How can I set up a mail transfer agent (MTA) to go to Google?
What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?
Emailed the PHP developer
What are the steps to reproduce the issue?
Hi, I’ve been using Cloudflare for a few months. I’m a History teacher, not a programmer. As a side project, my wife wanted a gift registry at our site jasonandterry.com. I just realized it doesn’t have a mail server on the site. I tried to set one up, but I found out it’s super complicated. I couldn’t get the DKIM/MX/PTR/Reverse DNS to work. I asked for advice and the recommendation was to use something like Google for personal mail, but I realized the registry can’t send out password resets or email notices. The PHP developer says there’s no update to use Google and I have to configure something called a “Mail Transfer Agent” to get the site to send out password resets. How can I do this in Cloudflare please? Thank you so much.
The PTR/Reverse DNS part is only relevant, if you want to operate your own mail server.
Are you leaning on to someone else’s mail servers (such as e.g. outsourcing that part to Google), then Google will handle that part for you.
Where exactly are you struggling, regarding “DKIM” and “MX”?
Are you having a paid Google Workspace set up, or are we talking about a free email address from Google, ending in “@gmail.com”?
Based on your explanation, it sounds like the person you’re referring to, as the “PHP developer”, is mixing between recommending you to use Google, and suggesting you to set up your own mail server, which would be two separate things.
Cloudflare does not have any products that allows you to send out emails to arbitrary email addresses, as it sounds like you require, considering the mention of “password resets or email notices”.
So how to set up it all up would be something you need to figure out between the (apparently PHP-based) system you’re using that needs to send out the emails, and the email provider you choose to use for the outbound emails.
Thanks for the reply. I was told by Cloudflare community that it would be too difficult as a non-programmer to maintain my own server, so I am paying Google for my email with a custom domain. The developer says the software doesn’t have the capability to add Google as a mail agent, so I need to add it in Cloudflare to the domain settings.
I agree with this. You don’t necessarily have to be a programmer, but I would not recommend operating your own mail server unless you advanced technical knowledge in related areas or are willing to spend hundreds of hours acquiring said knowledge.
It is a cool hobby if you are interested in these kinds of things, but it’s a complete waste of your time if you just want to be able to send email.
That said:
This sounds… strange.
Where are you hosting the website? Windows or Linux? Managed Hosting, a server at home or some form or rented server with root access?
There might be workarounds where you install a “fake” MTA that just forwards the emails submitted on localhost to your google workspace account. I believe this would be much more reasonable than actually operating your own MTA.