Email for Side Projects: From Free to Professional in 10 Minutes

Your side project has a landing page. Maybe it even has users. But you are still using myproject.dev@gmail.com as the contact address. Time to fix that.

What you need

• A domain name (you probably already have one for the landing page)
• 10 minutes
• $0-5/month

Step 1: Choose your addresses (1 minute)

For a side project, you need at most three addresses:

Address	Purpose
hello@yourproject.com	General contact, on your landing page
support@yourproject.com	User support (if you have users)
alerts@yourproject.com	Monitoring and error notifications from your app

The Cleanbox free plan gives you 3 aliases — exactly enough for this.

Step 2: Add your domain to Cleanbox (3 minutes)

1. Create a free account at my.cleanbox.app
2. Go to Domains → Add domain
3. Enter your domain name

Step 3: Configure DNS (5 minutes)

At your domain registrar (Cloudflare, Namecheap, Porkbun, etc.), add:

MX  @  mx1.cleanbox.to  (priority 10)
TXT @  cleanbox-verify=your-token
TXT @  v=spf1 include:_spf.cleanbox.to ~all

If your registrar is Cloudflare, propagation is instant. Others may take 5-15 minutes.

Step 4: Create aliases and verify (2 minutes)

1. Click Verify on your domain in Cleanbox
2. Create aliases: hello@, support@, alerts@
3. Route them to your existing Gmail/Outlook inbox

Send a test email. It should arrive in seconds.

Step 5: Send as your project address (optional, 3 minutes)

Cleanbox aliases are receive-only. To reply from hello@yourproject.com:

1. Gmail: Settings → Accounts → "Add another email address"
2. Enter hello@yourproject.com
3. For SMTP, use a transactional service like Mailgun (free tier: 5,000 emails/month), Resend (free: 3,000/month), or Brevo (free: 300/day)
4. Verify via the confirmation email

What you get for free

Feature	Cleanbox Free
Custom domain	Via Premium ($15/mo), but you can use @cleanbox.me for free
Aliases	3
Emails/week	50
Spam filtering	Yes
Contact categorization	Yes
Shield	On paid plans

For a side project receiving fewer than 50 emails per week, the free plan is sufficient. When your project grows and email volume increases, upgrade to Personal ($5/mo) for 200 emails/week, or Premium ($15/mo) for custom domains and 1,000/week.

When to upgrade beyond Cleanbox

Cleanbox aliases are receive-only. When your side project becomes a real business and you need:

• Multiple team members answering emails → Cleanbox Teams (available on all plans)
• High-volume outbound (newsletters, onboarding sequences) → Add a dedicated sending service (Mailchimp, ConvertKit)
• Full hosted mailboxes (IMAP/SMTP for desktop clients) → Google Workspace ($7/user/mo) or Fastmail ($5/user/mo) with Cleanbox Relay in front for spam protection

Start free. Add layers as you grow. Your domain stays the same throughout — that is the point of using your own domain from day one.

For a more detailed guide, see How to Set Up a Professional Email Address in Under 10 Minutes.