When Google announced that they will be making their G Suite Legacy Edition start paying for service, many people were justifiably miffed. After all, it’s been offered for free for many years. What you get is almost exactly the same as what’s on offer with a free @gmail.com account, but with the novelty of using your @customdomain.com address.
In my case, I started migrating some of my non-essential domains to a reputable web hosting service that offers free inboxes, like Dreamhost (Note: referral link), because I’ve my account with them for a long time. It was not exactly as straightforward, especially for non-techies. Additionally, all you get is email service, without the Google services bells-and-whistles.
Fortunately, sensible minds inside Google prevailed and they’re now allowing people to keep their free service, provided you’re not using it a business or for-profit context.
Anyway, my research into this topic a few backs pointed me to other sensible alternatives, especially if you’re just forwarding your @customdomain.com mail to another inbox in another. After all, hosting your own email is never easy. So what are the free alternatives out there?
- ImprovMX – The free tier allows for one custom domain, with a few caveats like a 10MB limit on attachments.
- Forward Email – Unlimited domains, 50MB attachments, but curiously (and justifiably, I think) leaves out the 99.99% SLA (Service Level Agreement) guarantee for the free option.
Both options simply require you to make changes to your DNS, and you should be good to go. Note that all you get is good ol’ email service, with all its failings like spam.
If you need help with DNS and other web administration type of things, drop a comment and we can probably help!