# How do I get free email forwarding with a custom domain?

> Forward Email and Cloudflare Email Routing forward your domain's mail free; ImprovMX Free allows 1 domain and 25 aliases. Limits compared.

- URL: https://postelva.com/free-email-forwarding-with-custom-domain/
- Last updated: 2026-11-12
- Publisher: Postelva (https://postelva.com)

Forwarding sends mail sent to you@yourdomain.com on to an inbox you already have. Three services do it for free on your own domain, two others do it for aliases only, and every one needs the same two things: a domain and MX records.

**Quick answer — How do I get free email forwarding with a custom domain?**

Register a domain, point its MX records at a forwarding service, and add rules that send each address to your real inbox. Forward Email, Cloudflare Email Routing and ImprovMX Free all forward at no charge; ImprovMX allows 1 domain and 25 aliases. **Postelva** also includes free email forwarding with each domain.

## Five forwarding services and what their free tier gives, 12 November 2026

*Each figure was read on the service's own pricing or documentation page on 12 November 2026. Prices change; check the page before you rely on one. Postelva has no affiliation with these services.*

| Service | Free with your own domain? | Free-tier limits | Sends mail as you@domain? | First paid price shown |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ImprovMX | Yes | 1 domain, 25 aliases, 500 emails forwarded per day | No on Free (0 SMTP sends a month) | Premium $9 a month; Light $50 a year for 5 domains |
| Forward Email | Yes | Unlimited domains, unlimited inbound mail, catch-all, 50 MB attachment limit | No on Free | Enhanced Protection $3 a month adds sending |
| Cloudflare Email Routing | Yes | Listed for Free and Paid plans; needs Cloudflare DNS; numeric limits are on a separate page | No; sending is a separate Beta service on a Workers Paid plan | No separate price for forwarding |
| SimpleLogin | No | 10 aliases at the provider's domain; custom domains not listed on Free | Not covered here | Premium $36 a year or $4 billed monthly, unlimited custom domains |
| addy.io | No | Custom domains not included on Free; unlimited standard aliases; 10 MB bandwidth a month | Not covered here | Lite $1 a month billed yearly for 1 domain; Pro $3 for 20 |

*Last checked on November 12, 2026; older figures carry their own date.*

## What do I need before I can forward mail from my own domain?

**You need a registered domain, DNS you can edit, and a destination inbox that already exists.** Forwarding does not create a mailbox. It receives mail for you@yourdomain.com on a server run by the forwarding service, then re-sends it to the destination address, for example a Proton Mail, Tuta or Fastmail inbox.

The DNS part is an [MX record](https://postelva.com/what-is-an-mx-record/ "What is an MX record?"), which tells the world which server accepts mail for the domain. Each forwarding service gives you its own MX values, and most also ask for an SPF record. A domain can hold only one SPF record, so if you already have one, add the new include to it instead of creating a second.

At Postelva the domain includes free DNS hosting with A, AAAA, CNAME, ALIAS, MX, TXT, NS, SRV and CAA records, DNSSEC, and your own nameservers if you prefer (2 to 13), and free email forwarding and URL forwarding from the client area. If you prefer a third-party forwarder, you type its MX and TXT records into the Postelva DNS editor. Postelva has no one-click template for these forwarders.

## Which free forwarding services work with my own domain?

**Three services forward your own domain at no charge: ImprovMX Free, Forward Email Free and Cloudflare Email Routing.** SimpleLogin and addy.io are alias services whose custom-domain support starts on paid plans.

- **ImprovMX Free:** 1 domain, 25 aliases and 500 emails forwarded per day, with no SMTP sending. Its Light plan at $50 a year raises the count to 5 domains, with 25 aliases per domain and 150,000 forwarded emails a month.
- **Forward Email Free:** unlimited domains, unlimited inbound mail, catch-all addresses, multiple recipients per alias, webhooks and a 50 MB attachment limit. The provider states that the Free plan does not store emails on its servers and describes itself as open source. These are the provider's own claims.
- **Cloudflare Email Routing:** available on Free and Paid plans, it forwards incoming messages to destination addresses or processes them with Workers. Cloudflare's setup page says you must be using Cloudflare DNS, and it adds MX records, an SPF TXT record and a DKIM TXT record to the root domain. It does not send mail.
- **SimpleLogin:** Free offers 10 aliases and does not list custom domains. Premium costs $36 a year and lists unlimited custom domains plus 5 subdomains.
- **addy.io:** Free lists custom domains as not included and gives unlimited standard aliases with 10 MB of bandwidth a month. Lite is $1 a month billed yearly for 1 domain.

The catch-all behaviour, which sends every unknown address to one inbox, is covered in the guide on [catch-all addresses and aliases on your own domain](https://postelva.com/guides/catch-all-and-aliases/ "How to use a catch-all address and aliases on your own domain").

## How many of the forwarding services are really free for a custom domain?

**According to Postelva's survey of 12 November 2026, 3 of the 5 forwarding services we read forward a custom domain on a free tier, and none of the 3 sends mail from your address without a paid plan.** ImprovMX and Forward Email list sending as a paid feature, and Cloudflare documents sending as a separate Beta service on a Workers Paid plan.

That is the real limit of free forwarding. You can receive at you@yourdomain.com, but a reply leaves from your destination inbox, with a different From address, unless you pay for SMTP or configure sending in the destination mailbox. If you need to send as the address, a mailbox plan such as Proton Mail Plus with a custom domain, or a flat plan at Purelymail or Migadu, is a better fit. The [index of providers with custom domains](https://postelva.com/data/email-provider-custom-domain-index-2026/ "Which email providers support custom domains in 2026?") lists them.

## What goes wrong with forwarded mail?

**Forwarded mail passes through an intermediary, and the standards treat that as a case of its own.** ARC, defined in RFC 8617 as an Experimental specification of July 2019, lets intermediaries record authentication results so that forwarded mail can still be assessed by the final receiver.

Google's sender rules, in force since 1 February 2024, require SPF, DKIM and a DMARC record from senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts. A personal forwarding address stays far below that volume, but the same records are still good practice on a domain you use for sending.

The practical rules are short: publish one SPF record, which RFC 7208 caps at 10 DNS lookups, and start DMARC at p=none. The page on [SPF, DKIM and DMARC](https://postelva.com/spf-vs-dkim-vs-dmarc/ "SPF vs DKIM vs DMARC: what is the difference?") explains each. Forwarding is also a stopgap, not a destination: it moves new mail only and keeps no archive.

## Where do I get the domain for forwarding?

**Any registrar works, and the domain price matters more than the forwarding service, because forwarding itself is free.** Postelva sells 14 extensions paid in BTC, USDT, USDC, ETH, SOL, LTC with no ID, one verified email per domain, and one price every year: a .com is $12.49/year, a .me is $18.49/year. We do not claim to be the cheapest, and the survey of 12 November 2026 compares Namecheap's regular renewal with ours extension by extension.

See the page on a [cheap domain for email](https://postelva.com/cheap-domain-for-email/ "Cheap domain for an email address: which one?") for the figures. Postelva sells the domain and does not host mail, so the forwarding and the destination mailbox come from the services above or from the provider you already use.

## Free email forwarding: questions

### Is free email forwarding with my own domain really free?

ImprovMX Free, Forward Email Free and Cloudflare Email Routing list a free tier for a custom domain. The domain itself is not free and renews every year. Sending as your address is a paid feature on the two that document it.

### Can I forward email from a custom domain to Gmail or Proton Mail?

Yes. A forwarding service accepts mail for your domain and re-sends it to any destination inbox. Pick the destination in the service's dashboard after you add its MX records.

### Do I need Cloudflare to use Cloudflare Email Routing?

Yes. Cloudflare's setup page says you must use Cloudflare DNS, which means moving the domain's nameservers to Cloudflare. Other forwarders only need MX and TXT records at your current DNS host.

### Can I use a catch-all with free forwarding?

Forward Email Free lists catch-all addresses. ImprovMX and Cloudflare pages did not mention a catch-all in the text we read, so check their dashboards.

### Does Postelva forward email?

Yes: Postelva includes free email forwarding and URL forwarding from the client area. It does not host mailboxes.

**In summary**

- 3 of 5 forwarding services read on 12 November 2026 forward a custom domain for free.
- ImprovMX Free: 1 domain, 25 aliases, 500 forwarded emails a day, no sending.
- Forward Email Free: unlimited domains, catch-all, 50 MB attachment limit; sending from $3 a month.
- Cloudflare Email Routing needs Cloudflare DNS and does not send mail.
- SimpleLogin and addy.io offer custom domains on paid plans only.
- Forwarding needs a domain and MX records; it moves new mail, not the archive.
- Postelva sells the domain (.com $12.49/year, the same every year), paid in crypto, no ID.

## Sources

1. [ImprovMX pricing](https://improvmx.com/pricing/) — ImprovMX (read 2026-11-12)
2. [Forward Email pricing](https://forwardemail.net/en/pricing) — Forward Email (read 2026-11-12)
3. [Cloudflare Email Routing overview](https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/) — Cloudflare (read 2026-11-12)
4. [Cloudflare - Enable Email Routing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/get-started/enable-email-routing/) — Cloudflare (read 2026-11-12)
5. [SimpleLogin pricing](https://simplelogin.io/pricing/) — SimpleLogin (read 2026-11-12)
6. [addy.io pricing](https://addy.io/pricing/) — addy.io (read 2026-11-12)
7. [RFC 8617 - Authenticated Received Chain (ARC)](https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8617) — RFC Editor (read 2026-11-12)
8. [RFC 7208 - Sender Policy Framework](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7208.html) — RFC Editor (read 2026-11-12)

**Register the domain, forward the mail** Search a name, pay in crypto, and use the free forwarding included with the domain. [Find your address](https://postelva.com/app/domains/?lang=en) · [See pricing](https://postelva.com/pricing/ "How much does a domain for your email cost?")

---

Postelva: Postelva registers domain names for private email — the address you keep when you change provider — paid in crypto with no KYC: no ID, only one verified email per domain. It is run by DomaineGoat LLC, a company registered in Panama; domains are registered through its ICANN-accredited registrar partner. A .com costs $12.49/year, the same price every year.