Hi I’m a hobbist trying to create a custom domain email on gmail for free. It uses a domain routing rule to point the emails to a gmail email address and on the gmail side it uses an app password to to access the gmail SMTP sever for this custom email address. Are there security, reliability or other concerns?
This video describes the process: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXWA08ly_s&list=PLqAMz-6-fHXxK-Yb-1Z7zFtHkXfTDD5&index=24
I did not watch the video but if you are asking about using what Google calls Less Secure Apps then that is getting phased out by Google
Transition from less secure apps to OAuth - Google Workspace Admin Help.
Google Workspace is only $7 per month and other services like Proton Mail are about $4 per month.
As Tom said, “Less secure apps” will be phased out, but “App Passwords” within google is a relatively new addition. I use the “App Passwords” feature myself for scanning documents to email from Ricoh copiers. Works great and does not use your actual Google account passwords. It generates a password for your device to use. Once you view the password, be aware that it will NOT be shown again. You’d have to delete and recreate if you don’t write it down or copy it.
If all you need is to have your own email addresses on your own domain without paying anything look into Cloudflare free tier they offer MX routing that can end up on your existing Gmail email (or any other mailbox you own anywhere) so long as the domain DNS servers are managed by Cloudflare. It’s completely transparent to the end user.
From my experience the only drawbacks are if the email volume increases they might ask you to pay and you don’t have much control over which emails get rejected due to sender reputation. If they decide to dump an email, it’s gone and you can’t get it back in any way.
There is always self-hosted options, as well. I, personally, don’t want the headache added to my workload since SMTP servers tend to be insecure. Microsoft/Exchange systems from my past experience if I remember correctly.
@mattsowders I briefly considered self-hosting that but it seems rather complex and alot to learn. another options I was looking at was purelyemail…
I agree. What about Yahoo mail? I haven’t looked into this so don’t quote me on it but my personal email is an old, old account I made many years ago. I seem to remember being able to use your own domain in the past but that could’ve changed since, as well. Might be worth looking into though.
@LTS_Tom thank you for build this place for questions… As a hobbyist with lots to learn it’s so nice the Lawrence Technology Services forums have helpful people. Other forums I have asked for help on have been less than welcoming and seemed like people are just there to try to show how smart they are and tell me I have no business trying to learn this.
Thank you for fostering a community of helpful people.
Yes! This forum is my number 1 go to when I’m struggling with something. I’ve always felt welcomed here. Very glad Tom made this and continues making excellent videos. Thanks Tom!
MXRoute isn’t horribly expensive and lets you typically have several domains that you can create emails on.
If you’re interested in getting something for free for your custom domain, you can check out Zoho Mail. They offer a free plan that provides 5GB of storage and supports up to 5 users. Although this plan has been removed from certain locations, such as Canada, you can still check availability in your country.
I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. I’ve been using this feature to send emails with another domain on GMail for a while now. However, I don’t think this part of sending an email with your domain through GMail will work for long, because the domain will fail some of the most basic DNS protections:
SPF (who can send emails through your domain)
DKIM (Gmail uses DKIM to sign the email header and this will cause most email servers to throw your email into the Spam box).
I use this Cloudflare email routing option for some projects and it works wonderfully well. However, if this sending part doesn’t start to cause problems due to the points I mentioned above, Google may at any time block you from using their servers to send emails with your domain, to prevent its use for sending Spam.
Self hosting is indeed a pain but the rewards are worth it. No other third party/cloud gets to read your emails.
You will need to have port 25 inbound open. There’s several good foss mailstacks available. I like mailcow.
If your outbound (sending) volume is low, smtp2go offers a free tier with 1000 email sent per month.
I’ve been self hosting now for about 2 years. Domain has proper spf/dkim/dmac/dane/MTA-STS. Inbound spam is generally low, with much of it filtered at postscreen level, the rest gets processed by rspamd. For outbound, even through I don’t have a proper PTR record (that matches the MX helo), very rarely is anything actually bounced or marked spam. For bounced emails, they are resent using either my backup mx (a webhost), or smtp2go. This hasn’t happened in over a year now.
Thanks for helping me see the issues. I’ll give smtp2go a try and setup the cname entries for it on my domain.
I really would like to give it a try but worried I’ll get stuck without any help. I’ve never setup a Docker before but want to learn. My needs are simple. I don’t send out very many emails today. Might give MailCow a try next weekend. I might come back with questions.
There are numerous tutorials out there. In addition, mailcow has well written documentation available at https://docs.mailcow.email/ .
Using smtp2go can actually be a good option for sending! However, I don’t know if you can use it with GMail, but it’s something that might be worth a try!
SMTP2GO works great. Sending with a Google Workspace account has no issues. I use it with pfSense and Unifi devices for sending warnings and scan to email services on printers.
Just to add another response, I used to do something similar with Cloudflare (Rx) + Mailgun (Tx).
Basically the same setup as described here and here.
For your own personal use, you can do this, but you’re responsible with things break. I made the mistake of setting up something like this for a family member but regret it because supporting it is a head ache.
Mailgun is meant to be a transactional email sender, not really conducive for a personal every day email provider.
Now I am transitioning to just paying for Mailbox.org.
I was a Proton customer, but disagreed with some of their messaging and I could feel them closing the walls in on me recently and decided it would be best to distance myself from that company before getting even more locked in.
Curious while your switching off of Mailgun. I’ve been using CF and Mailgun for years. Can’t say I’ve really had a problem with their service.