How to use your Domain for email

An email forward is different from a mailbox in that no email is stored, but is forwarded on to a specified address. For example, me@example.com > me@gmail.com

We often get asked about setting up email forwards as a service offering, which is something we've chosen not to offer. It might seem as simple as receiving an email, forwarding it to another address, and discarding it, but there's a more serious consideration to account for.

Let's say for example that we set up an email forward for your Domain that redirects email to your Gmail address. Now with unfiltered forwarding, we send you everything, which unfortunately includes all your spam mail. Gmail then receives all this spam and their filters determine that our mail server is a spammer, and accordingly starts rejecting mail originating from it (Gmail doesn't know who the original sender is, so our server becomes the spammer.)

This means that before we forward mail it needs to be filtered through anti-spam criteria, and the way to do this is to first capture the emails to mailboxes on our server. All this means managing email storage, the associated security, and maintaining anti-spam software - all overheads that would force us to increase our registration prices.

Since not everyone requires email forwarding it makes more sense to keep our prices low and not offer this as a service.

Email hosting with MyHost

We recommended using a hosting service that lets you create and manage email accounts.

Our sister company, MyHost, includes email hosting in all their web hosting packages, which start at $8.95/mo. Or if you want to keep things really simple you can take email-only hosting from $4.95/mo (prices excl. GST). Either way you can run multiple mailboxes all in one package.

To help you get started. MyHost offers 6 months’ free hosting when you pay monthly* to Domains Direct customers. When you register a new domain we’ll email you a discount code, or you can see it at the top of the screen when you log into Domains Direct.

Hosting with MyHost means you will be getting affordable, fast and secure hosting from a NZ company as well as 24/7 support, so you have help any time you need it. It's everything you need to get a professional email presence up and running quickly and easily.

^{*Offer valid for new MyHost customers only, and excludes sites already hosted with SiteHost (our other sister company).}