX records asap.
Note 2: As soon as you add CloudFlare MX records, email routing and forwarding will happen instantly, and it won’t take time for the next day.
Verifying MX Records
Once you have added Custom MX records, the next step is to verify them.
Go to Cloudflare DNS records and check whether it has added the records.
That’s it. Cloudflare Email Routing service is now configured for your domain.
Email Routing Options
Now you will have access to all Email routing features in Cloudflare.
You can choose which email address the message should be forwarded to and more.
Creating More Custom Addresses
If you want, you can create more custom email addresses from this section.
Setup Catch-all Email Address with Drop or Forward Option
Cloudflare also supports the Catch-all email feature with a drop and forward feature.
If a mail is sent to an email address that doesn’t exist, it will be forwarded to a default email address you set or dropped.
Managing Destination Addresses
You can also manage your destination email address from this section.
Just click on the name of a configured address and delete it if you don’t need it anymore.
And add another email address you want.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, you learned how to get a free professional email address from Cloudflare, routed through the free Cloudflare email routing service.
It is perfect for people who want to use an email address like “JohnDoe@example.com” and forward all emails to another address like “JohnDoe1232@gmail.com”.
With this free professional forwarding email address, you can use any email service you prefer to send and receive email messages.
If you want to use Cloudflare’s email routing service, visit Cloudflare here.
Please let me know if you have any questions or problems.
Enjoy!
