Is Cloudflare Email Routing really free?

Yes. It’s part of the free plan, and incoming mail has no limit. What Cloudflare charges for is sending email from applications, which is a separate product.

How many addresses can I have?

Up to 200 routing rules per domain, one per address. Each can go to a different person: an account can verify up to 200 destination addresses.

What does the catch-all rule do?

It forwards every message sent to your domain to one destination, including addresses you never created, such as a misspelt hello@. That way a typo doesn’t lose you a customer’s email.

Can I reply as hello@yourbusiness.com without paying?

Not with forwarding alone. Gmail’s “Send mail as” ends for outside addresses in January 2027, so anything lasting needs a mailbox; Zoho’s free plan is the no-cost one, with its limits.

Will customers see my Gmail address?

If you answer a forwarded message from Gmail, yes: the reply comes from your Gmail account. With a mailbox at your domain, they only ever see hello@.

Can the mail go to iCloud or Outlook instead of Gmail?

Yes. Any address you can open works as a destination, once you’ve verified it.

An email address at your own domain, free to receive

This is for anyone with a domain on Cloudflare who wants messages sent to hello@yourbusiness.com to land in the inbox they already use. It doesn’t matter what the site is built with; what counts is that the domain runs on Cloudflare’s nameservers.

Time: 5 minutes
Cost: Free, to receive

What you set up is forwarding. Cloudflare receives each message and passes it on to your personal address, at no cost and with no cap on incoming mail. Sending from the new address is a separate question, and this guide lays out the options.

Before you start

Your domain active on Cloudflare, with its nameservers already switched: Email Routing only works with Cloudflare’s DNS.
The inbox where the mail should arrive, open and at hand, because Cloudflare sends it a link to confirm.
The addresses you want, such as hello, bookings or invoices. Each one is a rule, and a domain can hold up to 200.
The answer to one question: does this domain already receive email somewhere else? If it does, read “When mail doesn’t arrive” before you start.

Step by step: an email address at your domain

Your domain has to be on Cloudflare (see Your own address).
Open Compute → Email Service → Email Routing, click Onboard Domain, choose your domain and follow the steps to the end: Cloudflare adds the records it needs.
In Destination Addresses, add your personal address (Gmail, iCloud…) and confirm it from the email they send.
In Routing Rules, click Create routing rule: hola (or hello, info…) → send to your personal address.

At the end: Mail to hola@yourbusiness.com arrives in your usual inbox.

To send from that address too you need a mailbox (Google Workspace, Zoho Mail…).

Forwarding, or a mailbox of your own?

Email Routing receives and forwards; it doesn’t give you an inbox. When you reply to a forwarded message, the answer goes out from your personal address, not from hello@.

If most of your mail comes in, from a contact form or from customers writing first, forwarding covers it. If you write to customers first, or they should see hello@ in every reply, you need a mailbox. Here is what the providers publish today.

Google Workspace Business Starter costs €6.80 per user a month with a one-year commitment, or €8.10 month to month, plus VAT, with 30 GB of storage per user.

Zoho Mail Lite costs €0.90 per user a month, billed yearly, with 5 GB each and taxes on top. Zoho also offers a free plan for up to five users on one domain, 5 GB each, without IMAP or POP, and only in some of its data centres.

iCloud+ starts at €0.99 a month in the euro area, taxes included, or $0.99 in the US, for 50 GB. Every plan lets you use a domain you own in iCloud Mail, up to five domains with three addresses each, and your Apple Account needs two-factor authentication.

Whichever you pick replaces Email Routing on that domain, because Cloudflare’s forwarding can’t work alongside another mail server.

Why not reply with Gmail’s “Send mail as”?

Gmail has a setting, “Send mail as”, for writing from another address you own. Google is ending it for addresses outside Gmail and Google Workspace: support stops in January 2027, and new setups may be restricted before then.

For a business that relies on it, Google suggests a mail app set up with the provider’s own server details, or Google Workspace for a custom domain. Mail forwarded into Gmail isn’t affected and keeps arriving.

When mail doesn’t arrive

Mail you already receive stops arriving. If the domain gets email at a host or registrar today, turning on Email Routing takes that over: Cloudflare needs its own MX records and can’t run beside another mail server. Save what you need first, or choose a mailbox instead of forwarding.

Your test message never appears. Cloudflare advises testing from an account other than the one you forward to, because some providers discard mail that seems to come from the same account. Look in spam, too.

Nothing arrives at all. Cloudflare won’t forward to a destination that hasn’t been verified, so find its verification email, which may also be sitting in spam.

A message bounces. Incoming mail can be up to 25 MiB; for bigger files, ask for a link instead.

Later: moving to a mailbox

If forwarding stops being enough, you can switch without losing mail in between. Cloudflare sets out the order: take the lock off its routing records, add the new provider’s records next to them, and remove Cloudflare’s once the new mailbox works.

Questions

Is Cloudflare Email Routing really free?: Yes. It’s part of the free plan, and incoming mail has no limit. What Cloudflare charges for is sending email from applications, which is a separate product.
How many addresses can I have?: Up to 200 routing rules per domain, one per address. Each can go to a different person: an account can verify up to 200 destination addresses.
What does the catch-all rule do?: It forwards every message sent to your domain to one destination, including addresses you never created, such as a misspelt hello@. That way a typo doesn’t lose you a customer’s email.
Can I reply as hello@yourbusiness.com without paying?: Not with forwarding alone. Gmail’s “Send mail as” ends for outside addresses in January 2027, so anything lasting needs a mailbox; Zoho’s free plan is the no-cost one, with its limits.
Will customers see my Gmail address?: If you answer a forwarded message from Gmail, yes: the reply comes from your Gmail account. With a mailbox at your domain, they only ever see hello@.
Can the mail go to iCloud or Outlook instead of Gmail?: Yes. Any address you can open works as a destination, once you’ve verified it.