Domains, Email, Upgrades

Add Email » Email Forwarding

Email Forwarding lets you use your custom domain in your email address, so your email address can be just as memorable as your site. All your mail will be forwarded to another email address you choose.

For example: if your email address is [email protected], and you have the domain example.com in your site, you can set up [email protected] using Email Forwarding. Emails sent to [email protected] will arrive to [email protected]

Custom domain owners on the Free, Personal, and Premium plans can add five email forwards for each domain. Custom domain owners on the Business and eCommerce plans can add 100 email forwards for each domain.

💡

Want a fully-hosted email for your domain? Consider purchasing Professional Email or Google Workspace. Learn more.

Table of Contents

Set Up Email Forwarding

To configure email forwarding:

  1. Navigate to My Site(s) → Upgrades → Emails.
  2. Scroll down and select Add email forwarding. You will then be prompted with one more Add email forwarding button on the left.
  3. To set up a new email forward, enter the new email address with your custom domain in the Emails Sent To field, and the destination email address in the Will Be Forwarded To field. After entering these settings, click Add new email address.

You will receive an activation email in the destination address specified. If you haven’t clicked the link in the activation email, you will see a Letter Icon next to your email forward. You can click that icon to resend the activation email to your inbox.

↑ Table of Contents ↑

Test Email Forwarding

Once you’ve set up an email forward, you can test it by sending an email to the forward address. For instance, using the example above, you can send an email to [email protected], then check your address at [email protected] to verify that the test message went through.

⚠️

If you’d like to send a test message, it MUST be done from a different email account than the one you are forwarding to.

If the email forwarding doesn’t work, double-check that your custom domain’s name servers are pointing to WordPress.com. To check this:

  1. Go to your Domains page (My Sites → Upgrades → Domains) and select your domain name.
  2. Click Change your name servers & DNS records → DNS records.
  3. Verify that Use WordPress.com Name Servers is switched on.
    • You can read more about changing your domain’s name servers here.

You’ll also want to make sure you don’t have an existing mail host connected. If you do have an existing mail host and are no longer using it, you’ll need to remove it. To remove the existing mail host:

  1. Go to your Domains page (My Sites → Upgrades → Domains) and select your domain name.
  2. Click Change your name servers & DNS records → DNS records.
  3. Remove all of the DNS settings related to your email host. This will likely include MX, CNAME, and possibly A records.
    • You can read more about editing these settings here.

If you need help with this, contact us!

↑ Table of Contents ↑

Managing Email Forwarding

Your email forwarding settings page will show how many email forwards you have set up. To delete an existing email forward, click the Trash can Icon. You can edit an email forward by deleting an existing one and setting up a new one with the updated settings.

Not quite what you're looking for?

Get Help