a real email address without buying a domain

forwarding or a real mailbox

Forwarding takes mail sent to an address on your name and drops it into an inbox you already own. Nothing is stored here, you read it where you always read it, and it works on every plan.

A real mailbox is an account of its own. The mail lives on our server, you reach it over IMAP or through the webmail, and you can send from it. It is a Pro feature: three per subdomain, one gigabyte each.

set up forwarding

Forwarding is per address, not catch-all. You create the exact names you want and everything else bounces, which is what keeps the spam down.

1. Open your subdomain and go to the mail section.
2. Add a forward: the part before the @ on the left, the destination address on the right.
3. Confirm the destination. We send it a verification link, because otherwise anyone could route mail into an inbox they do not own.
4. Send yourself a test. It should land within seconds.

what forwarding cannot do

You cannot send from a forwarded address. When you reply, your mail client uses your real account and the person on the other side sees your real address. If the point of the exercise was to keep that address private, forwarding does not do it.

Forwarded mail can also fail SPF at the destination. When we hand the message on, the envelope sender is still the original one, and a strict receiver may read that as a forgery. Large providers generally cope; small or aggressively filtered ones sometimes do not, so mail that matters should not be forwarded blind.

There is no catch-all either. An address you never created does not arrive, it bounces. That is deliberate, but it does mean a typo in a printed address is lost mail rather than mail you can recover.

a real mailbox, on pro

A mailbox fixes both problems. It can send, over SMTP on port 587, so the address on your name is the address people see, and it forwards nothing, so there is no extra hop for SPF to fail on.

You get a webmail you can open from the panel in one click, and the same account works in any IMAP client. Its password is separate from your does.software password and needs at least 12 characters, because it is a credential a mail client stores.

1. In the mail section, add a mailbox and pick the name before the @.
2. Set its password. You will not see it again, so store it where you store passwords.
3. Open the webmail from the panel, or point your mail client at it over IMAP with the full address as the username.

the limits

Forwards per subdomain go with the plan: five on the free plan, ten on Starter, twenty on Pro. Mailboxes are Pro only, three per subdomain, a gigabyte each.

A mailbox and a forward can share a name, and the mailbox wins: the mail is delivered to it and is not forwarded on. If you want both behaviours, use two different addresses.