Cloudflare Email Routing + Gmail “Send As”: the honest guide

1. In Cloudflare, open your domain → Email → Email Routing → Enable (it adds the MX records).
2. Create a custom address (info@…) and route it to your Gmail. Verify the destination.
3. For sending: Gmail → Settings → Accounts → “Send mail as” → add info@yourdomain.
4. Gmail demands an SMTP server for that address. Most people route it through smtp.gmail.com — which requires 2-Step Verification plus an App Password. This step is where most setups die.

• Silent drops: since mid-2025 Cloudflare no longer forwards mail that fails authentication — and there’s no notification when it happens. Senders think they wrote you; you never saw it.
• Spam placement: replies sent via Gmail’s servers for your domain often fail SPF alignment. Without correct SPF/DKIM/DMARC on the domain, answers land in spam — quietly.
• It doesn’t scale: Gmail caps “send as” addresses, and every new domain repeats the whole dance: routing, verification, App Password, DNS records.

All Your Inboxes does this exact setup for you: connect Cloudflare once, type a name, press Create. Routing, verification and spam-protection records are handled; every message and every decision shows in an activity log (nothing silently dropped); replies go out from your address without App Passwords. Free to try — the manual route above stays a fine choice for a single hobby domain.