If you own a domain, you can get an email address like hello@yourname.com for free. I use Zoho Mail because their free plan gives you 5 email accounts with 5GB each, enough for a personal email.
Why bother
A custom domain email looks more professional than a Gmail address. It also protects you if you ever switch email providers; the address stays the same because you control the domain.
What you need
- A domain name you own (the same one as your website works great)
- Access to your domain’s DNS settings (wherever you bought the domain)
- An LLM to walk you through it
How to set it up
Go to zoho.com/mail and sign up for the free plan with your domain.
Then open Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and say something like:
“I just signed up for Zoho Mail’s free plan with my domain [yourdomain.com]. My domain is registered at [your registrar]. Walk me through verifying the domain and setting up all the DNS records I need — MX, SPF, and DKIM.”
The LLM will explain what each record does and tell you exactly what to type into your DNS settings. The short version:
- MX records tell the internet “deliver email for this domain to Zoho’s servers”
- SPF record tells other email servers “Zoho is authorized to send email on my behalf” (so your emails don’t land in spam)
- DKIM record adds a cryptographic signature to your outgoing emails (another anti-spam measure)
The wait
After adding the DNS records, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours for everything to propagate. Usually it’s under an hour. Zoho’s setup wizard has a “verify” button you can keep clicking until it goes green.
Once verified, you can send and receive email through Zoho’s web interface or their mobile app. Time to quickly send an email to hello@dewanggogte.com :p
What it costs
Nothing. Zoho Mail’s free plan is genuinely free — no credit card, no trial period. The only cost is your domain name, which you probably already have if you followed the website hosting TIL.