ImprovMX Alternatives in 2026: Honest Comparison

Credit first: ImprovMX is simple, reliable, and its free tier is enough for a hobby domain. Point your MX records at it, add aliases, done. The paid tiers (starting at ~$9/mo) add SMTP sending from your domain and more aliases. If your complaint is only curiosity, staying put is a legitimate answer.

Forward Email is the option for people who care that the code is public. It’s fully open source, privacy-focused, generous with aliases on custom domains, and its paid plans start at ~$3/mo — cheaper than ImprovMX for comparable features, including SMTP sending. The trade-off is that it’s a smaller operation with a more technical personality: configuration happens through DNS records more than dashboards, which is either a feature or a chore depending on you.

If your DNS is already on Cloudflare, Email Routing is free, fast, and handles per-address rules plus catch-all. That’s a hard price to argue with. The honest limits: it forwards only (no sending from your domain without wiring Gmail send-as or a transactional provider yourself), your DNS must live on Cloudflare, and when it breaks it breaks quietly — we wrote a whole troubleshooting guide from real cases. For a personal domain where you only receive, it’s probably the right default.

Our own entry, so judge accordingly. All Your Inboxes is not a forwarder you configure but a delivery layer: mail to your domain addresses arrives as notifications in the Gmail you already check, tagged per project, and replying sends from your own domain. On Cloudflare domains, a new address goes live in about 10 seconds without touching MX records yourself. Message content is deleted from our servers after delivery and never shown in the panel (see security). Free covers one inbox; Starter is $6.99/mo for five with replies, Pro $14.99/mo for twenty with AI spam filtering, translation, drafts, and auto-replies. Where the others make you the operator, this one is aimed at people who’d rather not be.

Prices are approximate as of 2026 — check each provider’s site before deciding.

Receiving only, DNS on Cloudflare: use Cloudflare, it’s free. Want open source and low cost with sending: Forward Email. Happy with a polished classic forwarder: ImprovMX remains good at exactly that. And if what you actually want is every domain’s mail landing in the Gmail you already check — with replies from your domain and no forwarding rules to babysit — that’s the gap we built All Your Inboxes for. The Free plan needs no card — one inbox, free forever — so trying it costs you one test email.