Best Email Provider for a Custom Domain (Catch-All)

For a custom domain with a catch-all, the best email provider is iCloud+ if your household already uses Apple devices, Fastmail if you want to send from any address or use JMAP, and Purelymail or Migadu if you run several domains on a budget. Both of those cost under $20 a year (as of September 2026). Google Workspace and Zoho Mail can run a catch-all too, while Proton Mail, Tuta, and Microsoft’s services limit which mail apps you can use.

This page compares ten email hosts for a personal domain on what matters when you give every site its own address. None of the links here are affiliate links. Whichever host you pick, if it offers IMAP or JMAP, CatchNone can read its catch-all mailbox on iPhone, iPad, and Mac and show you which address each message reached.

What matters when you want a catch-all

• Catch-all. Mail to any address at your domain lands in one mailbox, so you can give shop@example.com to a store without creating it first. If the idea is new, start with what a catch-all address is and what it costs you in spam.
• Turning off one address. When one address leaks, you want to stop just that one. Fastmail lets you add the leaked address as an alias and disable it, so mail to it bounces. iCloud+ has no per-address switch, but you can create the leaked address (it uses one of your three) and then delete it: Apple says mail to a deleted address is returned to the sender, even with Allow All on. An iCloud Mail rule can also move that address’s mail to Trash.
• Sending from any address. Fastmail and Migadu document sending from addresses you never created, and Purelymail says you can reply to routed mail as the address it was sent to. For the others, check before you rely on it.
• Mail app access. IMAP with an app password works in almost any mail app. Without it, you’re tied to the host’s own apps or to apps that support its sign-in.
• Limits. Check the caps on domains, addresses per domain, and daily messages. Migadu and MXroute both warn that catch-alls attract spam.
• Price and jurisdiction. Some hosts charge per user and others per account, and a company and its servers may sit in different countries.

Which email providers support catch-all and IMAP

Checked September 25, 2026, on each provider’s help pages. The CatchNone column follows from the IMAP and JMAP access each host documents.

Price, limits, and location (as of September 2026)

Prices are in US dollars before tax, except mailbox.org (euros, VAT included) and Proton Mail (euros, as Proton’s plans page lists them). Zoho’s prices come from the price data behind its pricing page.

The best email provider for your custom domain, by situation

• You and your family use Apple devices: iCloud+. You may already pay for it. One plan covers up to six people, and each person on a shared domain can have up to three active addresses of their own.
• You want to send from any address, run many domains, or use JMAP: Fastmail.
• You run several domains and want the lowest cost: Purelymail, or Migadu if European servers matter and your mail volume is low.
• You already pay for Google Workspace or Zoho Mail: stay, and turn on its catch-all.
• You’ve chosen Proton Mail or Tuta for other reasons: both do catch-all on paid plans, but expect to use their own apps.
• You only need to receive, never send from the domain: free forwarding with Cloudflare Email Routing, if your domain’s DNS is on Cloudflare.
• You want to see which address each message reached, on iPhone, iPad, and Mac: any host here with IMAP or JMAP, read in CatchNone.

Best for Apple users: iCloud+ Custom Email Domain

Custom Email Domain is included in every iCloud+ tier, from $0.99 a month for 50 GB in the US (as of September 2026). You can use up to five custom domains, and Apple’s address guide says each person can have “a total of three active email addresses per domain.” It isn’t available in every country or region, and it needs two-factor authentication and iCloud Mail.

Only the domain owner can turn on the catch-all. On iPhone (iOS 26 or iOS 27), it’s under Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Mail → Custom Email Domain → your domain → Allow All Incoming Messages (Apple’s steps); on the web, it’s Turn On Allow All under icloud.com/icloudplus → Custom Email Domain → your domain.

For mail apps, Apple’s IMAP settings are imap.mail.me.com on port 993 with an app-specific password. The username is usually the name part of your iCloud Mail address, not your custom-domain address. Apple doesn’t document sending from catch-all addresses you haven’t created, so if you need to reply from any address, look at Fastmail, Migadu, or Purelymail. The full walkthrough is in our iCloud+ custom domain and catch-all guide.

Best for control and JMAP: Fastmail

Fastmail’s catch-all is an alias written as *@example.com, added under Settings → My email addresses. You can then type any From address at that domain when you compose, which makes replying from a per-site address easy. A specific alias takes priority over the catch-all. To stop one leaked address, add it as its own alias, then disable it under Settings → Users & Sharing → Aliases → the alias → Show advanced preferences → Disable. Mail to it then bounces. Fastmail’s catch-all help has the exact steps.

By default, mail to anything@shop.example.com is delivered as shop+anything@example.com, as long as the subdomain’s DNS points to Fastmail (the options are under Settings → Domains → Edit → Routing → Manage). Every app needs an app password, and IMAP uses implicit TLS rather than STARTTLS. Fastmail also offers JMAP (RFC 8620), a newer standard than IMAP, through an API token.

The catch is price. Fastmail’s cheapest plan, Basic, has no custom domains and no IMAP, so the real entry point is Individual at $5 a month billed yearly (as of September 2026). Duo costs $8 a month and Family (up to six people) $11 a month, both billed yearly, with a free trial of up to 30 days. If you’re weighing Fastmail’s own alias feature against a domain, see Fastmail Masked Email vs custom domains.

Migadu vs Purelymail vs MXroute: several domains on a budget

In short: Purelymail costs less ($10 a year against $19 for Migadu Micro), has no hard limits on users, domains, or storage, and supports two-factor login with app passwords. Migadu Micro caps your daily mail but adds pattern aliases, Wildcard Sending, and servers in France. MXroute costs more ($59 a year for 10 GB) and discourages catch-alls. All prices here are as of September 2026.

Purelymail’s soft limits mean heavy use can move you to pay-as-you-go pricing. A plain *@example.com routing rule overrides real mailboxes, so if you also keep me@example.com, choose the rule for any address except valid user addresses. There are no wildcard subdomains, and Purelymail says Mail on iPhone fetches new mail on a schedule instead of receiving it by push. The service changed hands in March 2025 and is now run by Add Rabbit LLC in the US, on AWS in northern Virginia.

Migadu charges per account, not per mailbox, with unlimited addresses on every plan and no enforced domain limit (on Micro, Migadu may ask you to upgrade if you add a lot of domains). Micro allows 200 received and 20 sent messages a day. Once you go more than about 25% over the limit, incoming mail is deferred until the next day, and it bounces if you stay over day after day. Migadu doesn’t say whether catch-all spam counts toward that limit, so a busy domain may be better on Mini ($90 a year). It has per-app identities but no two-factor login for mailboxes, and its pricing page lists a 14-day refund window.

MXroute includes unlimited domains and accounts on every plan. It supports catch-all but calls catch-alls “significant spam magnets”, and there’s no autoconfig, so you set up each app by hand.

Already on Google Workspace, Zoho Mail, or IONOS

Google Workspace

Business Starter costs $7 per user per month on a yearly plan, or $8.40 on the flexible plan (as of September 2026). The catch-all is a Gmail routing rule in the Admin console, under Apps → Google Workspace → Gmail → Routing. It changes the envelope recipient for “All inactive and unrecognized accounts” to one mailbox, and changes can take up to 24 hours. Since May 1, 2025, third-party apps must use OAuth or an app password, which needs 2-Step Verification and, Google notes, may be missing on work or other organization accounts.

Does Zoho Mail support IMAP?

Only on paid plans. Zoho’s Forever Free plan covers up to five users on one domain, but its pricing page says “IMAP/ POP/ Active Sync not included”, so you read that mail in Zoho’s own interface, and the free plan is offered only in some Zoho data centers. On paid plans, switch IMAP on first: Settings → Mail Accounts → your address → IMAP, tick IMAP Access, then Save. Paid users on a domain connect to imappro.zoho.com on port 993, though the right server depends on your data center. The catch-all lives in the Admin Console under Domains → your domain → Advanced Settings → Catch-all Address.

IONOS

IONOS supports a catch-all on Mail Basic and Mail Business: you create a *@example.com address, which becomes an ordinary mailbox you can read over IMAP. Its advertised prices are introductory rates on multi-year terms, so check the renewal price. IONOS also resells Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, which bring those services’ sign-in rules with them.

Why Proton Mail, Tuta, and Microsoft limit your choice of mail apps

• Proton Mail offers IMAP only through Bridge, a paid-plan desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux. It runs a mail server that listens only on your computer (127.0.0.1), so a phone or tablet can’t reach it, and it secures that connection with a self-signed certificate. On mobile you use Proton’s own apps.
• Tuta says it “does not support IMAP”, because IMAP would mean storing your mail unencrypted on your device. You use Tuta’s apps or web client.
• Outlook.com stopped accepting passwords for mail apps on September 16, 2024, and Microsoft 365 business mailboxes did the same for IMAP and POP in October 2022. Apps that support Microsoft’s OAuth sign-in, such as Apple Mail, still connect. Apps that only take a password can’t.

If you want a European host that still offers standard IMAP, mailbox.org (Berlin data centers) or Migadu (a Swiss company with servers in France) fits better. Fastmail can also keep your primary data in Amsterdam (an option since August 2026), though its replica, backups, and logs stay in the US.

Free forwarding instead of hosting

If you only need to receive, Cloudflare Email Routing is available on Cloudflare’s free plan. It works only if your domain uses Cloudflare DNS, so you may need to move your nameservers to Cloudflare first (Cloudflare’s setup steps). Its catch-all rule, under Compute → Email Service → Email Routing → Routing Rules, forwards every address on your domain to one inbox you already have. Limits include 200 routing rules per domain and 25 MiB per message (as of September 2026).

The trade-off: Email Routing “does not support sending or replying from your Cloudflare domain”, so replies go out from your destination address.

Gmail’s “Check mail from other accounts” (POP fetching) and Gmailify stopped taking new users after the first quarter of 2026, so guides that have Gmail pull mail from another host no longer work for new setups. Forwarding into Gmail still does; our Gmail and Cloudflare setup guide has the current route.

How to switch hosts without losing mail

1. Set up the new host first: add and verify your domain, then recreate the addresses you use and the catch-all. Our host-by-host catch-all guide has the steps for Workspace, Zoho, IONOS, Proton, Fastmail, iCloud+, and Cloudflare, and where Migadu keeps the setting.
2. Copy your old mail. Fastmail imports under Settings → Migration → Import, Migadu and MXroute recommend imapsync, and Purelymail has a transfer tool. iCloud’s importer doesn’t work with every provider.
3. Change your MX records, and the SPF and DKIM records your new host gives you, at your DNS provider. When leaving iCloud+, remove Apple’s records too.
4. Keep the old account open for at least a week, and rerun the copy from step 2 to pick up mail that arrived after the MX change. RFC 5321 says senders should generally keep retrying for at least four to five days, though Migadu notes that retries most often last up to 48 hours, so keep any gap short. Mail sent during a gap is delayed rather than lost only if the new host already accepts every address, which is why the catch-all goes on in step 1.
5. Update every mail app with the new server and a new app password.

Reading your catch-all mail with CatchNone

CatchNone turns the catch-all mailbox at the host you pick into one list per address, without replacing the host. It reads the mailbox directly from your device, read-only over IMAP (TLS, port 993 by default) or JMAP, and badges each message with the address it reached, including addresses you never created, so a leaked or sold address shows up. Your mail never passes through CatchNone’s servers, and it never changes your DNS. The Free plan covers up to 10 aliases, and Lite and Premium have no limit on aliases on your own domain. CatchNone is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

CatchNone is receive-only by design, so you answer from your host’s app, and the app password you give it has full access even though CatchNone only reads. It signs in with a password, app password, or JMAP token, so OAuth-only Outlook.com and Microsoft 365, Proton Mail Bridge, and hosts with no IMAP, such as Tuta and Zoho’s free plan, can’t be connected. It reads only the inbox, and each check covers the newest 100 messages from the last 30 days, counted before it filters by domain, so a separate catch-all mailbox works better than a busy main inbox, where iCloud+ puts catch-all mail. It imports a message only if its To, Cc, or Bcc names an address on your domain. Marking an alias as not in use is only a label, so block leaked addresses at your host.

If you’d rather not host a domain at all, Premium adds @catchnone.com addresses, with no domain, DNS, or mailbox to set up.

FAQ

Is there a free email provider for a custom domain?

Zoho Mail’s Forever Free plan hosts one domain for up to five users, without IMAP and only in some Zoho data centers. Cloudflare Email Routing is free for a domain on Cloudflare DNS and supports catch-all, but it only forwards, so you can’t reply from your domain. Migadu replaced its free plan with the Micro plan, which costs $19 a year (as of September 2026). In every case, you still pay a registrar for the domain itself (iCloud+ can also buy one for you).

What’s the cheapest good option for one person or a family?

For one person, Purelymail at $10 a year is the cheapest host here with a documented catch-all, followed by iCloud+ at $0.99 a month (as of September 2026). For a family, iCloud+ shares one plan with up to five others, and each person can have up to three addresses on a shared domain; Purelymail and Migadu price per account rather than per person. Fastmail Family costs more ($11 a month billed yearly) but adds JMAP and lets you type any From address at your domain without extra setup. If you’re still deciding whether a domain is worth paying for, read what your own email domain really costs.

Fastmail or iCloud+ for a custom domain?

iCloud+ is cheaper (from $0.99 a month) and already on your Apple devices, but each person gets up to three addresses per domain, and Apple doesn’t document sending from addresses you haven’t created. Fastmail Individual ($5 a month billed yearly, as of September 2026) lets you send from any address at your domain, disable single aliases, and use JMAP. Choose iCloud+ if you mainly need to receive, and Fastmail if you also want to reply from per-site addresses.

Which IMAP email providers allow an app password or JMAP?

iCloud+ and Fastmail require an app password. Purelymail and Zoho’s paid plans take your password, or an app password once two-factor authentication is on; Migadu takes the mailbox password or a per-app identity; and Google Workspace accepts app passwords only where the admin allows them and 2-Step Verification is on. Of these hosts, only Fastmail documents JMAP access.