I set up an email address on my own domain, and the email service cost nothing

Why I wanted this email address

I recently bought a domain: mingjunzhu.com.

After buying it, I wanted an email address on it. The reason is simple: an address ending in your own domain looks more like something proper that belongs to you. When I leave contact details from now on, zhumingjun@mingjunzhu.com is a better fit than a personal mailbox.

I chose the free edition of Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Mail. The email service itself is free; buying the domain costs money. The whole process was done with help from DeepSeek.

Setup

1. Activate the mailbox

After activating the free edition of Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Mail, I got a few basic details:

• Region: China East 1 (Hangzhou), mainland China site
• Mail address: https://qiye.aliyun.com
• Admin account: postmaster@ my domain
• Free edition limits: 50 users, 250 GB total storage, 2 GB company drive

2. Point the domain

After logging in to the mail admin console, I saw "DNS status: not in effect".

I clicked "Set up DNS". The system said the domain uses Alibaba Cloud (Wanwang) DNS and that mail DNS records needed to be set up. I then clicked "One-click add mail DNS records".

The system said DNS records usually take effect within 10 minutes. There was also a warning on the page: the DNS records must be set up and take effect within 7 days, or the system will reclaim the mail domain.

After waiting about 10 minutes, I clicked "Refresh status", and it turned green: "DNS in effect".

3. Test sending and receiving

After setting the initial admin password, I logged in to https://qiye.aliyun.com.

I sent an email to my personal mailbox, replied from there, and the reply arrived in the Alibaba mailbox. External sending and receiving worked.

4. Create a staff account

In the admin console, the path is: Users and Groups > Users > New account.

I created the staff account zhumingjun@mingjunzhu.com under the name Mingjun Zhu.

5. Set up the iPhone's built-in Mail app

When setting it up on the iPhone, I hit a problem: verification kept failing.

After some digging, I found that the "Block third-party clients" option under "Access policy" in the admin console was turned on. After turning it off, the iPhone setup succeeded.

The settings:

I could not find a "third-party client password" option in the free edition console, so this time I used the main mailbox password.

Result

• DNS records in effect
• Admin account sends and receives external mail normally
• iPhone built-in Mail set up and working

Confirmed: the mailbox works.

A few takeaways

1. The free edition of Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Mail can be used to set up email on a personal domain. The email service costs nothing; buying the domain does.
2. "One-click add mail DNS records" sets up DNS automatically, so you don't have to enter records one by one.
3. If the iPhone's built-in Mail keeps failing verification, first check whether "Access policy" in the console blocks third-party clients.
4. I'm not doing anything about the free edition expiring for now; I'll deal with it then. I'm not creating other staff accounts for now either.

Notes

• This is a record of my own practice; the setup was done with help from DeepSeek.
• The server settings come from Alibaba Cloud's official configuration guide, not from my own testing.
• Admin accounts, passwords and similar details have been removed.