Getting Email Forwarding Without the G Suite Bill
Google’s announcement that legacy G Suite free accounts would need to move to a paid plan before May 1, 2022, has sent many people hunting for alternatives. A common reason to keep one of those old accounts was simple: handling email for a custom domain. If that sounds familiar, Cloudflare’s Email Routing service is a free way to replace that functionality.
Email Routing, first introduced during Cloudflare’s Birthday Week in September, lets you create any number of custom addresses on your own domains and forward inbound messages automatically to whatever existing mailbox you prefer. The service is designed to be secure, private, and straightforward to set up, and it’s included at no cost for all Cloudflare customers.
The service has gone through a closed beta with more than two hundred thousand zones testing it in production. Cloudflare is now in the process of opening the service up more broadly, and the configuration flow is simple enough that you can be running in minutes.
Setting Up a Custom Address
To get started, log in to your Cloudflare Dashboard and select the zone you want to use—for this walkthrough, example.com. In the left navigation panel, click Email and request access to the beta. Approval has been taking a few days; if you’d rather not wait, Cloudflare staff are active on the Discord server and community forum and will try to prioritize community requests.
Once you’re in, you’ll see a three-step configuration wizard. The first step asks for the custom address (e.g., [email protected]) and the destination inbox (e.g., [email protected]). Don’t worry about getting it perfect—you can modify both later.
The wizard then triggers a verification email to confirm you own the destination address. Open Gmail (or whichever provider you chose), locate the message, and click the verification link to continue.
The final step involves DNS records: Email Routing needs MX and SPF records set up on your zone. The simplest path is to hit “Add records automatically.” If you already have MX or SPF configured, Cloudflare will flag any conflicts and help you resolve them.
Once that’s done, Email Routing is live. You can start sending messages to [email protected] and read replies in your Gmail inbox.
Gmail Address Tricks Worth Knowing
Gmail (and Google Workspace) supports two address conventions that many people use for organizing mail or filtering spam. Both work with Cloudflare Email Routing, but there’s a small catch.
Plus Addressing
You can add a + sign plus any label to your address, such as [email protected]. Messages still land in the main inbox, and you can create Gmail filters around the tag to file or label mail automatically.
Ignoring Dots
Gmail treats periods in the local part as invisible. An email sent to [email protected] or [email protected] arrives in [email protected].
To take advantage of either trick through Email Routing, enable the “Catch-all address” feature. Any incoming address that doesn’t match an explicit rule will then forward to your verified destination inbox, letting you use an unlimited number of + tags or dotted variations without configuring each one individually.
For more detail, Cloudflare’s documentation pages cover the full setup process, and the roadmap points to improved metrics and more advanced routing rules in the future. If the G Suite price hike pushed you off your free plan, this is a solid option to evaluate.
