Privacy Policy Cookie Policy

(Almost) Free Email Hosting for Your Own Domain Name

Google Apps for Business costs $60 per year for email hosting. I found an email hosting option (Pawnmail.com) for your domain name that only costs $0.06 per year.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you exactly how to set up and use free email hosting for your domain name.

Interview (10:01): Watch | Listen/Download Audio | Sponsors | Read Transcript

Your DomainSherpa Interview

Playback Speed:
 
This interview is promoted through a media partnership with DAN.com.

Thank Today's Sherpa via Twitter

(Don’t have Twitter? Post a comment of thanks or share on Facebook.)

Your DomainSherpa Interview, Audio Only

Download Domain Name Interview in MP3

Note: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Or, listen on iTunes or in your favorite podcast app (here are the feeds).

Or, grab a feed for your podcast app, listen via Stitcher or listen on iTunes.

DomainSherpa Advertisers

Please visit the advertisers that support DomainSherpa and make our shows possible.

Efty.com
Watch Ad
Namejet.com

MediaOptions.com

Tutorial Raw (Non-Edited) Transcript

Download/Read the Domain Name Interview Transcript in PDF FormatTutorial Transcript in PDF Format (Right-click to Save As…) [View in Google Docs]

Watch the full video at:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/free-email-hosting/

Google Apps for Business costs 60 dollars per year for email. I found an email option for your domain name that only costs six cents per year. In this tutorial, I am going to show you exactly how to set it up and use it. Stay tuned.

This show is made possible by these awesome sponsors. A quick message about them, then go check them out, then come back and watch this tutorial.

If you’re buying or selling a domain name or portfolio and you want an estimate of it’s value, Estibot.com is the place to go. Just like you’d visit Zillow.com to get an estimate of a house value, Estibot.com provides key information about the most important statistics so you can make an informed decision based on data.

Second: Serious about online trading? Secure your funds, keep your merchandise safe, and use a company that keeps the buyer and seller protected the whole way through. That’s Escrow.com. Payments you can trust.

Finally, if you’re a domain name investor, don’t you have unique legal needs that require domain name technical know-how and industry experience? That’s why you need David Weslow of Wiley Rein. Go search for David Weslow on DomainSherpa, watch his interview and you can see for yourself that he can clearly explain issues, can help you with buy/sell agreements, deal with website content issues and UDRP actions, and even help you write your website terms and conditions. David Weslow is the lawyer to call for Internet legal issues. See for yourself at DavidWeslow.com.

Michael Cyger: Hey Sherpa Network. My name is Michael Cyger, and I’m the Publisher of DomainSherpa.com – the website where you can learn how to become a successful domain name investor or entrepreneur directly from the experts.

While setting up Google Apps for Business will give you a real secure email address for your own domain name, it costs 60 dollars per year. How about an email account that only costs six cents per year? That is the focus of this tutorial.

There are many reasons why you may want to setup a free or close to it email account for your domain name. You may want to only send a few emails from an account and you do not need it long-term, or you may want to receive emails to a particular email account on your domain name, or you may want to play a practical joke on some friends. I remember Shane Cultra of DomainShane.com sharing an April Fool’s prank on a recent DomainSherpa Review of how he would send emails from the City.org domain name he owns, telling his friends they were late paying business taxes. Google used to offer Gmail for free on domain names, but stopped offering it years ago. Today I found a new option for you.

The service is called Pawnmail.com, and it is offered by Andrew Belt, a student at the University of Tennessee. You can read more about Andrew by clicking his name on the Pawnmail.com website. So, it is not a service offered by a company, but more of a labor of love offered by a programmer who is willing to share his awesome service with the world. The website reads, “Email hosting for custom domains. 2GB of storage free forever.”

If you are so enclined after watching this tutorial that you want to use this service, I suggest you make a nominal donation to him via the links he provides at Pawnmail.com. I also want to point out that messages that you send and receive through Pawnmail are stored unencrypted on his servers. That means that if a hacker were to access his server, they could download all of the email and read it. Andrew provides instructions on how to use PGP encryption for your mail stored on the Pawnmail server, but if you are like me, that sounds like Greek. So, I will use Pawnmail for the reasons I mentioned earlier, and if I need email for an operating business that I need secure, then I will use Google Apps.

Let’s get into how Pawnmail works.

Start on the register domain link at the top of the page. Type in the domain name that you want to use for your email as well as a password. Make sure the password is secure by making it at least 10 characters and using numbers, upper and lower case letters, and throw in a few special characters. When that is done, go to step two, which is to update your domain name system records, or DNS records.

The domain name I am using as an example in this tutorial is at GoDaddy, so I will sign into GoDaddy, click the edit domain, click to edit the DNS zone file, and update the mail exchanger records, or MX record, to MX.Pawnmail.com. You can see that I removed one record and updated the other from their default settings to match what Pawnmail told me to setup. Make sure you save your configuration before you leave that page. If the DNS has not propagated yet from GoDaddy to the rest of the Internet, which Pawnmail says can take up to 24 hours, then you will see this error message. “MX record of domain name not yet configured.” Wait a little while. It could take minutes or hours.

You can check the MX records using a third party tool at MXToolbox.com. Here, I see that my records have been updated properly, so I will go back to Pawnmail now and try to sign in again. Now I am in.

You can create an account by typing a username and password. If you do not like it, just click the account username and you can delete it. If your creating an account, stick with standard formatting, like FirstName@DomainName or First.LastName@DomainName to look more professional. Once the email account is setup, you can click the webmail link and enter the full email address and password to access your email.

There are no messages in this account yet because I just created it, so let’s send one from my other email account. After a few moments, the email shows up. I can see graphics, click links, etc. It is a full webmail console. You can reply to email using Pawnmail’s webmail console, but notice that it shows up from your email address by default. I recommend that you make sure it shows up from your full name so that you look more professional to the email recipient. To update your name, go to settings, then identities, click the account and type in your full name as the display name. You can also add your full name, then your business name, for example, if you want it to show up from your name, the business name to look more professional.

Then, when you send an email, your full name shows up as the from name in addition to the email address. Because email you send and receive is not encrypted on the Pawnmail server, it is susceptible to being hacked and stolen. As a result, do not store confidential information in this account. I recommend you delete the account as soon as you no longer have a need for it. And finally, go back into your DNS zone file at your registrar and remove the MX record for Pawnmail, which will prevent any received email from going to Pawnmail and Pawnmail from being able to send any email from this domain in the future.

Lastly, if you use this service, please consider making a small donation to Andrew Belt, so he has the funds to keep this service running. Each email account only costs six cents per year, so send him a few dollars and you will be ensuring that Pawnmail stays up and running for a long time to come. Now, if you want to ensure that DomainSherpa stays up and running for a long time, please watch these final three sponsor messages. Thanks.

First, if you’re buying a domain name from a private party and want to know what else they own, DomainIQ.com is the tool you should be using. View their entire portfolio, filter by Estibot value and be a better investor. $49.95 for 250 queries per month. Visit DomainIQ.com/portfolio to learn more.

Second, Efty was built by domain investors to increase your inquiries, sales and profit. Forget spreadsheets and archived emails — manage your entire investment portfolio in one place using a secure and completely confidential platform. Learn more at Efty.com, that’s e – f – t – y, Efty.com.

Finally, if you’re struggling with how to buy, sell, and value domain names, you need to check-out DNAcademy.com. Published by me, Michael Cyger of DomainSherpa, and trusted by Uniregistry to train their new employees, you too can learn using the DNAcademy accelerated learning system for domain name investing. Learn more at DNAcademy.com.

Watch the full video at:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/free-email-hosting/

More About…

Keywords:
People:

Leave a Reply

Comments must be respectful and constructive. Read our comment policy.

 

13 Responses to “(Almost) Free Email Hosting for Your Own Domain Name”

  1. Ivo Hristov says:

    Great tutorial, thank you Michael! I watch your program every week and I learn a lot from it!

    I want to share my experience using pawnmail –
    I am getting all my emails sent out to gmail accounts blocked by gmail even when I am replying to an email sent to pawnmail. It looks like pawnmail hosted mail is deemed as spam, which makes this service practically unusable.

    It looks like the service have been abused and it has been ruined for all of us.

    1. Thanks for your support, Ivo.

      That’s too bad about Pawnmail but I appreciate you taking the time to post that your experience hasn’t worked out.

      It does appear that Pawnmail.com is on a blacklist now. If you go to https://uptime.com/domain-health and type in “http://pawnmail.com” (without the quotes), you’ll see:
      Blacklist Spam Blacklists CRITICAL: 107.191.103.103 on 1 spam blacklists (91 blacklists checked.) Close
      CRITICAL: 107.191.103.103 on 1 spam blacklists

      BLACKLISTS:
      spam.dnsbl.sorbs.net

      It’s too bad.

      It now seems that the only benefit of this option is to receive email, as a catch-all, so you can see if others are using email associated with a domain name you own.

  2. Alan Dodd says:

    Michael – superb. Thanks so much for this tutorial. Invaluable.

  3. Ricky Deas says:

    Hi Michael,

    Hope all is well. Can’t believe Summer is over.
    I want to wish you, your family and ALL the Sherpas a Safe and Enjoyable Labor Day Weekend.

    Thanks and Happy Domaining!

    Ricky Deas

    1. Hi Ricky,

      Thank you kindly. Best wishes to you and yours.

      Regards,
      Mike

  4. Biart says:

    As a freelance developer, I found it s more professional to have your email under your domain name. It s not just promoting your brand name, it is also advertising your website for free!

  5. Michael Calabretta says:

    Thanks Mike for this, I’ll give it a try.

  6. Troy W. says:

    Great tutorial. This is exactly what I need for one of my domains. I want to send out “this domain name is for sale” emails to a few companies, but want it to come from the domain name to look more authentic. I’ll gladly contribute $5 to be able to send those emails out, and then “burn” the email address hosting after I’m done with it.. And it will be well worth it for me in the long run.

    Keep up the great work, Michael! Love all that you do.

  7. Omer says:

    You can get Google Apps for legacy for your domain for one time fee at https://gapps.xyz. No monthly or year fees.

    Your domain will be setup as primary domain of the account.

  8. Arseny says:

    Michael, is it just my pc or firefox doesn’t show your videos?

    1. Hi Arseny

      I think it’s just your PC as it worked on Firefox on my Mac.

      Can you please try it on another browser and let me know if you’re still experiencing the same issue?

      Thanks,
      Michael

      1. Arseny says:

        Then it must be my PC :) It worked on Chrome, but not Firefox.

        Thanks for sharing great advices and ideas!

Domaining magazine site recommended by Domaining.com
Copyright © 2010-2024 DomainSherpa. All rights reserved. Reproduction without explicit permission is prohibited.
About  |  Advertising  |  Affiliate Links  |  Disclaimer  |  Disclosures  |  Privacy  |  Terms  |  Contact Us