---
title: The Poor Man's Custom Domain Email
description: How to set up a free custom domain email that sends and receives from your personal Gmail account.
date: 5 December 2025
---

I want a custom domain email, but I'm too poor to afford the Google Workspace $12/month tax. This article contains what I did to set up a professional, highly-deliverable, custom domain email **for free**.

## Prerequisites

1. **A Domain**: You own a domain (eg. `dev.me`) and it is using Cloudflare DNS
2. **A Gmail Account**: You have a standard personal Gmail account (eg. `personal@gmail.com`)

## Goals

Here are our goals:

- Personal Gmail (`personal@gmail.com`) to remain as the primary UI
- Emails sent to `me@dev.me` to appear in `personal@gmail.com`
- Emails sent from `me@dev.me` to appear as if they originated from that address, fully signed and authenticated, avoiding the dreaded "via gmail.com" header
- Most importantly: **free**

To achieve this, we'll use the following stack:

1. [**Cloudflare**](http://cloudflare.com/): Routes *inbound* mail to your personal Gmail
2. [**Mailtrap**](https://mailtrap.io/): SMTP relay to handle *outbound* mail so you don't look like spam
3. [**Gmail**](https://gmail.com/): The email UI you're already familiar with

## Receiving Mail via Cloudflare

To receive emails sent to the `dev.me` domain, we utilise Cloudflare's free email routing service to route all emails to our personal Gmail.

Configuration steps:

1. Head to your [Cloudflare Dashboard](https://dash.cloudflare.com/), then enter your domain of choice (eg. `dev.me`)
2. Then click on `Email`, then `Email Routing`
3. Add your existing personal Gmail (eg. `personal@gmail.com`) as a `Destination Address` and follow the steps to verify it
4. In the `Routes` tab, enable `Catch-all address` to forward everything (`*@dev.me`) to your Gmail

The catch-all setting is optional, but having it enabled means you don't actually need to manually create aliases for every email address you want to use. You can start receiving emails from `netflix@dev.me` or `contact@dev.me`, and they will all land in your `personal@gmail.com` inbox.

## Sending Mail via Mailtrap

To send mail that doesn't look like spam, we must use a dedicated SMTP relay. For this, we'll use [Mailtrap](https://mailtrap.io/), which has an extremely generous free tier (4,000 emails/month as of this writing).

Create your account, then follow these steps:

1. Head to the `Sending Domains` section on the sidebar and add your custom domain
2. Click into your domain, and follow all steps needed to be done in the `Domain Verification` section (ensure all checkmarks are green)
3. After that, head to `Settings`, then `API Tokens`, and create and note down a new token that you will use for the Gmail integration

## Gmail Integration

Now the fun part, combining everything together:

1. Head to your personal Gmail, then `Settings` and `See all settings`
2. Under `Accounts and Import` tab, in the `Send mail as` section, click on `Add another email address`, and use the following details:
   - SMTP Server: `live.smtp.mailtrap.io`
   - Port: `587 (TLS)`
   - Username: `api`
   - Password: API key from Mailtrap that you created in the previous section
3. Ensure the `Reply from the same address to which the message was sent` option is checked so that your replies automatically use the same email address that received the email in the first place

At this point, you should try to send an email from the `me@dev.me` email address to see if it works.

## Gmail Profile Picture "Hack"

If you tried sending yourself an email from the integration above, you'd have noticed that the profile picture of your `me@dev.me` account doesn't have a proper profile picture.

To fix this, we need to actually create a Google Account with the custom email address:

1. Start creating a new Google Account as per usual
2. When prompted for a username, select `Use your existing email` instead and type your custom email address (`me@dev.me`)
3. Once the account is created, upload a profile picture, and your outbound emails from `me@dev.me` should start showing your profile picture after a few hours

> [!NOTE]
> If a prompt appears to try to convert this account you just created to use a Gmail inbox, **ignore it**. Remember that you are **not** creating a new Gmail inbox, just a new Google account that uses your custom email address.

## Security & Preventing Spoofing

> [!CAUTION]
> **If you have followed Mailtrap's instruction as is when adding the DNS records, your email is likely susceptible to spoofing attacks! Please read on to remediate!**

Firstly, **tighten your SPF record** in your Cloudflare DNS.

Find the TXT record for SPF and ensure that Mailtrap is also included in the authorised list, since emails are sent from Mailtrap. The `~all` (tilde = soft fail) setting should be set to `-all` (dash = hard fail) as well, marking senders not on the authorised list as unauthorised, not just as suspicious.

```sh
# Correct SPF example:
v=spf1 include:_spf.mx.cloudflare.net include:spf.mailtrap.live -all
#                                                               ^ Ensure it's not `~`
```

More importantly, **tighten your DMARC record**.

If you've copy-pasted Mailtrap's example, then it's likely set to `p=none` (monitor only). For a personal domain where you are the only sender, you should set this to `p=reject` to block anyone trying to spoof you.

```sh
# Correct DMARC example:
v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=...
#           ^ Ensure it's not `none`
```

Since these are DNS changes, they may take some time to propagate. Check the health of your new email by using [CanIBeSpoofed](https://caniphish.com/free-phishing-tools/email-spoofing-test) to do an automated check, or [Kevlarr](https://www.kevlarr.io/email-test) to try to spoof as your newly created email. Afterwards, you should ideally do another sanity check that sending emails from your new domain works as expected as well.