Setting up email forwarding for a Shopify-managed custom domain

Email forwarding is a service that enables you to direct an email message that's sent to one email address to another email address. If you have a Shopify-managed domain, then you can set up an unlimited number of custom domain email addresses that forward to an email account hosted by a third-party. For example, if you own the domain name johns-apparel.com, then you can create the custom domain email address info@johns-apparel.com for your customers to contact and set the forwarding email address to your personal account john@gmail.com. When customers send an email message to info@johns-apparel.com, the email message is forwarded to your existing personal account john@gmail.com.

To help ensure that email messages are forwarded successfully, add a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record to your Shopify-managed domain.

If you use a third-party domain, then you can't set up email forwarding addresses from your Shopify admin. Email forwarding or hosting might be offered by your third-party domain provider, or you can transfer your domain to Shopify.

Set up email forwarding

All new email addresses that you create in your Shopify admin must be forwarded to an existing email address hosted by a third-party, for example, Gmail or Outlook. You can set up forwarding from one or more store email addresses to an existing email address. Each store email address can forward to only one third-party email address.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Domains.

  2. Click the domain that you want to set up a custom email forwarding address for.

  3. In the Email forwarding section, click Add forwarding email.

  4. In the Forwarding email address field, enter the email address that you want to create for your custom domain. You don't need to type the @ symbol or anything that follows it. For example if you want the email addressinfo@johns-apparel.com, then enter info. This is the email address that your customers use to send email messages your store.

  5. In the Receiving email address field, enter your full destination email forwarding address. For example john@gmail.com. This is the email address that receives the forwarded email messages. If you reply to forwarded email messages, then this email address is displayed in the recipient's inbox.

  6. Click Save.

Add an SPF record to your domain

To help ensure that email messages are forwarded to your destination email address successfully, add an SPF record to your Shopify-managed custom domain.

Steps

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Domains.

  2. Click the domain that you set up your custom email forwarding address for.

  3. Click Domain settings > Edit DNS settings.

  4. Click Add custom record, and then click TXT Record.

  5. Enter @ as the Name.

  6. Enter v=spf1 include:_spf.hostedemail.com ~all as the TXT value.

  7. Click Confirm.

Test your email forwarding

Test your email forwarding to confirm that email messages are successfully directed to your email forwarding address.

Steps

  1. Log in to a different email account than the one you set up as your forwarding email address.

  2. Send a test email message to each of the custom domain email addresses that you created. For example info@johns-apparel.com.

  3. Log in to your forwarding email account. For example, john@gmail.com.

  4. Check that your messages are displayed in your inbox.

Replying to customer emails from your custom domain email address

A reply to a forwarded email displays the forwarding email address as the sender, not the custom domain email address. You can't reply to customer email messages from your custom domain email address unless you use a third-party email hosting service with your custom domain.

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