Are you a small business looking to get a free custom email?
A software developer wanting a more professional inbox?
Or a hobbyist just wanting to flex a custom email to their friends?

If so, this article is for you!

I’m Arslaan Pathan, and as of 2026, I’m 13 years old. This is an improved version of my previous guide. If you’ve already set that up, I’d recommend switching — I’ll explain why in a second. It only takes 30 minutes to an hour, and it’s much more secure than the previous method. If you’re new and don’t want to hear me yap about why the old method was broken, skip to the section titled “Getting Started”.

Why the old method was fundamentally broken

The previous method used Gmail SMTP to send the emails, which works, but it has a fundamental flaw that most tutorials don’t tell you about.

The problem is that Gmail SMTP is made to send emails only through a Google-managed email, for example, a normal Gmail account, or if you pay for Google Workspace (the fact that you’re here trying to find free emails shows you probably don’t), that account.

When you send from the Gmail SMTP, SPF passes, because we place the correct records in our DNS, but DMARC still fails because of misalignment (and so does DKIM because DKIM is signed with Gmail’s servers). Gmail SMTP will always, no matter what, set the Envelope-From to your Gmail address in the email headers, even if you have a different From address. This makes the DMARC alignment fail, which in turn causes DMARC itself to fail.

The only reason our emails were still even sending was that we had ‘p=none’ set in our DMARC TXT records, which tells the mail servers to accept our emails even if checks fail. This makes it extremely easy for an attacker to spoof our emails, because our DMARC records are set to accept everything. Setting it to ‘p=quarantine’ or ‘p=reject’ with the old method was impossible, because that would make our check-failing legitimate emails undeliverable.

The new method uses Resend SMTP to send emails, which is a mail-sending service that has a free tier for developers and hobbyists. Resend explicitly supports custom domains and passes all of the SPF/DKIM/DMARC checks, avoiding our issues from earlier.

Getting Started

Setting up Cloudflare Email Routing

The first step in creating a custom business email is receiving emails. This guide assumes you are using Cloudflare nameservers with your domain. If not, please follow this guide.

  1. Open the Cloudflare dashboard and select your domain if you haven’t already.

  2. On the left sidebar, click on Email, then Email Routing.

  3. It should bring you to a Getting started with Email Routing page.

  4. Enter the desired custom address in the Custom address field.

  5. Enter the desired destination email (in this case, your current email) in the Destination field.
    It may take you through to another page that makes you verify the destination email, but simply follow the steps and you should be good to go.

  6. Press Continue.

  7. Make sure email routing is enabled and add other desired addresses if you would like.

Done! You’ve setup email routing so you can receive emails in your normal email inbox. It wasn’t that hard, right?

Setting up Resend SMTP

This method of getting free custom emails uses Resend SMTP for sending emails. Resend is an email API made for developers and hobbyists alike, which also happens to support sending via SMTP.

  1. Go to resend.com and create a new account.

  2. It will show you the onboarding process. It’s fairly straightforward, just follow the instructions to create an API key and send a test email and you should be all set. Remember to save the API key somewhere safe, you’ll need it.

  3. From the Resend dashboard, go to Domains and add your domain. It will determine your DNS provider (in this case, Cloudflare) and ask if you want to use automatic setup. In the case that it doesn’t, it will tell you exactly which DNS records to add. Simply follow the instructions and you should be up and running soon enough.

  4. In your preferred email client, add another identity for the email you’d like using the following details:
    Host/Server: smtp.resend.com
    Port: 587
    Username: resend
    Password: <YOUR_API_KEY>

    This process varies by email client, but it shouldn’t be that hard. Just search up “how to add another identity in <Gmail/Thunderbird/your email client>” and you should get some results.

There you go! You’ve just setup Resend SMTP with your custom email address. Just one last thing…

Adding DMARC records

Almost done! The last step is to add our DMARC records which tell mail servers what to do if our SPF/DKIM checks fail and act as a layer of security for our emails.

  1. In the Cloudflare dashboard, go to your domain and then DNS.

  2. Add the following DNS record:
    Type: TXT
    Name: _dmarc
    TTL: Auto
    Content: v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]

    If you want to add multiple emails, comma separate them in the rua field:
    For example: v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected],mailto:[email protected]

    You can also omit the rua field entirely, as it just tells email servers to send you aggregate reports of your emails so you can see if your SPF/DKIM/DMARC are passing or failing on average.
    For example: v=DMARC1; p=reject

Enjoy!

Great job! You’ve just setup your own custom email address for completely free! You’ll be able to send 100 emails per day, and a total of 3,000 emails per month, which is plenty for most people.

If your emails aren’t sending or are being marked as spam, the DNS records probably haven’t propagated yet. Just wait a few days and you’ll be fine.

Thanks for reading my blog post!
I’m a 13-year-old developer making niche tech content here on my website and also on YouTube, so I really appreciate the support!
I’ll (probably, if I get time) be coming out with a YouTube video corresponding to this blog post soon, and this page will be updated to show that when the time comes.
Feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on other socials!