Host your own email with your domain using Zoho mail
We may need a business email id for our business, or an email id which we can use to setup alerts from our self-hosted servers or an email which guarantees non-prying eyes of Google and other email providers. Zoho mail is a solution for all of these.
Zoho offers free email hosting for your business using your own custom domain. It claims to be secure, encrypted, privacy-guaranteed and ad-free email service. Free plan includes up to 5 users, 5GB/user storage using 1 domain. You may switch to paid service which has much more features and benefits.
To use Zoho mail with third party app (Other than zoho mail app, e.g. Outlook), You need to switch to paid plan. Free plan only supports zoho mail apps and zoho mail website.
Here, We will see how can we host our own email using Zoho mail.
What do we need ?
- A domain name — Your own domain from any of domain registrar (e.g. GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google domain, AWS Route53, etc.)
- A Zoho account
Let’s begin
I have a domain with GoDaddy domain registrar. You can have one domain name with any registrar.
Steps may vary for existing and a new Zoho user account. But concept should be same and additional steps are self-understood.
- Sign up to Zoho
Sign up to Zoho, If you don’t already have a zoho account. Visit, https://www.zoho.com. Click on Mail option, Choose ‘Business Email’ from radio button and provide required details to sign up.
2. Once sign up is completed, you will be redirected control panel https://mailadmin.zoho.com/cpanel. For existing users, You may directly open email control panel to start.
3. Add a organization name (Or you may directly be redirected to step 4).
4. Now, You will be asked to choose a plan. If you scroll down, You will find a Free plan. If you wish, you can go for a paid plan as well according to your requirement.
5. First step is to add a domain.
6. Once domain is added, you need to prove that you are the owner of this domain. To do so, You need to proceed with domain verification.
7. Login to your domain registrar and add a TXT record with value displayed on your screen.
8. Once added, click on ‘Verify TXT Record’ to verify. It may take sometime for verification based on TTL value. Once verification is successful, proceed to next step.
9. Now, You will be asked to add a user and create a group. Create your first superadmin user and add it to a group. e.g. admin@example.com.
(For existing/some zoho account, this step may be needed to configure separately under Users and Groups section from control panel after completing below steps.)
10. After users are added to group, proceed to DNS mapping.
In this step, You need to add some MX record which points to Zoho mail servers. Values will be displayed in next step. Just copy those and create MX record in your domain from your registrar website. You will also need to add SPF and DKIM as TXT record as displayed on your screen. Keep TTL value as low as possible for speed propagation of values.
SPF is an authentication protocol used to make sure emails are sent using verified list of email servers. DKIM is an email security standard which is used by email clients to verify if the email is authentic or spoofed. This is done by signing emails using a public key. To know more about them, Please check these links:
11. Proceed to email migration and Go mobile. You may skip email migration step. You can download mobile app to access the email.
12. Test the email.
Login to Zoho mail (mail.zoho.com) using superadmin email account. And send an email to any of your personal email id. Check if you are receiving email from your zoho mail to personal mail. Repeat the same other way around and check if yoou are reciving email in your zoho mail.
13. Login to control panel again and under user section, Add new non-admin users. You may create up to 5 users (including admin) under free plan.
I hope this article has helped you.
To know more about zoho mail, You may look into official document of zoho mail here.
Thanks
Navratan Lal Gupta
Linux Shots
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