Sending and receiving emails with WordPress has always been a challenge, whether you're self-hosted or buy one of WordPress's packages.

WordPress's native email functionality is dire, and has deliverability issues of note.

We've already gone through the (relatively complicated) process of adding an SMTP "Sending Service" to your website in part 1 of this post yesterday. While that goal can be achieved with many different platforms and plugins, and in lots of different ways, we went with the more straightforward but slightly more expensive option of buying a couple of paid plugins and a Mailchimp account and letting them take care of it.

As we found when researching this problem: you can use whatever you like, but sooner or later you're going to have to bust out the credit card.

‍It sucks, but in most cases our clients are planning on using email to do Marketing and otherwise grow their business. So it makes sense that anything that does this job well is going to cost money.

The same is unfortunately true of the other side of things - being on the receiving end. Although not necessarily.

Receiving Emails at your WordPress site's domain - the free option

Before you get too excited, the "free" option in WordPress shares something in common with a lot of other free ways of doing things:

It sucks

With that out the way, there is a very quick, easy and free way to receive emails sent to any email address on your domain.

The catch is that you have to have them forwarded, and it's only one-way. That means you can receive emails in your personal gmail, or any other free email tool. We recommend this as a stopgap when setting up a new site or a new online business, but it's not exactly ideal.

To set up email forwarding in WordPress:

1. Go to your WordPress Dashboard and click "Emails" (if you're hosted on WordPress it'll be under "Hosting"

Simply type any email alias you like (even ones that don't exist) into the first box, and then tell WordPress where to send them. Job done - your visitors can now email you directly.

But I want it to be fancy

Remember that credit card we asked you to bring to class? You'll need it now.

If you want to receive emails into a @yourdomain.com email address, and reply from that address, and do all of the normal things we've been able to do with email since the mid 1990s, it's strangely enough going to cost you - either in time, money, or both.

The easiest way to do this depends on your hosting provider, and there's 3 levels of fancy up from email forwarding:

Fancy level 1: You log in to some janky email platform operated by your hosting provider, be it WordPress or whomever.

Fancy level 2: You log in to some third-party email provider like Zoho Mail

Fancy level 3: You use Gmail or Outlook

The most basic way of doing things is using your hosting provider's mailboxes.

Self-hosted:

Log into cPanel or whatever admin interface you have

Look for the "email" button

Follow the setup steps.

There's not much more we can say here as every platform is different. All of these will give you access to some kind of traditional mailbox that is functional, but not amazing.

WordPress Hosted

If you're on a WordPress hosted domain, I'd actually recommend using WordPress Professional Emails as a starting point. It's not the best, or the cheapest, but it's literally right there and all you have to do is turn it on.

It costs $35/year per mailbox, so if you get too happy with creating them, expect a big bill a year down the line. Start with one or two.

Fancy Level 2: Zoho Mail

Why Zoho Mail? We've no special preference here - all you need is a service that creates mailboxes on your domain. From here, you're able to easily set up Outlook to be the actual email client - or you can use Zoho's web one. Or whoever - doesn't matter. Find a provider that makes life easy and is affordable.

1. Sign Up for Zoho Mail

• Go to Zoho Mail.
• Sign up for the Zoho Mail Free or Zoho Mail Business plan.
• Choose Sign Up with a Domain I Already Own if you already have a domain.

2. Verify Your Domain

• After signing up, you'll need to verify your domain ownership.
• Zoho will provide you with options for domain verification:
  • TXT or CNAME Method: Add a TXT or CNAME record to your domain's DNS settings.
  • HTML Method: Upload an HTML file to your website's root directory.
  • MX Method: Update your domain's MX records (this will also start routing emails through Zoho).
• Follow the instructions provided by Zoho and wait for verification (it may take a few minutes to a few hours).

3. Set Up MX Records

• Log in to your domain registrar’s control panel (e.g., GoDaddy, Namecheap).
• Navigate to the DNS management or DNS settings section.
• Delete any existing MX records.
• Add Zoho’s MX records:
  • Priority 10: mx.zoho.com
  • Priority 20: mx2.zoho.com
  • Priority 50: mx3.zoho.com
• Save your changes. DNS changes may take up to 48 hours to propagate globally, though it's often much faster.

4. Set Up SPF and DKIM (Optional but Recommended)

• SPF Record: Add a TXT record to your DNS settings with the following value:
  v=spf1 include:zoho.com ~all
• DKIM: Go to Zoho Mail’s control panel and navigate to the Mail Admin section. Generate a DKIM key and add it as a TXT record in your DNS settings.
• These records help prevent your emails from being marked as spam.

5. Create Email Accounts

• Once your domain is verified and MX records are set up, you can start creating email accounts.
• Go to the User Details section in the Zoho Mail Admin Console.
• Click Add User and fill in the required details to create email accounts.

6. Access Your Email (Fancy Level: 3)

• You can now access your email through Zoho Mail's web interface or configure your email client (e.g., Outlook, Thunderbird) using Zoho’s IMAP/SMTP settings.
• IMAP Server: imap.zoho.com
• SMTP Server: smtp.zoho.com

7. Test Your Setup

• Send a test email to and from your new email address to ensure everything is working correctly.

8. Configure Additional Settings (Optional)

• You can further customize your email settings, set up aliases, and more through the Zoho Mail Admin Console.

That's it! Your domain should now be set up to receive emails using Zoho Mail, or whatever else you used. If you've connected it to Outlook, you'll barely notice Zoho or whatever service you used.

Ok I want to use gmail though

That's beyond the scope of this blog post, because of recent changes by Google to how they handle SMTP. You're welcome to go grab a bottle of strong dark liquor and wade into Google's documentation on the subject, but we'd advise saving yourself the trouble.

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