Help with email: using a Reclaim address but in a way that won't get rejected by big webmail providers

[poritzj]

I don’t know if there is already an explanation somewhere, or if it is really “newby”-esque.

…I’m not new, in fact, and generally a pretty solid sysadmin …but I don’t know how to do this thing, and it seems like I would need a fairly basic guide to do it.

Here’s the situation: I want to get off Google completely, but I use gmail for my main account.

I have another account with my Reclaim Hosting domain, but I’m wary to use it because I’ve had problems in the past when, for example, applications for things were rejected by the org I sent them to because the return address was not a well-known webmail provider, it was that Reclaim address.

I’d like to use that Reclaim email address as my main email, replacing gmail, and I want email sent there to go somewhere like Proton with E2EE and a reasonable interface (presumably I run a client or web interface on my personal machine at home that gets email from Proton or whichever service I use). I want email from my client (or web interface) on my machine, probably via Proton or whatever service I use, to go places on the Internet and not to get rejected, because it is coming from a reputable webmail provider (like Proton or whatever)… but then if people reply to those emails that it would go to the Reclaim email address (where I would again get it in a client or web interface, as before).

So, there are two sides: incoming email to my Reclaim address should go directly to Proton (or whatever similar service I end up with) – directly, not forwarded! … I think that involves MX records; and I want outgoing mail from Proton (or whatever service) both to not be rejected on the net because it is coming from a reliable source (presumably Proton is reliable), and at the same time to show the “reply-to” as being my Reclaim email address.

Surely this must be a thing that lots of folks do, is there a very simple guide that steps me through all the things I need to do to make it happen?

Note that some webmail services like Proton have simple guides for switching from Gmail to them, but I think that what I want to do is a bit different, so probably those guides and tools are all slightly wrong for what I want.

Any help or suggestions would be gratefully received!

[jhonnmarie]

To achieve what you want, set your Reclaim domain’s MX records to point to Proton Mail’s servers, so mail sent to your Reclaim address is delivered directly to Proton (not forwarded). Then, in Proton Mail, set your Reclaim address as your custom domain email, and configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records on Reclaim’s DNS to authenticate Proton as a legitimate sender for your domain—this helps prevent rejection by major providers. Finally, set your “From” and “Reply-To” address in Proton to your Reclaim email, so all replies go there, but the sending reputation benefits from Proton’s infrastructure. Proton has a custom domain setup guide that walks you through this in detail.