Hover Email Forwarding Alternative: Real Mailboxes on Your Domain
Hover forwarding passes mail on to another inbox. Compare it with full business mailboxes on domains registered at Hover.
Many founders register at Hover and enable forwarding to Gmail. Replies still go out from the personal account, and forwarded mail can fail authentication. Point MX to a real host instead.
Forwarding is not a mailbox
Hover offers email forwarding and sells its own mailboxes. Forwarding is popular because it is cheap: mail sent to you@yourdomain.com is passed on to Gmail or another inbox. The weak spot is replying. Your answer goes out from the personal account unless you set up extra “send as” configuration, and forwarded mail can fail SPF checks at the destination because the forwarding server is not listed for the original sender’s domain.
Moving to real mailboxes while staying at Hover
- Keep the domain registered at Hover — nothing needs to be transferred
- Turn off Hover forwarding for the addresses you are moving
- In Hover’s DNS settings, replace the MX records with the ones your new host gives you
- Add the SPF, DKIM and DMARC TXT records
- Verify the domain with the host, then send a test to and from an outside address
What you get with OquMail
Up to 15 mailboxes free on your domain, webmail, IMAP/SMTP for desktop and phone apps, and a transactional API. Your domain stays at Hover; you only add the records we generate. If you are comparing Hover’s own paid mailboxes, check its current mailbox storage and price per address against your team size.
Want to see how your own domain is set up? Use the free SPF checker, DMARC checker and MX lookup: they run in your browser and store nothing.