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DocsSet up email on a domain you just bought

Set up email on a domain you just bought

From a domain with nothing on it to hello@yourdomain.com that sends and receives. Six steps: two of them at the place that manages your domain's DNS, the rest on imado. Usually under an hour; a DNS change can take up to a day to be seen.

  1. 1Create an accounton imado
  2. 2Connect your domainon imado
  3. 3Prove you own itat your DNS host
  4. 4Publish the mail recordsat your DNS host
  5. 5Create a mailboxon imado
  6. 6Send yourself a messagefrom anywhere

Before you start

You need three things.

  • A domain you own. The root name — example.com, not www.example.com. Any domain works; imado does not sell them.
  • The login for its DNS host. That is usually the registrar you bought the domain from. If you have pointed the domain's nameservers somewhere else — Cloudflare, Vercel — the records go there instead; your registrar's domain page shows the nameservers.
  • An email address you already read, for your imado account. Sign-in and password-reset mail is sent there, so it cannot be an address on the domain you are about to set up.

01Create an account

Sign up with the address above and a password, then open the verification link we send. The account is free and holds every domain you connect; you do not make one account per domain.

02Connect your domain

The first page after sign-in asks for the domain. Type the root name and press Connect this domain. Nothing about the domain changes yet — it changes when you publish the records in step 4. The first domain creates a project of the same name; a project is the place a domain, its mailboxes and the people who read them live, and you can rename it later.

If mail on this domain already goes somewhere — a forwarding service your registrar set up, Google Workspace — we say so and ask before you go on, because imado replaces it. Mail arriving at the old place stops when the new records are in.

Step 1 of 5, Connect a domain: example.com typed into the Domain field, the Connect this domain button, and under it the path to your first message with its five steps.
The first step, as it appears after sign-in; the path under it says what opens next.

Under the form is the path: five steps on imado's side, each opening the next. This guide follows it, with the account before it and the first message after.

03Prove you own it

One TXT record shows the domain is yours and not someone else's, so it comes first and everything else waits on it. The value is unique to your domain; copy it from the page, not from here.

Prove you own this domain1 record
TypeHostValueStatus
TXT_imado-challengeimado-verification=…Not found yet
The value marked … is yours alone and is on your domain's page; nothing here is one to copy. Most DNS forms add the domain to the host themselves, so _imado-challenge is the whole host; a form that wants the full name gets _imado-challenge.example.com, and the page has a switch for that.

Add the record at your DNS host, leave the TTL at whatever the form suggests, come back and press Check again. A new record is usually seen within a few minutes. The status changes to Added, and the next step opens.

04Publish the mail records

Once ownership is verified, the page shows four more records and one optional one. This is the second visit to your DNS host.

Sign the mail you send3 records
TypeHostValueStatus
CNAMEk4m2…._domainkeyk4m2….dkim.amazonses.comNot found yet
CNAMEp7ax…._domainkeyp7ax….dkim.amazonses.comNot found yet
CNAMEzq1n…._domainkeyzq1n….dkim.amazonses.comNot found yet
Three records that let Gmail, Outlook and the rest confirm a message really came from your domain; the check is called DKIM. Without them, what you send is likely to land in spam. The parts marked … are different for every domain; copy all three from your domain's page.
Receive mail here1 record
TypeHostValuePriorityStatus
MX@inbound-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com10Not found yet
The one record that points mail sent to your domain at imado. @ means the domain itself; some forms want it blank, and a few want the full name. Priority goes in its own field where there is one, or in front of the value (10 inbound-smtp…) where there is not.
Extra protection · optional1 record
TypeHostValueStatus
TXT_dmarcv=DMARC1; p=none;Not found yet
Tells mail providers what to do with a message that fails the checks above. Nothing breaks without it.

Add them, come back, and press Check again. Each record turns to Added as it is seen. Receiving works the moment the MX record is found. Sending is separate: once the three CNAME records are found, the mail provider checks them on its own and turns sending on when that check passes — usually within the hour, occasionally longer — and the domain's page says which of the two it is still waiting for. A message sent before then is refused — "This address can't send yet" — and the draft is kept.

You do not have to wait on the page. We check every domain once a day and finish the setup when the records appear, and if something is still missing after a while we send you one email saying which record.

05Create a mailbox

The fourth step asks for the address. Type the part before the @ — hello, hi, or your name — and press Create mailbox. The address takes shape as you type, and what you see is what is created. The name is optional: it is what people see in front of the address, and left empty they see the address itself.

Step 4 of 5, Create a mailbox: hello typed into the Address field before @walk-173.test, an optional Name, and the Create mailbox button.
A mailbox can have more than one address, and a second person can be given access to it at no charge.

06Send yourself a message

From any other account, send a message to hello@example.com. It appears in the inbox within a minute. Open it and reply: the reply goes out from hello@example.com and lands in the same conversation on the other side. That is the setup finished.

Mail to an address on the domain that you have not created does not reach you; create support@ before you print it. Catch-all — mail to an address you never created still reaching you — is part of the Builder plan once it ships, and the pricing page says what that costs.

If a record is not found

Most of the time the record is right and DNS has not caught up; give it an hour. If it is still Not found yet after that, it is one of these.

  • The host was doubled. The form appended your domain to a host you had already typed in full, so the record exists as _imado-challenge.example.com.example.com. Open the record at your host: if you can see the domain twice, shorten the host to the part before it.
  • The record went to the wrong place. You added it at the registrar, but the domain's nameservers point at another host. Your registrar's domain page shows the nameservers; the records go wherever they point.
  • The record is proxied. On Cloudflare, an orange cloud means the record answers with Cloudflare's own address. Click it until it turns grey.
  • Doesn't match means the record was found with a different value — an old one from a previous service, usually. Replace it with the value on the page.

If none of these is it, write to us with the domain name; a person replies.