Free Professional Email Setup Guide

A professional address like support@yourdomain.com, received in your normal Gmail, and replied to from Gmail so people see your domain instead of your personal address. Cost: nothing. No paid email hosting, no paid plan.

What you need before starting

• A domain you own.
• The domain's DNS managed on Cloudflare — the free plan is fine.
• A normal Gmail account.

The idea: two separate halves

This is the part most guides skip, and it is why people get stuck halfway.

• Receiving — Cloudflare Email Routing takes mail sent to support@yourdomain.com and forwards it to your Gmail inbox. Free.
• Sending — Cloudflare cannot send mail. A free SMTP provider (Brevo) does that half: Gmail connects to Brevo and sends your message with your domain as the sender. Free, 300 emails per day.

You need both. One alone is not enough.

Why Brevo for the sending half

The guide compares the free options: Brevo gives 300 emails a day forever with real SMTP and custom-domain DKIM. SMTP2GO (1000/month) is the fallback. Mailjet works but with a weaker delivery reputation. SendGrid removed its free plan, and Zoho's free tier has no SMTP access, so neither can work with Gmail.

Check your DNS before you touch anything

Do not skip this. You need to know what is already there so you do not break your website or your existing mail:

dig +short MX yourdomain.com
dig +short TXT yourdomain.com
dig +short TXT _dmarc.yourdomain.com
dig +short A yourdomain.com

If you already have MX records pointing at another mail provider, stop. You cannot run two mail providers on the same domain. No MX, no SPF, no DMARC means a clean start.

The one rule that breaks everything

A domain can have only one SPF record. Two TXT records starting with v=spf1 and every SPF check fails — your mail goes to spam. If you need to add something, edit the existing record. Never create a second one.

This is also why the guide tells you to choose Manual setup in Brevo rather than Automatic: the automatic path logs into your DNS and often adds a second SPF record.

And a related trap: Brevo does not ask for an SPF record, and that is correct. Old guides that tell you to add include:spf.brevo.com are wrong here — it does nothing useful and lets every other Brevo customer send mail as your domain.

Things that quietly break the setup

• Proxy status must be "DNS only" (grey cloud) on every mail record. Proxying a DKIM or mail record breaks it completely.
• Trailing dots matter on CNAME values if you import a BIND file.
• Test receiving first, from a different account — Gmail hides mail you send to yourself, so you will think forwarding failed when it did not. Gmail later sends a confirmation code to that address; if forwarding is broken you will never receive it.
• Tick "Treat as an alias" in Gmail. Unchecked, Gmail adds a hidden Reply-To pointing at your personal Gmail address, and everyone who replies sees it. That defeats the entire setup.
• Do not enable Brevo's "block unauthorized IP addresses" — Gmail sends from Google servers whose IPs change constantly.

Treat the SMTP key like a password

It can send email as your domain. Never commit it, never put it in a shared .env, never screenshot it. Store it in a password manager, and if it leaks, delete it in Brevo and generate a new one.

What is in the PDF

Every step with the exact screens, the DNS records to add, the BIND import shortcut, the verification commands, and the Gmail settings — seven pages, in order.