With Runbox Email Hosting you can manage the email for a domain you already own from your Runbox account.

You can add a domain to an existing Runbox account, or sign up for an account using your domain rather than using a Runbox domain.

This means that you can have email that is sent to you@domainyouown.com delivered to your Runbox account. Then you can also set up Runbox to send email from you@domainyouown.com, while taking advantage of Runbox’ management features.

1. Add your domain name to Runbox Email Hosting

Go to Account > Email Hosting and enter a domain name you already own or administer. See Email Hosting Setup for detailed instructions.

Note: If your Runbox username is already in the format you@domainyouown.com, you can skip this step as your domain will automatically have been added to the Email Hosting section of your account.

2. Set up addresses/aliases on your domain

Setting up aliases

You can now set up additional addresses for your Runbox account using your domain. To do this go to Account > Aliases and set up the addresses on your domain that you need to receive email on. It can take up to 15 minutes for these addresses to become active across our systems.

If you don’t set up aliases then mail to your domain will bounce (unless you are using the “Catch All” feature, see below).

Email sent to alias addresses will be delivered to your usual Inbox, but you can use filters to move email to folders you have set up if you want to keep email to aliases separate.

Setting up sub-accounts

If you have purchased sub-account products then you can set up your sub-accounts using your domain(s) by going to Account > Sub-accounts.

3. Changing DNS records (MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC)

MX Records

You will need to change the MX record of your domain to point to mx.runbox.com. This should be done at the service that hosts your domain’s DNS records. This might be the service where you registered your domain, but it might also be where you host your website, if you have one.

This should be the only entry for your domain unless you are using an external (third-party) spam filtering service.

Note: The contents of a DNS record like the MX record can be stored temporarily (cached) by other mail services. This reduces the need for those mail services to look up the details of where to send messages for your domain each time they see an email that they need to deliver to your domain. In theory how long the record is cached for should be determined by the TTL (Time To Live) value of the DNS record. A typical setting might be 14400 (seconds) which means a mail service doesn’t need to go back and look up the MX record for your domain for 4 hours since the last time it checked. The effect of this caching is that after you change the MX record to mx.runbox.com mail might still go to your old mail service for a few hours before it starts arriving at your new Runbox account.

SPF Records

To improve the legitimacy of messages you send from your domain at Runbox, you should add an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record to your DNS.

Note: This has become a requirement with some receiving email services such as Gmail and we recommend you set up the SPF record at the same time you change the MX record to point to Runbox. If you do not use an SPF record messages you send will often end up in the spam folder of the person you send to.

DKIM Signing

You can also add DKIM signing to your outgoing emails. This is highly recommended and you can find more information about this on our DKIM Signing page.

DMARC Policy

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) makes use of SPF and DKIM to further secure your domain against spoofed messages (messages pretending to be sent from you or your domain). We recommend reading the excellent resources at https://dmarc.org to learn more about this. If you have any further questions then please contact Runbox Support.

4. Other options available to you

Using sub-domains

You can also use sub-domains of your domain for Email Hosting. For example, if the main domain is domainyouown.com then you can also use subdomain.domainyouown.com.

To do this, you need to set up an MX record for the required sub-domain in your DNS settings. This might vary slightly depending on who your DNS host.

Using an external (third-party) spam filtering service

Some customers have specialist requirements when it comes to spam filtering, and use external (third-party) spam filtering services. Typically when you do this, your MX records point to the spam filtering service. That service then passes on the filtered mail to the Runbox mail servers. However, if our systems do not detect mx.runbox.com in your DNS records, then we will deactivate your domain on our system for security reasons.

To get around this issue you can add mx.runbox.com as an additional MX record at a lower priority (lower numbers have higher priority). Mail will still be sent to the spam service as it has higher priority, and you have the added benefit of mail being automatically sent to Runbox in the event the spam service is unavailable for any reason. Our system will see mx.runbox.com exists in your domain’s DNS records, and your domain will remain active.

If you prefer not to use mx.runbox.com as any of your MX records please contact us as we do have more options for you regarding the use of external spam filtering services.

Using the ‘Catch all’ function

“Catch all” means that you will receive email sent to all possible addresses for your domain without having to set up an explicit alias or account. All email will automatically be received by your main Runbox account.

Note: Use the “Catch all” function with care. Your account will receive email on every address for this domain name, except those set up as sub-accounts or aliases. Some spammers run so-called dictionary attacks, which means that they send spam to many common addresses within a given domain name. You are likely to receive some spam on all these addresses, so make sure that you have your spam filter activated.

Note that all domains have a default postmaster@domain.com address that forwards all email to the main domain account unless a postmaster address is explicitly set up as an account or alias.

More information on Runbox Email Hosting:

General information on DNS