What is email routing?
Email routing is the process of ensuring that the right messages get to the right recipients. It allows users to send different types of emails to separate accounts based on criteria such as the recipient’s address or department.
How does email routing work?
Email routing is a process that helps send email messages from one inbox to another. Email essentially operates like a digital post office — he sender mails a letter, it goes into a series of trucks, and then arrives at the recipient’s mailbox. In a real-world postal context, individuals and businesses can set up various guidelines to determine which letters are routed or redirected to which people. Email routing works in the same way.
The first element of email routing is the relationship between the sender and the recipient. Sender-based routing assigns an email address to individual user accounts, and emails sent from within that account are routed accordingly. This type of system is usually used when one department within an organization uses its own domain (for example, @SalesTeam-CompanyName.com) for sending internal messages, but other departments (such as @companyname.com) use their company’s primary domain name.
Meanwhile, receiver-based routing relies on filters to determine which addresses should receive which type of message based on certain criteria (such as contact information). When a message is received by a filter server, it compares the sender’s IP address with the list of known recipients stored in memory or in a database. If it matches someone who should receive that kind of message, then the message is filtered and forwarded to them.
The second element of email routing is the pathway an email may take. Email routing can use inline, deferred, or transport-level forwarding pathways. Inline routing ties together individual mailboxes within a domain into an “inline flow.” An “inline flow” is the system that touches that email from the sender to the recipient. Deferred routing sends all incoming messages directly to a mailbox specified by the sender or contact, bypassing any other mailboxes in between and transport-level forwarding routes all emails sent through a specific transport server instead of going out through the general delivery system on the network.
How to set up E-mail Routing on Cloudflare
step1: Domain
You should buy a domain (which can be resolved by Cloudflare) and add it to your Cloudfalre account like picture below :
before adding your domain here ,you should purchase a domain from domain name register. for me ,i choosed nameesilo as my dimain name register ,beacuse it is cheap.also you can buy from another ,if you have any choise , be your mind .
step2 DNS server name change
after adding your purchased domain name to cloudflare , it will detect your current dimain name server and remaind to change it to CF name server name like :
1 | aaden.ns.cloudflare.com |
after change your name server on your domain purchase platform , your domain should be active on Cloudflare.and you can now setup your email routing.
step3 setup domain routing
back up to your CF homepage ,click your registed domain on the left .you will be in the domain manage page
in the left function list ,you should select and click e-mail routing buton ,it will direct to setting page
you can see an add buton on the right.clicl it and follow the prompts to add your new email routing rules.
custom address that is your custom information , you can fill it with any alphabet and mix with number or mixed . The follwing is your first-level donmain name which i sthe domain name you purchased .
Destination you should fill it with your normal useing e-mail like Gmail or outlook mail address.
fill all information and click save.
it may prompt you the process is not finished , you should turn the prompted block on .
it may prompt you to verify your email address before the changes take effect. open your vertified mail and check out your inbox ,you will find a email sent by Cloudflare ,click it and follow the prompts to complete the verification process.
that’s it!