Use your free IONOS domain to get free professional emails
You get a free domain from Entri through IONOS when you join the Bolt.new hackathon. I want to show you how to leverage this to get a free professional emails for your project.
I am using this to keep my project separate from my personal email so that I can sign up for services such as Supabase, Netlify, RevenueCat, Eleven Labs etc.
You can follow the video above for claiming your domain from Entri.
Sign up for Zoho Mail
For free email we will use the Zoho Mail platform. Visit the following link and scroll down until you see the forever free plan
After sign up, Zoho will show you the process of configuring DNS to work with Zoho.
They do have an option to configure automatically, but it was giving me an error when I attempted that option. I will walk through how to manually set it up.
You can click on the “Add Now” button.
Click the Proceed to domain verification button.
We first need to add this TXT record for Zoho verification to IONOS.
You will want to use two tabs for this. There is a lot of copying back and forth from Zoho to IONOS.
Copy the TXT value from Zoho and navigate back to IONOS.
Click on your domain and you should see a DNS tab.
Click the DNS tab and click the Add Record button
You should now see the following screen. Click on the TXT at the verify bottom
Use @ as the host name and paste the value you copied from Zoho in the Value box.
For all of the values we need to enter, I chose 1 minute as the TTL so we can verify everything faster. You can always go back and change it after the verification.
Click Save and you should see a success confirmation. This is the process for adding each record. Pretty straight forward.
Now go back to Zoho and click Verify TXT record.
You will get a success confirmation from Zoho and prompted to choose your Super Administrator email. You can use firstName.lastName@domain.com, support@domain.com, admin@domain.com, etc.
Click Create
You should now be at the Setup Users step. You can set up more users now or later. Click Proceed to Setup Groups
You can setup groups if you want. I haven’t found a need yet for them. Click Proceed to DNS Mappings.
You see we need to add 3 MX records, and 2 TXT Records. Let’s work from the bottom up.
Let’s add the MX records first. Head back to IONOS and click Add Record again.
This time choose MX
Use @ for the host name and paste the value you copied to Points to. Zoho also gave a priority for that value. Paste it in the Priority box. Again change the TTL to 1 minute. Click Save.
You may see this warning that it will disable certain DNS records. Go ahead and click the confirm button. I forgot to screenshot the actual button.
Follow this step for the remaining 2 MX records.
Go back to Zoho and copy the SPF TXT value. Now go to IONOS and click SPF (TXT)
Enter the values in the following screenshot
Click Save.
Go back to Zoho to copy the value.
Now navigate back to IONOS and click TXT
Paste the host name and value. For the host name use
zmail_domainkey
Click Save.
Now go back to Zoho and click the Verify All Records button.
You should get the following success confirmation
Click Proceed to Email Migration
I don’t have screenshots for Email Migration, but click the proceed button on that as well. You may not have emails to migrate since this is a new domain.
The mobile screen is next where they will give you links to download the Zoho apps. I don’t have a screenshot for this. You can click proceed on that page as well.
Now you should be on the final page letting you know that your set up is complete. Congrats on setting up your free professional email!
