Namecheap domain email setup without Private Email: switch Mail Settings to Custom MX, add the records in Advanced DNS, and watch for the forwarding setting that quietly drops your MX record.
You've just paid for the domain. Namecheap sells its own Private Email, priced per mailbox, alongside every domain, and now you're wondering whether to add it or put your email somewhere else. How Namecheap domain email setup works depends on which you choose, so this page covers both, then walks through the second one in Namecheap's own screens, one field at a time.
If you want the background on what each DNS record actually does, our complete guide to setting up custom domain email covers that, so we won't repeat it here.
One opinion up front, because it changes what you pick: free forwarding is not email. It copies the message into an inbox you already own, and that's it — you can't reply as you@yourdomain.com, which is most of why you bought the domain.
Namecheap gives you three ways to get custom email on a new domain.
Free Email Forwarding. Mail sent to your domain gets passed on to an inbox you already have, and Namecheap allows up to 100 forwarding addresses. It costs nothing. But it's forwarding, not a mailbox, and by Namecheap's own rules it can't share the domain with Private Email or any other email service at the same time.
Private Email. These are Namecheap's own hosted mailboxes. The draw is convenience: one account, one bill, and choosing "Private Email" in the Mail Settings dropdown sets the MX records for you. You pay per mailbox. As of 8 October 2026, Namecheap's help centre lists each additional mailbox on its current plans at $8.88, $25.88 or $39.88 a year depending on the plan, and the plan itself is priced separately on Namecheap's Private Email page.
A separate email host (the Private Email alternative). The domain stays registered at Namecheap and you point its mail records somewhere else. That's what we do: JustEmails is $49 a year, flat, for unlimited custom domains and unlimited mailboxes with a unified inbox across all of them — additional team members are $2 per member per month, and storage beyond the included 10 GB is $99 a year per 100 GB.
So which one should you pick? If you need one mailbox on one domain and never expect a second, Private Email is a perfectly reasonable choice, and having everything under one login is worth something. Per-mailbox pricing starts to hurt once you add a second person or a second domain, because each one is another line on the bill. We worked through the numbers in what a custom domain email address really costs.
We sell one of these three options, so weigh that recommendation accordingly. The honest version: none of what follows is hard, it's just fiddly, and most of the traps sit on one Namecheap screen.
The rest of this guide assumes a separate host.
Mail Settings and Host Records only show up when the domain uses one of Namecheap's own DNS options: BasicDNS, PremiumDNS or FreeDNS.
Check the Nameservers section under Domain List → Manage:
To move a domain back, choose "Namecheap BasicDNS" from the Nameservers dropdown and save. Namecheap says a nameserver change can take up to 24 hours, and more in rare cases. (Changing nameservers moves every record, including your website's, so don't do it on a domain that's already serving a live site unless you know where those records will end up.)
First, add your domain in the JustEmails dashboard. It lists the records below with your own DKIM key, verification token and MTA-STS id filled in. Those three values are different for every domain, which is why we show them as … here. Always copy them from your dashboard, never from a guide.
We mean that. We have published a hostname that looked right and didn't resolve, and a DNS mistake rarely tells you what's wrong. Copy from the dashboard.
The full set, in the order you'll add them:
| Type | Name / host | Value | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| MX | @ (the domain) | mail1.justemails.app priority 10 | Delivers incoming mail to us |
| TXT | @ | v=spf1 a:mail1.justemails.app ~all | SPF: lets us send for the domain |
| TXT | dkim._domainkey | v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=… (unique per domain) | DKIM signature key |
| TXT | arc._domainkey | v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=… (same key as DKIM) | Signs forwarded mail |
| TXT | _dmarc | v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; rua=mailto:dmarc@justemails.app | DMARC policy |
| TXT | @ | justemails-verify=… (from the dashboard) | Proves the domain is yours |
| TXT | _mta-sts | v=STSv1; id=… (from the dashboard) | Turns on enforced encryption |
| CNAME | mta-sts | mta-sts.justemails.app | Hosts the encryption policy |
One SPF record only. If the domain already has a record starting
v=spf1(Private Email and Namecheap's forwarding both leave one behind), edit that record's value into ours. Don't add a second one. With two SPF records, both stop working.
The same goes for DMARC. A domain can carry exactly one TXT record at
_dmarc, and some registrars and email products add one for you, so edit an existing_dmarcrecord to the value above rather than adding a second alongside it.
There are two TXT records at @, the SPF and the verification string, and that's fine. The one-record rules apply per kind: one v=spf1 string, one _dmarc string.
Sign in to Namecheap and select Domain List in the left sidebar. Click Manage next to your domain, then open the Advanced DNS tab at the top.
@, Value mail1.justemails.app, Priority 10, TTL Automatic.Add just the one MX record. There's no second one to add, and a backup MX pointing at nothing is worse than none — spammers know to try the backup first. If Mail Settings was on Email Forwarding before you changed it, read the first problem in the list further down before you move on.
Go to the Host Records section on the same tab. For each TXT row in the table:
The Host field is the easiest thing on this screen to get wrong. Use @ for the bare domain, and for everything else type only the part before your domain: dkim._domainkey, arc._domainkey, _dmarc, _mta-sts. Namecheap's TXT guide is explicit that the domain name itself doesn't belong in the Host field. The domain gets added for you, so if you type dkim._domainkey.example.com you end up with dkim._domainkey.example.com.example.com, a record nobody will ever look up.
This is the one that annoys us. Namecheap doesn't stop you: the doubled record saves and sits in the list looking healthy, while you spend an hour reading DKIM documentation.
A Namecheap TXT value can hold up to 2,500 symbols, so the long DKIM key goes into a single Value field without splitting.
Click Add New Record again and choose CNAME Record. Set Host to mta-sts and Value to mta-sts.justemails.app, then click Save All Changes.
Namecheap's CNAME page warns that its DNS system adds the domain name automatically and that you should make sure it isn't duplicated in what you enter. Our value doesn't contain your domain at all, so you can paste it exactly as written.
Reload the page and confirm the MX record is still under Mail Settings and that all six TXT records and the CNAME are listed in Host Records.
There's a reason for the reload. Namecheap's own developer notes say it "can accept a record and then drop it — for example an MX record at @ on a domain with email forwarding enabled", because Namecheap manages that domain's mail records itself. No error message, just a missing record.
Our dashboard checks each record and shows which ones are still missing. Most changes show up within minutes, though some can take a few hours. Namecheap says newly created records normally take effect within 30 minutes, which matches its default TTL (Automatic) of 30 minutes.
A record still missing after a few hours is most likely a Host typo or a domain typed twice. (The second one is an easy mistake to make.)
Once everything checks out, connect your mail app to mail.justemails.app: IMAP on port 993 (SSL/TLS) and SMTP on port 587 (STARTTLS), with your full email address as the username. That's mail., not the mail1. from the MX record.
One thing to plan around: a newly verified domain is limited to no more than 50 emails a day in its first week, 200 a day in its second, and up to 500 a day from day 15, counted from the day the domain verified. Plenty for a normal inbox. Not enough for a launch announcement to your whole list, so don't schedule one for the afternoon you finish this page.
After the domain is verified, we keep checking it. If a record changes or disappears later, say someone switches Mail Settings back to Email Forwarding, we spot it and email you.
Email Forwarding is still on. Forwarding sets its own MX records, and it needs its own SPF record, which Namecheap says can't be deleted while forwarding is active because forwarding depends on it. Switch Mail Settings to Custom MX first and sort out the SPF record after that.
A new domain arrived with forwarding already set up. Namecheap has account-level "DNS and Redirect Presets" (Profile → Tools → Advanced section → Manage), and it applies them automatically to every newly registered domain. Set a forwarding preset years ago and every domain you buy today starts with it. Handy once, baffling every time after, especially once you've forgotten you set it.
The old SPF record is still there. Moving from Private Email, you'll find v=spf1 include:spf.privateemail.com ~all at @. Moving from forwarding, you'll find forwarding's own SPF record. Edit whichever one you have into ours. Two SPF records on the same host interfere with each other, and Namecheap's Private Email guide says that leaves none of the domain's email services working properly. Namecheap doesn't say whether switching Mail Settings to Custom MX removes the forwarding SPF record by itself, so check Host Records afterwards rather than assume it did.
Old Private Email records. Namecheap lists these for Private Email: DKIM at privateemail._domainkey (or default._domainkey on subscriptions bought before 2 June 2026), CNAMEs for mail, autodiscover and autoconfig pointing at privateemail.com, and an SRV record at _autodiscover._tcp. Delete them once you've moved, or mail apps will keep trying to set themselves up against the old provider. Move any mail you want to keep before you cancel. Our import tool can bring it across over IMAP.
A CNAME on the bare domain. Namecheap warns that a CNAME takes priority over every other record for the same host name, MX records included, and those are the records that deliver your mail. If Host Records shows a CNAME with Host @, mail won't work until it's replaced.
Do you have to move the domain away from Namecheap to use another email host? No. The registration stays at Namecheap, and only the domain's mail records change: switch Mail Settings to Custom MX in Advanced DNS and add the host's records there.
What does Custom MX mean in Namecheap's Mail Settings? It's the Mail Settings option Namecheap reserves for third-party mail services. Private Email and Email Forwarding each set the domain's MX records for you (Namecheap currently flags its Gmail option as not working and points Google Workspace users to Custom MX). Custom MX lets you enter your own, which is what any separate email host needs.
Can you keep free forwarding for one address and use JustEmails for the rest? No. Namecheap won't run free Email Forwarding alongside another email service on the same domain. Set up aliases or a catch-all in JustEmails instead. Both are included.
Why did the MX record disappear after saving it in Namecheap? Most likely because Mail Settings was still on Email Forwarding, so Namecheap kept managing the domain's mail records itself and dropped yours without an error. Switch Mail Settings to Custom MX first, then add the MX record again and reload the page to confirm it stayed.
How long do Namecheap DNS changes take to work? Namecheap says new records normally take effect within 30 minutes, matching its default TTL. A nameserver change is slower: up to 24 hours, and longer in rare cases. Our dashboard tracks every record and flags any that haven't appeared yet, so there's no guessing.
What's the alternative to Namecheap Private Email if you need several mailboxes? A separate host with flat pricing. Private Email is billed per mailbox, so the cost grows with each person and each domain you add. JustEmails is a flat $49 a year for unlimited domains and mailboxes, and the domain itself stays registered at Namecheap.
If this domain will need more than one mailbox, or you own more than one domain, look at our pricing. It's one flat $49 a year for unlimited domains and mailboxes. Add the domain, copy eight records into Advanced DNS, and the Namecheap side is done.