Save money: Cancel your email SAAS 💸

tl;dr: With Forward Email, gmail's "send mail as" feature and a SAAS SMTP service you can send and receive emails on your custom domain for free.

I don't like paying for things I don't use. Particularly SAAS products.

I've paid for Google's workspace tools for several projects but think I found a better alternative.

The problem: I need a free way to send and receive emails under a domain I own without hosting an email server. I don't care about the other cloud features.

Here is how I did it:

• To receive emails on a custom domain, sign up for Foward Email.
• To send emails on a custom domain...
• Find a hosted SMTP service that is free and within your sending throughput. SendGrid is free but limits daily use. AWS SES offers a free tier then usage based pricing.
• Configure your personal (free) gmail account to "send as" this domain.

That's it! Now, when I want to send an email on one of my project domains, I select from the "From" dropdown in gmail's composer. Replies are handled by Forward Email. Below are some screenshots you might find useful if you set this up.

If you do set this up yourself or have a better solution, I'd love to hear it! ✌️-- Justin

Forward Email total setup time was less than 5min. Mostly waiting for my registrar to update DNS records.

I find Gmail's settings view hard to find. Click the gear, the "see all settings".

Navigate to "Accounts and Import" tab. Select "Add another email address" in "Send mail as" section.