10. Emails

As a managed WordPress hosting provider, we focus on what we do best, hosting your websites and making them secure and blazing-fast. Email hosting is a whole other product and can be quite tricky to get right with all the spam, bots, filters, blacklists, IP reputation management, etc so we leave that to the pros.

If you just need to be able to receive emails for your custom domains, Email Forwarding might be the most cost effective method. Many of the larger domain registrars provide free email forwarding services, or you can try other free options like IMPROV.MX (easiest) or forwardemail.net. Mailgun is free for sending 10k emails/mo, and supports forwarding as well.

If you need traditional email hosting for your custom domains there are many providers out there at minimal cost, such as Hover, GSuite, Rackspace, Zoho, etc.

In order to manage domain reputation and to keep emails from winding up in spam inboxes, we send all system emails (and those created by plugins, such as for contact forms and the like), from a [email protected] address.

To customize the sending email addresses, you will need to configure WordPress to use your own email provider via SMTP. Or you can use premium transactional email providers such as Mailgun (free for 10k emails/mo, and supports forwarding), SendGrid, Mandrill, etc which all provide their own WordPress plugin for easy integration.

To ensure important transactional email from your WordPress sites (such as password resets) get to everyone’s inbox, we work hard to protect our email reputation.

As such we do not allow sending non-transactional email from our default hosting email. This includes email subscriptions, newsletters, marketing, or mass email, even if via WPMU DEV plugins like Subscribe by Email or eNewsletter. If you need to send this kind of email, you can configure WordPress to use your own custom email provider.

As part of these protections we also limit the number of emails sent per day and month for each site. You will find a record of the number of emails sent in the ‘Analytics’ tab of the Hub for each site.

If your site exceeds these limits, we will temporarily block email sending and notify you if you exceed your monthly quota. If your site needs to regularly send more emails than our quota allows, please upgrade your plan or configure WordPress to use SMTP or another transactional email service.

The easiest way to avoid our sending limits or to change the “From” email addresses is to use our Branda plugin, which has an easy SMTP tool built right in :)

Also, see here for how to use Gmail or G Suite to send emails.

Email forwarding is a simple way to use an existing email account, such as Gmail, to receive emails from an alias address that includes your domain name. This is ideal for individuals and small businesses concerned with maintaining a professional online reputation without incurring email hosting fees.

For example, you can forward [email protected] to your @gmail.com address.

Email forwarding is included for domains that are hosted by WPMU DEV Hosting.

You can begin receiving domain emails shortly after editing your DNS records, but a separate set of steps is necessary to also send emails. A guide to setting up Gmail to send your domain emails is located near the end of this document.

Important Notes About Forwading

You are not able to create email forwards if you already have email addresses for the domain. Creating a forward requires you to change MX records via DNS which will result in any existing email addresses no longer working. Please only change any existing MX records if you are sure that it is safe to do so.

Each WPMU DEV hosted domain is allowed up to 20 email forwards. The forwards will no longer work should your WPMU DEV membership expire or you delete the hosting account from your plan.

Creating A Forward

Before creating a forwarding address, you must first make sure that you have added the desired domain to a site hosted with us.

Once that is done, in your Hosting Hub, click on ‘Emails’ > ‘Email Forwarding’.

From here, click the ‘Add New Email Forward’ blue button in the bottom left corner.

Choose the desired new email address, domain, and the email you want to forward to.

Click on ‘Add Email Forward‘.

Then, login to the email address that you will receive the forwards from (most likely, your @gmail.com address or similar).

Within a few minutes, you should receive a verification email. You must click the verification link in the email for forwarding to work.

Also in the email will be important DNS information that you must add wherever you manage DNS for the domain.

Configuring DNS MX Records

In the confirmation email you receive, you will see the needed MX record that you must add to your DNS file. This is often done at the registrar where you purchased your domain. Many customers also use Cloudflare for DNS management.

For a list of the most popular registrars and DNS providers and how to edit DNS, please visit our DNS docs here.

It is important to note that once you edit DNS, it may take some time (up to 24 hours in rare cases) for the DNS changes to take full effect and for the email forward to begin working.

How To Send Mail As Using Gmail

Setting up Send Mail as Gmail is the same on the Google side of the equation regardless of the who’s forwarding your emails, but each forwarding provider is slightly different. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll be showing how its done at mailgun.com.

You will find a guide to doing the same thing with improvmx.com here: https://improvmx.com/guides/send-emails-using-gmail

Start by navigating to your Mailgun domain details page, at You’re looking for the Domain Information section. Find and make note of the SMTP Hostname, Default SMTP Login, and Default Password. You’ll need them shortly.

Open your Gmail inbox, click the gear icon in the upper right of your inbox and select Settings from the menu. Select the Accounts and Import tab, and in the Send mail as section, click the Add another email address you own link.

Provide your name, the domain email address you set up when you opened your Mailgun account, and ensure “Treat as an alias” box is checked. Click the Next Step button.

Now you need those three fields from the Mailgun Domain Information section. Provide the Mailgun SMTP Hostname as the “SMTP Server,” the Mailgun Default SMTP Login as the “Username,” and the Mailgun Default Password as the “Password.” Leave the bubble next to “Secured connection using TLS” selected, and ensure the port indicated is 587. Click the Add Account button.

Gmail will then ask you to verify ownership of the email address by following a link in a verification email sent to the address, or by entering a code contained in that message. Once you do either, you should see your new email address listed in the “Send mail as” section.

You can now select your new email address when composing Gmail messages can now send and receive email using an address on your own domain!