WordPress.com Email Alternative for Site Owners
Your WordPress site deserves matching email. Connect your domain mail without upgrading to expensive suites.
Visitors who trust yoursite.com expect to email you@yoursite.com. WordPress hosting does not replace dedicated mail — add MX records to a mail host.
Your website host and your mail host can be different
WordPress.com hosts your site and, if you bought the domain there, manages its DNS. It also resells email products. You do not have to use them: mail is controlled by MX records, and you can point those at any host while the site stays exactly where it is.
Adding external email records
- Open the domain’s DNS settings in your WordPress.com dashboard
- Remove any existing MX records you are replacing
- Add the MX records (the settings that tell the internet where to deliver email for your domain) your mail host provides
- Add the SPF, DKIM and DMARC TXT records
- Leave the A and CNAME records for your website untouched
- Verify the domain with your mail host and send a test message
Contact forms and site mail
Many WordPress sites send contact-form mail “from” your domain. If that mail comes from your web host’s servers, it can fail SPF and DMARC. The safer pattern is to have the form send to your mailbox from an address the site is allowed to use, or use an SMTP plugin that sends through your mail host. OquMail supports SMTP submission on port 587 and has a transactional API.
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.