How do I get a real email address on my Shopify store's domain?

You point the MX record of your store's domain at a mail host, create info@yourstore.com and support@yourstore.com as real mailboxes there, and set that address as your Shopify sender email. It does not affect the order confirmations and shipping notices Shopify sends. Those go out over Shopify's own servers and are authenticated with CNAME records; the MX record only decides where mail arriving at your domain goes. The two do not collide. The rest of this page is the detail, the order to do it in, and the two records where you do have to be careful.

What Shopify actually provides

Shopify is direct about this in its own help centre: "Email hosting isn't provided on Shopify. You need to use a third-party email hosting service." What you get instead is forwarding, and only if you bought the domain through Shopify:

• Unlimited forwarding addresses on a Shopify-managed domain. "You can set up an unlimited number of custom domain email addresses that forward to an email account hosted by a third-party."
• Each one points at exactly one destination. "Each store email address can forward to only one third-party email address."
• Nothing on a third-party domain. "If you use a third-party domain, then you can't set up email forwarding addresses from your Shopify admin."

And the limitation that matters, in Shopify's words: "You can't reply to customer email messages from your custom domain email address unless you use a third-party email hosting service." A forward is a redirect. It has no mailbox, no sent folder and no identity, so "a reply to a forwarded email displays the forwarding email address as the sender, not the custom domain email address."

A forwarder and a mailbox are not the same thing

Where your customer mail goes today

Three flows end up in the same place, and it is usually a personal Gmail account.

1. Your contact page. Shopify: "Your contact form sends all submissions to your store's sender email address." That address is set at Settings → Notifications.
2. Replies to order emails. The sender email is the From line on order confirmations and shipping notices, so when a buyer hits reply, that is where it lands. With forwarding, Shopify says: "If they reply to your store's emails, then their message forwards to the personal email you configured in your email forwarding settings."
3. People who just write to you because info@ is printed on the packing slip or the invoice.

So returns, "is this back in stock", a wholesale enquiry and your mother all arrive in one inbox, and every answer goes out as yourname@gmail.com. That is the problem. It is not a sending problem — Shopify's sending is fine — it is that the store's addresses were never real.

Will this break the emails Shopify sends my customers?

No, provided you leave two things alone. The reason is that the records do different jobs.

One thing genuinely does stop, and it is the point of the exercise. Shopify: "Email forwarding configured within the domain itself on Shopify will be impacted once MX records are added to domain DNS settings." The forwarding is what you are replacing. Create the mailboxes before you move the MX record and there is no gap.

Doing it, step by step

You can do all the DNS work from the Shopify admin if the domain is Shopify-managed: Settings → Domains, click the domain, then Manage in the DNS settings section, then Add custom record. Shopify supports A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT and SRV records there. If you bought the domain elsewhere, do it at that registrar instead.

1. Write down your Shopify sender email. Settings → Notifications, the Sender email field. Whatever it says — info@yourstore.com, orders@yourstore.com — that is the address customers reply to, and it is the address you must have a mailbox for at the end of this.
2. Add your domain to FounderMail and prove it is yours. Adding it issues a token; publish it as a TXT record named _foundermail. (If a DNS panel refuses names beginning with an underscore, a TXT record on the domain itself is accepted too.) Nothing about the store changes at this point — no mail moves, the forwarding still works.
3. Create the mailboxes. The sender email from step 1 first, then whatever else the store needs: support@, returns@, wholesale@. Mailboxes are unlimited on every plan including the free one, so there is no reason to economise. Each one gets its own password for a mail client.
4. Switch the MX record. Delete any existing MX records on the domain and add one: host @, value smtp.foundermail.mx, priority 10. This is the moment Shopify's forwarding stops and the mailboxes start. Shopify says DNS changes there can take up to 24 hours; in practice it is usually minutes, and the domain page re-checks every ten seconds. Shopify notes that on some domain types bought through them you may not be able to add MX records yourself, in which case their support has to do it.
5. Add SPF. A TXT record on the domain itself reading v=spf1 include:foundermail.mx ~all. If the domain already has an SPF record, do not add a second — merge the includes into the existing one: v=spf1 include:foundermail.mx include:whatever.example ~all.
6. Check DMARC. If _dmarc already has a record, leave it. If it does not, add one TXT record at _dmarc: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourstore.com. Create that mailbox too if you want the reports.
7. Enable sending on the domain. On the domain's Sending tab. It issues three DKIM CNAME records that are unique to your domain, plus two records on a bounce subdomain. Publish those. They sit alongside Shopify's CNAMEs; they are at different names and neither knows about the other.
8. Read the mail. In the dashboard at app.foundermail.mx, or add the mailbox to your phone: IMAP imap.foundermail.mx port 993 SSL/TLS, SMTP smtp.foundermail.mx port 587 STARTTLS, username the full address.
9. Send yourself a test order. Place a real order on the store, confirm the confirmation email still arrives and still comes from your address, then reply to it from the customer's side and confirm it lands in the mailbox. That is the whole system checked in two minutes.

Old mail that was forwarded into Gmail can stay in Gmail. If you want it here too, open the mailbox, choose Import mail from another provider and pick Gmail: the importer copies it across in the background. The migration guide has the details.

What you get that a forwarder cannot give you

Any mailbox host fixes the "reply as yourself" problem. The reason to look at FounderMail specifically is what happens when the same buyer writes twice.

• The inbox groups by customer, not by address. If Dana asks about sizing on info@ on Monday and chases her refund on support@ on Thursday, that is one customer with two threads in one place, not two inboxes to cross-reference. It is the default grouping; you can switch to grouping by mailbox or by date when you want the conventional view.
• One shared inbox over every address. You are not checking four mailboxes. Every address the store has is one list, and the rail narrows it to one address when you want that.
• Enough workflow for two or three people. Assign a thread to whoever is handling it, snooze it until the supplier answers, leave an internal note on it that the customer never sees, label it, mark it Done. A new message from the customer reopens a Done thread; your own replies do not.
• A page per customer. Every address they have written from, every thread, your notes about them. Useful when a returning buyer opens with "as I said last time".
• Aliases, on every plan. A receive-only address that drops into an existing mailbox, so hello@, info@ and contact@ can all land in one place without three inboxes to check. Unlimited, Free included. There is no catch-all.

What it costs

Priced per account, not per person or per mailbox. The meter is mail received per month; mail the spam filter judges to be junk is not counted against it.

Most single-operator stores fit inside Free indefinitely. The two reasons to leave it are volume and headcount: Free includes twelve months of mail and seats one person, so the moment a second person answers the store's mail, that is Plus at $4. Plus carries Free's mail allowances deliberately — it buys seats, room and permanent retention, not more mail.

When this is not the answer

• You want a helpdesk. There is no ticket number, no SLA timer, no macro library, no CSAT survey. If you need those, buy a helpdesk.
• You want your orders next to the email. There is no Shopify integration and no app in the Shopify app store. FounderMail sees the mail that arrives at your domain and nothing about your catalogue, carts or orders. A customer's page shows their mail, not their order history. (Any record you hold about a customer can be pushed onto their contact through the API and shown beside their mail, but that is your engineering, not an install.)
• Your problem is store chat. Shopify Inbox handles conversations that start in the chat widget on the storefront. That is a different channel and this does not replace it.
• You need email, calendar and documents as one purchase. Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 is the honest answer, at a price per person.
• You are happy as you are. If you are one person, the store is a side project and replying from a Gmail address costs you nothing, the forwarder is genuinely fine. Come back when a second person starts answering.

Start free — no card, unlimited mailboxes on your store's domain, and the MX record takes two minutes to point back if you change your mind.

Sources

Shopify's documentation, read on 29 September 2026. Check it before acting; help pages move.

• Shopify: Setting up email hosting for a Shopify-managed domain or a third-party domain — "Email hosting isn't provided on Shopify"; the MX-breaks-forwarding note.
• Shopify: Setting up email forwarding for a Shopify-managed custom domain — unlimited forwards, one destination each, replies show the forwarding address, not available on third-party domains.
• Shopify: Editing the DNS settings for your Shopify-managed domain — the admin path, the six record types, the 24-hour propagation note and the warning about the storefront's records.
• Shopify: Setting up your email — store email versus sender email, and where replies go.
• Shopify: Displaying your store's sending email — the CNAME records, the DMARC minimum, and the store+123@shopifyemail.com rewrite.
• Shopify: Add a Contact Us page to your store — contact form submissions go to the sender email address.

FounderMail's own records and allowances are in Domains and DNS and Analytics, plans and billing.