The one with a guide for configuring a proxy-email service

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post.

I recently registered the domain davidmontesdeoca.dev through sav.com. At the time of this writing, they offer a highly competitive price of $4.99 for the first year, with a renewal rate of $12.68 per year.

After configuring the blog DNS on Hashnode, I was surprised to find no option for setting up an email account. Since the feature was missing from the control panel, I contacted customer support via their web chat. They confirmed that they do not provide email services, though they did recommend several third-party email providers.

Until now, every time I registered a domain, I had access to a webmail service and had the possibility of creating an email account and multiple aliases for it. Usually, I would configure Gmail to receive and send emails for and from that email address, too.

Ultimately, I chose ProxiedMail as my proxy-email provider, a service that was not among the recommendations from the sav.com team. I was impressed by their security and privacy-focused approach, the intuitive dashboard for configuring proxy-emails, and the availability of the following features within their free tier:

The following steps outline how I configured a proxy-email specifically for this post: blog-post[@]davidmontesdeoca.dev.

After registration, the dashboard allows you to create a new proxy-email:

Since I am using a custom domain, I must first add it to the system:

The verification process involves several steps:

To begin the verification, navigate to sav.com: My Domains -> davidmontesdeoca.dev -> Manage DNS -> Custom DNS.

The process for each record is identical: create a record in the domain provider dashboard using the data provided by the proxy-email service, then verify the record.

First, you must verify the domain ownership:

Type: TXT
Name: davidmontesdeoca.dev
Value: proxiedmail-verification=<verification code>

Using @ as the name works exactly the same way.

In the Proxy settings, you must select DNS Only. Choosing Enabled will trigger the following error:

Code 9004: This record type cannot be proxied.

Once ownership is verified, proceed to the MX record configuration:

Add the following record at your domain provider:

Type: MX
Name: davidmontesdeoca.dev
Value: mx.proxiedmail.com
Priority: 10
Proxy: DNS Only

Once the MX record is verified, proceed to the SPF record configuration:

The process for adding this record is the same:

Type: TXT
Name: davidmontesdeoca.dev
Value: v=spf1 include:spf.proxiedmail.com ~all
Proxy: DNS Only

Once the SPF record is verified, optionally proceed to the DKIM record configuration, which helps ensure your forwarded emails are not marked as spam by receiving servers:

To enable DKIM, add the following record:

Type: CNAME
Name: dkim._domainkey.davidmontesdeoca.dev
Value: dkim._domainkey.pxdmail.com
Proxy: Enabled

While other verifications are near-instant, this one may take longer to propagate. Once applied, you will see the message: You are all set.

You are now ready to create your first proxy-email using your verified custom domain:

A confirmation message will appear:

With forwarding enabled by default, emails sent to the proxied email address will be received at your specified real email account:

The email arrived in less than a minute:

This only works if the recipient is in the To field. During testing, emails where the recipient was placed in the BCC field were not delivered.

In the dashboard you can see the total number of emails forwarded to the new address:

ProxiedMail also supports wildcard proxy email addresses:

A modal explains the functionality:

As with the other proxy-email, forwarding is active immediately:

The email sent to this email address was also delivered in less than a minute:

In the dashboard you can see the total number of emails forwarded to this new address, too:

To conclude, I will highlight several other features available on the platform, both free and paid:

• Deleting proxy-emails is a paid feature. On the free plan, you can only disable unused email addresses:

  

• Hiding the forwarded email banner is a paid feature, too:

  

• Storing a password to send emails via an alias did not work with Gmail during my testing; so most likely it requires a paid plan:

  

  

  However, they offer a compelling feature for managing contacts:

  

  

  This uses a reverse alias process, which worked perfectly in my tests (though the initial email was flagged as spam):

  

  

• Using unique email addresses for every site where you register to track potential data leaks:

  

• Adding context to remember the purpose of each proxy-email:

  

• Identify which proxy received a specific message with a reverse lookup:

  

  

The service offers other functionalities beyond those listed here. I encourage you to see for yourself.

Although I have not tested every feature yet, what I have discovered while writing this post is impressive and definitely offer a significantly better user experience than relying on a provider's native webmail interface.

I really like ProxiedMail's approach, being a compelling alternative to traditional email setups. It is also significantly easier to configure.

Thank you for reading and see you in the next one!