Free email forward with Mailgun.com

I recently started moving away from my Danish Domain and DNS provider GratisDNS which charges me about $7.5 per year just for an email forward service which I use to be able to send and receive emails as serek.eu from my gmail account. This can be done for free using Mailgun.com! This includes unlimited incoming mails and 10.000 outgoing mails per month which is more than enough for my needs.

This guide shows how to

• Forward incoming emails to any email address using you own domain (e.g. user@example.com –> user@gmail.com)
• Send emails from gmail as user@example.com

Replace example.com and all emails with your own.

Initial setup

1. Create an account at Mailgun.com.
2. Login to Mailgun.com and click Add new domain under Domains. Ignore the recommendation to use a subdomain, just add your base domain, e.g. example.com.
3. After adding the domain successfully you will be shown a Now Follow These Steps To Verify Your Domain page. Follow the instructions to add the two TXT records, two MX records and the CNAME entry to your DNS settings. Remember to remove existing MX settings for the chosen domain that to prevent conflicts.
4. Confirm that the DNS works by going to Domains –> Click on your domain –> Click Domain Verification & DNS and lastly click Check DNS Records Now. It might take a day or two for everything to confirm depending on your existing DNS / TTL settings.

Setup incoming emails

1. In Mailgun.com go to Routes and click Create route
2. Configure a mail forward as follows:
   • Expression Type –> Match recipient
   • Recipient –> user@example.com
   • Action –> Check Forward and enter the email to forward to, e.g. user@gmail.com
   • Priority –> Set to 10
   • Description –> Add the same as in Recipient
   • Click Create route
3. Repeat step 2 for each email forward you want.

4. (Optional) Create a route to catch every mail not caught using Match recipient. This will ensure that every possible recipient using @example.com will be caught and forwarded.
   • Expression Type –> Catch All
   • Action –> Check Forward and enter the email to forward to, e.g. user@gmail.com
   • Priority –> Set to 99
   • Description –> Catch all mailforward
   • Click Create route

Thats it, you can now receive emails on @example.com.

Setup outgoing emails

1. Log into gmail
2. Go to Settings –> Accounts and Import
3. Go to section Send mail as and click Add another email address that you own
4. Enter an @example.com email address and click Next Step
5. Configure the form with information from Mailgun.com –> Domains –> example.com
   • SMTP Server –> SMTP Hostname from Mailgun
   • Port –> 587
   • Username –> Default SMTP Login from Mailgun
   • Password –> Default Password from Mailgun
   • Check Secured connection using TLS
   • Click Save Changes

6. Repeat step 3 - 5 for each email you would like to be able to send as
7. Go back to Settings –> Accounts and Import –> Send mail as. Choose which email is the default to use when sending mails and which email to use when replying

Thats it! When composing a new email from gmail you now get a dropdownlist in the From field where you can choose who to send as.