Setting up email

MicroApps runs real email hosting on your own domain: proper mailboxes, auto-generated DNS records, and built-in metrics. Deliverability is handled for you, so your mail lands instead of vanishing.

The journey is four steps, in this order: turn email on for the domain, publish the mail records, create a mailbox, connect a mail app. Every click is named below.

Talk to us

Email hosting is offered on request and is enabled per account. Contact us and we'll switch it on for yours.

What you need first

• The domain already added to your account and verified. That half is in Custom domains & SSL.
• Access to wherever its DNS is managed - your registrar, Cloudflare, Route 53, whoever answers for the name. You will be adding records there, and nobody else can do that part for you.
• At least $3 of credit on the account. Both turning email on and creating a mailbox are refused below that.
• Email hosting enabled on your account, per the note above.

1. Turn email on for the domain

1. Open Domains in the console, or click Domains in the side panel.
2. Click the domain's name in the table. You land on the domain's Overview tab.
3. Find the Email card. It says "Email isn't set up for this domain". Click Set up email.
4. In the dialog, choose your server from Email server. There is normally one option, the server we assigned to your account.
5. Click Enable email.

The card switches to the server's name, and the badge under the domain name goes from Email not set up to Email active.

We generate six DNS records at that moment: MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and two SRV records. They are waiting on the DNS tab, which is step 2.

The Email tab has the same Set up email button on its empty state, if you land there first.

2. Publish the mail records

Nothing sends or receives until these records exist in your zone. This is the part nobody can do for you.

On the domain page, click the DNS tab. The six email records are listed there, alongside the ownership, SSL and web records the domain already had. The chip beside the name tells you which row is which:

Chip	Name	Type column	Needed
Mail	@	MX	Required
SPF	@	TXT	Required
DKIM	a long name ending ._domainkey	TXT	Required
DMARC	_dmarc	TXT	Optional
IMAP	_imaps._tcp	SRV	Optional
SMTP	_submission._tcp	SRV	Optional

Then, at your DNS provider, for each row:

1. Create a record of the type shown in the Type column. That is the type to pick from your provider's dropdown.
2. Set Name (your provider may call it Host or Record name) to the value in the Name column. @ means the domain itself, and most providers accept @ for that.
3. Set Value (or Content, or Data) to the value in the Content column. Click the copy icon next to it rather than retyping. DKIM is a very long key and one wrong character means it never verifies.
4. Set TTL to the value shown, or leave your provider's default. Either is fine.
5. Save, and give it a few minutes to propagate.

Then go back to the DNS tab and click Recheck DNS, at the top right.

Each row's Status goes from Pending to Verified. Once Mail, SPF and DKIM read Verified, the domain is ready for mailboxes.

Publish the optional three as well and the warning banner above the table turns green. The Email card back on the Overview tab is strict about this: it reads Healthy only when every row is verified, optional ones included, and Degraded until then.

DKIM, SPF and DMARC are all TXT records

The chip beside the name tells you what a record is for. The Type column tells you what to create, and for DKIM, SPF and DMARC that is a plain TXT record. Don't go hunting for a "DKIM" type in your provider's dropdown, there isn't one.

Providers that split the value into separate fields

Our Content column packs everything into one string, the way a zone file does. Many providers ask for the parts separately:

• MX: 10 mail.example.com is priority 10 and host mail.example.com. If there is a Priority field, put 10 there and only the host in the value.
• SRV: 0 0 993 mail.example.com is priority 0, weight 0, port 993, target mail.example.com, in that order.

MX, SPF and DKIM are required. Without them, mail does not flow. DMARC and the two SRV records carry an Optional chip instead: DMARC tightens your policy against spoofing, and the SRV records let mail apps discover the IMAP and SMTP ports on their own. Both are worth adding while you are already in the DNS panel.

3. Create a mailbox

1. Open Emails in the console, or click Emails in the side panel. You land on the Email Accounts tab.
2. Click New, at the top right. You land on the Create Email Account page.
3. Fill in the form:
   • Domain - the domain you just set up. Choose it first, because it fills in Server for you.
   • Username - the part before the @, such as hello. The hint under the field shows the full address you are about to create.
   • Password - 8 or more characters with an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, and a digit. Anything less is rejected.
   • Storage - N GB - the quota, on a slider from 1 to 50 GB. The label updates as you drag.
   • Server - filled in and greyed out once the domain is linked to an email server. Nothing to do here.
4. Click Create Email Account.

You come back to the Email Accounts table with the mailbox in it and its Status reading ACTIVE. It sends and receives from that moment.

4. Connect a mail client

Any standard mail app works. The username is always the full email address, and the password is the one you just set.

Your server's host names are on the domain page:

1. Open Domains, click the domain's name, then click the Email tab.
2. Expand Client setup. Six tiles: IMAP Server, IMAP Port, SMTP Server, SMTP Port, Username and Password. The two host names have a copy icon.
3. Below the tiles, pick iOS, Android or Desktop for numbered steps written against your own server's values.

Protocol	Host	Port	Security
IMAP (receiving)	your email server's hostname	993	SSL/TLS
SMTP (sending)	your email server's hostname	587	STARTTLS

Managing a mailbox

Open Emails and click the address in the Email column. You land on the mailbox's Overview tab, where all of this lives.

• Resize storage - on the Mailbox card, click Resize storage, pick a Storage size and click Apply. The sizes offered here are 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 GB.
• Catch-all - under Routing, click Enable on the Catch-all row. Mail sent to any address on the domain that doesn't exist lands in this mailbox. The button then reads Disable. One mailbox per domain.
• Forwarding - under Routing, click Set up on the Forwarding row, type the destination in Forward incoming mail to, and click Save. A copy of every incoming message goes there, and the original still lands here. The buttons afterwards are Edit and Remove.
• Change the password - under Access, click Change, type it in New password, click Set password.
• Pause a mailbox - under Access, click Suspend and confirm. It stops sending and receiving, and its status shows DISABLED. The same button then reads Resume. No need to delete and recreate.
• Delete - the trash icon at the top right of the mailbox page. You have to type the full address to confirm. It is irreversible and drops mail in transit.

To see only one domain's mailboxes, click that domain in the Domain column of the Email Accounts table.

Regenerating DNS records

Need to rotate keys? On the domain's DNS tab, Regenerate Records wipes the domain's DNS records and builds a fresh set, including a new DKIM key and a new ownership token. Confirm with Wipe & Regenerate.

MX, SPF, DMARC and the SRV records normally keep the same values, so if they were already published they re-verify on their own. The three you have to go and update at your provider are the Ownership TXT, the DKIM TXT, and the _acme-challenge CNAME.

Update your CNAME after regenerating

Regenerating also rotates the SSL validation label, so the _acme-challenge CNAME changes. Update that record at your DNS provider afterwards, or your next certificate renewal will fail. The certificate you already have keeps serving until it expires, then quietly stops.

Metrics and unsubscribes

Each mailbox shows sent / received / bounced counts on its Activity tab, over whatever range you pick. The same three numbers roll up per domain and account-wide: the Analytics tab on the Emails page covers the whole account, with a daily chart.

Outgoing mail carries a one-click unsubscribe link. Anyone who unsubscribes lands on your domain's suppression list and we stop mailing them. Review the list, or remove an address to resume sending to it, on the domain's Email tab under Unsubscribes.

Turning email off again

On the domain's Email tab, click Remove Setup and confirm. The email DNS records are deleted and the email server is unlinked. Ownership, SSL and web records are kept, so the domain keeps serving its site. Delete the domain's mailboxes first, or the removal is refused.

API

The same flow is available via the emails API.

Once mail is flowing, read the email deliverability guide - the authentication plumbing is handled for you, but what you send and who you send it to is what decides the inbox.