Setup free email hosting for your website with Mailgun and Gmail

Mailgun is a free alternative for receiving and sending email using a custom domain.

Why not just use gmail?

Because this setup is free, just a little more work. Mailgun will act as an email service, and Gmail as email hosting. Visually it would work like this:

Prerequisites

• you have your own website and a gmail account.
• you know what dns records are.
• you have registered an account with Mailgun and followed their steps for setting up nameservers.

Setup Mailgun

1. Add a catch all route – Mailgun will forward all emails to that route. Go to your mailgun account -> Receiving -> Add Route. Fill with your gmail account. Form should look like this:
   

Setup Gmail

1. Go to your Gmail -> Settings -> Accounts and Import -> Send mail as -> Add another email address.
   
2. Authenticate with your mailgun smtp credentials.
   
3. Verify email with verification code that Google sent to your email address.
   
   Read verification code by checking mailgun domain logs (Quick View).