Email forwarding services compared

If you own a domain and want to receive mail at it without running your own mail server, you have a handful of options. They look similar from the marketing copy and very different once you start using them. Here’s an honest read on the six we get asked about most.

EForw

That’s us. Free for one domain with catch-all forwarding; paid plans add multiple domains and send-as via SMTP. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC pass on every forward — including replies — so messages from your domain don’t land in spam. Continuously running since 2020.

Cloudflare Email Routing

Free, fast, and reliable for receiving mail through Cloudflare’s network. The catch: no send-as. You can route mail in, but replying as you@yourdomain.com requires a separate SMTP setup somewhere else. Good if you only need inbound.

SimpleLogin

An alias-first service — generate a new alias per signup, mail forwards to your real address. Privacy-focused, with reverse-aliases for outbound. Now part of Proton. The reverse-alias workflow takes getting used to and isn’t a great fit for “I want a real address on my own domain.”

ImprovMX

Closest in shape to EForw — receive mail at custom domains with a simple dashboard. Free tier limits you to one domain; paid plans unlock more. The main difference is pricing: their paid tier is meaningfully more expensive than ours for the same feature set.

Forward Email

Open-source forwarding service. The trade-off on the free tier is that your destination address ends up published in your domain’s DNS records — anyone who runs dig on your domain can see where mail is going. Paid plans avoid this. If routing transparency isn’t a concern, the free tier is fine; otherwise budget for paid.

ForwardMX

Paid-only forwarding. No free tier. If you’d rather not deal with a free/paid split and just want to pay for the thing, it’s straightforward. We don’t see much functional difference vs. paid tiers elsewhere.

How to choose

• Inbound only, trust Cloudflare with the routing → Cloudflare.
• Privacy aliasing, throwaway addresses per signup → SimpleLogin.
• A “real” email at your own domain that also lets you reply, free for one domain → EForw.

The rest fit narrower cases.