How to set up email on your own domain

Sending business mail from a free consumer address is the cheapest possible way to look temporary. Fixing it takes an afternoon at most, and the same work that gives you you@yourcompany.com is what keeps your messages out of the spam folder — because the records that prove the address is yours are the records receiving servers check.

What you actually need

• A domain. If you already have a website, you have one.
• Somewhere to host the mailboxes — your site host, a mail provider, or a suite that includes mail.
• Three DNS records: MX, SPF and DKIM. A fourth, DMARC, is optional in theory and essential in practice.
• Ten minutes at your registrar's DNS panel.

The records, in plain language

• MX — where mail addressed to your domain should be delivered. Without it, nobody can write to you.
• SPF — a TXT record listing which servers are allowed to send as your domain. It stops strangers sending mail that claims to be from you.
• DKIM — a cryptographic signature. Your provider signs outgoing messages with a private key; the matching public key sits in DNS so receivers can verify nothing was tampered with.
• DMARC — a TXT record that tells receivers what to do when SPF or DKIM fail, and where to send reports about it. It turns the first three from suggestions into a policy.

Set it up in order

1. Create the mailboxes at your provider first — the provider then gives you the exact record values to publish. Never copy values from an article, including this one.
2. Add the MX records at your registrar and delete any MX records left from a previous provider. Two mail hosts on one domain is a coin toss you will lose.
3. Publish the SPF record. You get exactly one per domain — if you already have one, merge the new sender into it rather than adding a second.
4. Publish the DKIM record your provider generated, exactly as given. It is long, so copy and paste it.
5. Wait for DNS to propagate, then send a test message in each direction — to the new address from an outside account, and from the new address to one.
6. Once mail flows, add DMARC starting with p=none and a reporting address. Read the reports for a couple of weeks, then tighten to quarantine and finally to reject.

Going straight to a strict DMARC policy is the classic mistake. Start at p=none, find out which of your systems send as your domain — the invoicing tool, the newsletter, the CRM — and only then tighten.

Names worth reserving

Set up role addresses before personal ones: hello@ or contact@ for the public, support@ for customers, billing@ for money, and postmaster@ because that is where DMARC reports and delivery complaints go. Role addresses survive people joining and leaving; an address built from someone's name does not, and forwarding a departed colleague's mail forever is nobody's idea of a system.

Why mail still lands in spam

• SPF or DKIM missing or misaligned — the most common cause by a distance.
• A brand-new domain sending a large first campaign. Reputation is earned; warm up gradually.
• Sending marketing mail from the same address as transactional mail. Separate them, ideally on a subdomain, so a bad campaign cannot poison your receipts.
• No visible unsubscribe on bulk mail. Recipients then use the spam button instead, which is far more damaging.
• Link shorteners and image-only messages — both look exactly like the spam they are used by.

Three records, one afternoon, and your mail both arrives and looks like it belongs to a business. The order matters more than the difficulty: mailboxes, MX, SPF, DKIM, test, then DMARC.