Set up email records

  1 min read

​​ Receive email

If you only need to receive emails, Cloudflare offers Email Routing for free email forwarding to custom email addresses.

​​ Send and receive email

To send and receive emails from your domain, you need:

• An SMTP provider.
• To create two DNS records within Cloudflare.

To route emails through Cloudflare and to your mail server:

1. Get the IP address and MX record details from your SMTP provider (vendor-specific guidelines).

2. Add an A or AAAA record for your mail subdomain that points to the IP address of your mail server.

   Type	Name	IPv4 address	Proxy status
   A	mail	192.0.2.1	DNS only

   API example

   Request
   curl -sX POST "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/<ZONE_ID>/dns_records" \
   -H "x-auth-email: <EMAIL>" \
   -H "x-auth-key: <API_KEY>" \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   --data '{
     "type":"A",
     "name":"www.example.com",
     "content":"192.0.2.1",
     "ttl":3600,
     "proxied":false
   }'

   Response
   {
     "result": {
       "id": "<ID>",
       "zone_id": "<ZONE_ID>",
       "zone_name": "example.com",
       "name": "www.example.com",
       "type": "A",
       "content": "192.0.2.1",
       "proxiable": true,
       "proxied": false,
       "ttl": 1,
       "locked": false,
       "meta": {
         "auto_added": false,
         "managed_by_apps": false,
         "managed_by_argo_tunnel": false,
         "source": "primary"
       },
       "comment": null,
       "tags": [],
       "created_on": "2023-01-17T20:37:05.368097Z",
       "modified_on": "2023-01-17T20:37:05.368097Z"
     },
     "success": true,
     "errors": [],
     "messages": []
   }
   

3. Add an MX record that points to that subdomain.

   Type	Name	Mail server	TTL
   MX	@	mail.example.com	Auto

   API example

   Request
   curl -sX POST "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/<ZONE_ID>/dns_records" \
   -H 'x-auth-email: <EMAIL>' \
   -H 'x-auth-key: <API_KEY>' \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   --data '{
     "type":"MX",
     "name":"example.com",
     "content":"mail.example.com",
     "ttl":3600
   }'
   

   Response
   {
     "result": {
       "id": "<ID>",
       "zone_id": "<ZONE_ID>",
       "zone_name": "example.com",
       "name": "example.com",
       "type": "MX",
       "content": "mail.example.com",
       "priority": 10,
       "proxiable": false,
       "proxied": false,
       "ttl": 3600,
       "locked": false,
       "meta": {
         "auto_added": false,
         "managed_by_apps": false,
         "managed_by_argo_tunnel": false,
         "source": "primary"
       },
       "comment": null,
       "tags": [],
       "created_on": "2023-01-17T20:54:23.660869Z",
       "modified_on": "2023-01-17T20:54:23.660869Z"
     },
     "success": true,
     "errors": [],
     "messages": []
   }