[Support Guide] How can I receive emails on my domain?

[ulyngs]

Hi @luke ,

I just returned to this today to fix the problem, and without me having done anything it is working now!

Seems it just took an unusually long time for some unknown reason

[Paul_Haze]

Hi Luke, not sure if I just reply to this thread or make a new one, but I am also having trouble getting emails working. I recently got my site hosted on Netlify and that is working fine. Apparently I can only embed one media per post so I have added links to the other relevant screens.

My domain was registered with Crazy Domains and it points to your name servers:

My old hosting was with DreamIt and they also take care of my emails as well. I have several sites registered with them, but only want my Artemist site to be hosted by Netlify. They told me that I need the zone editor part of the cpanel for the relevant email info for you guys. It looks like this:

From there I followed the instructions here and added MX records to my domain:

add also added the TXT field for good measure (not sure if I have done this correctly)

And this is the server connection settings for my email using Thunderbird:

So after all that I still get “failed to connect to server ‘mail.artemist.com.au’” each time I try and check my email.

I would REALLY appreciate it if you or someone could help. I love the Netlify platform and really want to make this a part of new business but obviously I need to get my email working too!

Thanks very much in advance…

[gregraven]

Your MX records need to point to your mail server, not to another DNS service. However, the way you have your DNS set up your name servers are with Netlify and Netlify does not do self
hosted e-mail. You need to use a stand-alone e-mail such as ProtonMail, Gmail, etc.

[Paul_Haze]

Really? So if I use Netlify to host my Artemist site there is no way of being able to use things like admin@artemist.com.au or info@artemist.com.au?

I would have thought there would should surely have been a way?

[gregraven]

@Paul_Haze Yes, of course you can have “private-label” e-mail, but not self-hosted. I refer you to the first post in this thread. Gmail and many others allow you to use your custom domain in your e-mail account(s), but you have to use a third-party, you cannot self-host an e-mail server.

[Support Guide] How can I receive emails on my domain?

Last reviewed by Netlify Support: March 2022 That’s a really common question! Netlify does not provide email service. But no worries! You can choose a service yourself, and then set up the DNS records required by that email provider at Netlify. Note that these instructions are primarily for folks who are using Netlify’s DNS Hosting. Any mail provider should work with our DNS hosting, from major ones like GSuite and Outlook to your own mail server. Some specific services customers have report…

[Paul_Haze]

So my email is hosted by DreamIt, is this considered ‘self-hosted’? I see that that Gmail can be configured to go to a custom domain (like artemist.com.au) but it seems strange that the only way to use this email address with Netlify is to set up a gmail account, have netlify point to that and then have gmail point to my email server.

Just seems a little convoluted for such a forward thinking company like Netlify…

Also there is this quote from the start of the link you posted:

Any mail provider should work with our DNS hosting, from major ones like GSuite and Outlook to your own mail server.

So you can see why I am a little confused that I can’t seem to get it work directly with my mail server at DreamIt

[gregraven]

@Paul_Haze It depends on your account with DreamIt. If you have a separate arrangement with them to host your e-mail, then you can use DreamIt, but you need to get their MX entries to make this work.

When you use an external e-mail service, you use that service for your e-mail, you don’t point your DNS at that service and then have that service point to some other service. The whole point of the MX records is to enable you to set up a direct connection from your SOA.

This whole discussion is academic, however, because you have now removed your site from Netlify hosting.

[Paul_Haze]

Yes I have for now because I need to get my emails working so I wanted to try and find a solution before I hosted it again. And I do really want to get this sorted because I really like the Netlify platform and the netlify way of working. Regarding MX, I DID get MX details from DreamIt, it is in the screen shot that I posted above. I showed them the steps that Netlify were suggesting to get emails fowarded to them, and they said that it should work using the details I entered above. I would be grateful if you could look over my post, and my screenshots in particular and let me know if I missed anything?

[gregraven]

@Paul_Haze I don’t know what the DreamIt mail servers are, but anything with “ns” in the sub domain looks wrong to me. The “web” sub domain doesn’t look very confidence-inspiring either, but if that’s what they told you then that’s what you need to use for your MX entries.

[talves]

@Paul_Haze

Regarding MX, I DID get MX details from DreamIt, it is in the screen shot that I posted above

Hi Paul,

MX settings get frustrating real quick and a pain to debug. I don’t want to cause you a bunch of work again, but in your original screen shots I didn’t see the CNAME record for mail.artemist.com.au. Maybe I missed it or it was off the screenshot. Could that have been the problem with the mail server not resolving?

BTW: All your MX records look consistent with the current working settings when I do a MX lookup on your domain. Also, another note, mail.artemist.com.au would have to resolve back to the DreamIt servers for this to work if that is not how you had it setup.

Regards,
Tony

[luke]

Hi, @Paul_Haze. We have a support guide about moving to Netlify DNS and preventing email downtime here:

[Support Guide] How do I migrate a domain to Netlify DNS with zero downtime?

Last reviewed by Netlify Support - August, 2023 IMPORTANT UPDATE While many details in this support guide remain valuable information, the best guide for a zero downtime DNS migration can be found here: However, there is still great information below and our support team will continue to link people to sub-sections of this support guide when they are relevant to someone’s particular situation or question. What is this topic about? This topic covers copying your existing DNS records from you…

There is a section about what to do when email services break because the required DNS records were not manually copied in advance.

The solutions are to either copy the missing records to Netlify or reverting to the previous DNS service and using the external DNS instructions instead of Netlify DNS.

If there are questions about either solution, please let us know.

[Vincent_Lamoen]

I have bought the email package at one.com and host my website on netlify. In order to make email work again I had to add their MX record to the name server. However, now my email alias still doesn’t work, how could I make this work?

[hillary]

Hey there @Vincent_Lamoen

Have you read through these two support guides? They outline appropriate steps here!

[Support Guide] How can I receive emails on my domain?

Last reviewed by Netlify Support: March 2022 That’s a really common question! Netlify does not provide email service. But no worries! You can choose a service yourself, and then set up the DNS records required by that email provider at Netlify. Note that these instructions are primarily for folks who are using Netlify’s DNS Hosting. Any mail provider should work with our DNS hosting, from major ones like GSuite and Outlook to your own mail server. Some specific services customers have report…

[Support Guide] How do I migrate a domain to Netlify DNS with zero downtime?

Last reviewed by Netlify Support - August, 2023 IMPORTANT UPDATE While many details in this support guide remain valuable information, the best guide for a zero downtime DNS migration can be found here: However, there is still great information below and our support team will continue to link people to sub-sections of this support guide when they are relevant to someone’s particular situation or question. What is this topic about? This topic covers copying your existing DNS records from you…

If you have read these guides, followed the steps, and are still encountering issues please let us know! In your response, please include your site name.

[sosanhgiacomvn]

I use email from domain https://sosanhgia.com.vn but i can’t set up the DNS records
How to fix it? , thanks

[hillary]

Hey there, @sosanhgiacomvn

Thanks for reaching out! Welcome to the Netlify Forums. Have you read the two support guides I linked in my above comment? Those are two good places to start, as well as our configure DNS docs.

[hrishikesh]

Last reviewed in August 2021.