Email on your own domain

Give your site real email addresses on its own domain, like office@gracechurch.org. Mail is kept in the studio: you read, answer and send it in Mail with your studio login, and your forms and flows can send from the same addresses. There's no separate mail account or password to look after.

Prefer the mail account you already have (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho or any other host)? Your site can send through it instead: see Sending email. Both work, and you can use both on one site.

What a mailbox is

• A mailbox is one address on your domain whose mail is kept in the studio. Mail to office+anything@ lands in office@ too.
• Who can open it: the site's admins and owners can open every mailbox. Other people on the site can open a mailbox only if they've been added to it. Everyone uses their own studio login.
• Storage: 1 GB per mailbox to start; an admin can set anything from 10 MB to 10 GB. Mail in a mailbox doesn't count toward your site's storage.
• There's no limit on the number of mailboxes, or on the number of people who can use one.
• Just want mail passed on to an inbox you already have? Use a forwarding address instead. Forwarding addresses are free.

Before you start: your own domain

Email works only on a custom domain connected to your site. Connect one you already own, or buy one in the studio: see Domains & mail. Your site's built-in yourname.sitehost.dev address doesn't get email. Admins and owners set email up.

1. Turn Mail on for your domain

Ask the assistant, for example “Set up email on gracechurch.org, sending as Grace Church”. It shows you what will happen, and nothing changes until you confirm. Turning Mail on is free.

• Domains bought or transferred in through the studio (DNS at name.com): confirming also adds the sending records (SPF and DKIM) to your DNS for you. An existing SPF record is merged, never duplicated. If a record already has a different value, you're told about it and it's left as it is, never overwritten. Your incoming mail (MX) isn't touched. The confirmation lists exactly what will be added or changed. If a change fails, everything is put back and you get the records to add yourself.
• Domains with DNS elsewhere: the studio shows you two records to add at your DNS provider: an SPF record (if you already have one, add the include: it shows to that record rather than adding a second) and a DKIM record. Then ask the assistant to check the domain. The studio also checks every day, and sending starts as soon as the records are found.
• Incoming mail is a separate switch, so turning Mail on never moves your existing mail. See Turn on incoming mail below. Until it's on, a mailbox can send but doesn't get mail yet, and the assistant tells you so when you create one.

Turn on incoming mail

For mail sent to your addresses to arrive in Mail (and for forwarding addresses to work), turn on incoming mail for the domain. Once the domain has a mailbox, the Email card in Settings › Domains & email shows where the domain's mail goes now and a Turn on incoming mail button. You can also ask the assistant, for example “Turn on incoming mail for gracechurch.org”. Admins and owners can do this. It's free.

• You see what changes first. The confirmation says in plain words where your mail goes today and what will happen, for example “Mail to gracechurch.org will stop going to Google Workspace and arrive in Mail instead”. It also lists which mailboxes and forwarding addresses will get it. The exact DNS records are under Details. Nothing changes until you press Confirm.
• It moves every address on the domain. If the domain already gets mail somewhere else (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho, name.com forwarding…), the studio names that service and warns you: anyone reading the domain's mail there stops getting new mail there.
• Your name.com forwards come along. If the domain has forwards set up on its Mail forwarding card, they're copied to studio forwarding addresses. The only exceptions are an address that's already a mailbox or already has a studio forwarding address, and the confirmation lists those.
• Domains bought or transferred in through the studio (DNS at name.com): the studio changes the DNS for you when you confirm, and if a change fails, everything is put back.
• Domains with DNS elsewhere: after you confirm, the Email card lists the records to add at your DNS provider: three CNAME records and one MX record. Remove the domain's other MX records too.
• It switches on by itself. Until it's on, the Email card shows Incoming mail: turning on and what it's still waiting for. The studio checks again by itself, and you can press Check now. It's usually on within an hour.
• Turning it off: press Turn off on the Email card (or ask the assistant). Mail stops arriving in Mail, and mail already there stays. The studio puts back the previous setup: it removes the records it added and restores the domain's previous MX records, except where someone has changed them since. If your DNS is elsewhere, you're told what to point the MX record back to.

2. Create a mailbox

• Open your site's Settings › Domains & email. The Email card shows where you are: connect a domain, create your first mailbox, or Add a mailbox. Its button opens the assistant with the request ready for you to finish and send.
• Or just ask: “Create a mailbox office@gracechurch.org called Grace Church Office, and let sam@gracechurch.org use it.” The name is what people see on mail you send from it. People you add must already be on the site (invite them first).
• The confirmation shows the price before anything is created.
• You can change a mailbox's name, storage and people later, at no change to the fee. Deleting a mailbox deletes every message in it for good, and always asks you first.
• An address is either a mailbox or a forwarding address, not both.

3. Read and send in Mail

Mail appears in the studio's menu once there's a mailbox you can open.

• Folders with unread counts (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Archive, Trash and Spam), search, conversations, attachments, star, archive and mark unread.
• Reply, reply all and forward. Drafts save as you type. After you press Send you have a few seconds to Undo.
• Safe to read: nothing in an email can run, and remote images stay hidden until you choose Show images.
• New mail shows up without reloading, and Mail works on a phone. Press ? for keyboard shortcuts.
• Attachments up to 10 MB per message, any number of files; up to 50 recipients per message.
• Trash and Spam are emptied after 30 days.
• Mail apps such as Apple Mail or Outlook can't connect to a mailbox yet: read it in Mail, or forward an address to an inbox you already use.
• The assistant can read and send from the mailboxes you can open. Every message it sends, including replies, needs your Confirm.

Spam

• Every incoming message is checked for spam and viruses, and the sender is checked with SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
• Mail that looks like spam, or whose sender can't be verified, goes to the mailbox's Spam folder, with the reason in plain words. Spam is never silently thrown away.
• Not spam moves a message to the inbox, and mail from that sender skips the spam filter for that mailbox from then on. Report spam does the opposite.
• Mail from a forged sender also goes to Spam and can't be allowed. Mail with a virus is quarantined in Spam: its attachments are removed and it can only be deleted.

Forwarding addresses

• An address on your domain can forward to up to 10 outside inboxes, e.g. info@gracechurch.org → the pastor's personal email. Ask the assistant, or use mail_manage {action:"set_alias"}.
• *@gracechurch.org catches every address that has no mailbox or forward of its own. Mail to info+anything@ follows info@'s rule.
• Forwarded mail shows as “Sender via info@gracechurch.org”, and Reply goes to the original sender.
• Spam, viruses and forged mail aren't forwarded.
• Up to 100 forwarding addresses per site. Free, with or without a mailbox. Like mailboxes, they start working once incoming mail is on for the domain.
• The Mail forwarding card on a domain bought through the studio (Domains & mail) is a simpler option that works without Mail. It and studio incoming mail can't both receive a domain's mail: turning on incoming mail copies those forwards to forwarding addresses here, as described in Turn on incoming mail.

Sending from your forms and flows

A flow's send_email step sends from the address you put in from, and that address decides how it goes:

• One of your mailboxes: it's sent as that mailbox, a copy is saved in the mailbox's Sent folder, and it's covered by the mailbox fee (it counts toward that mailbox's daily limit).
• An address in one of your SMTP settings: it goes through your own mail server, as described in Sending email. If an address is both a mailbox and in an SMTP setting, the mailbox is used.
• Naming a setting with smtp always uses that setting.

{ "id": "mail", "type": "send_email", "from": "office@gracechurch.org",
  "to": "office@gracechurch.org", "reply_to": "{{input.email}}",
  "subject": "New message from {{input.name}}", "text": "{{input.message}}" }

Warned before a visitor sees an error. If your site has no way to send a step's mail yet (no mailbox, mail domain or SMTP setting that fits its From), the flow still saves, but the assistant warns you straight away, the flow's preview says the mail would not be sent and why, and Needs attention lists the flow until it's fixed. The fix is either a mailbox on your domain or an SMTP setting for your own mail server.

Limits

• A message over a limit is refused, not queued. The assistant can show your site's limits and today's use.
• Addresses that hard-bounce or complain aren't mailed again from your site.
• If too many of a site's messages bounce or are marked as spam, its sending is placed under review: new messages can't go out until the review is finished. Contact support if you have questions.

Who can do what

For your AI client (MCP)

mail reads (mailboxes, messages, forwarding addresses, email domains, incoming mail status with incoming, limits and today's use) and never changes anything. mail_manage makes the changes: setup_domain, incoming_on / incoming_off, set_mailbox, delete_mailbox, set_alias, send_from_mailbox, update_messages, allow_sender. Every change and every send asks for your Confirm. help {topic:"mail_manage"} lists every action.

Price

Charged to the site's billing owner. A flow that sends mail is still a flow call. See Billing & credits.