They don't tell you in the startup courses that you'll spend more time wrestling with DNS records than actually building product.
My journey started simple enough: GoDaddy domain (next time, Namecheap—I've learned). Cloudflare for DNS management and email routing because, let's be real, their free tier is absurdly generous and Email Workers is sitting there like a future power-up I haven't unlocked yet.
The Gmail Alias Experiment
The sending part? That's where it got spicy.
Tried the Gmail alias route first. Brilliant idea in theory: use Resend's SMTP, send as support@mistory.app from Gmail. Except Gmail's sender signature still screamed "gmail.com" and every reply landed in spam. Cool. Very professional.
Resend vs Brevo: The Great Consolidation
Resend worked technically—clean API, dev-friendly, all that jazz. But here's the thing: I'm already using Brevo for the vehicle marketplace email workflows. Why juggle two platforms when one does both transactional and support?
The Final Setup
The final setup is almost embarrassingly simple: Cloudflare routes incoming support emails to my Gmail. When I need to reply, I fire off a one-off transactional email through Brevo. It's not elegant. It's not scalable. But it's free and it works.
This is MVP life. Someone emails support? I see it. I respond. The email doesn't bounce or hit spam. Mission accomplished.
Incoming: Cloudflare Email Routing → Gmail
Outgoing: Brevo Transactional API → Customer
Cost: $0/month
When to Upgrade
When we're making actual money, sure—upgrade to Front, build a custom support portal, hire a team. But right now? The most expensive thing should be customer acquisition, not email infrastructure.
DNS taught me this: perfect is the enemy of shipped. And shipped pays the bills.
The best infrastructure is the one that works right now, not the one you'll need when you're at scale. Because if you never ship, you'll never get to scale.
P.S. – If you're reading this because you're also in email hell, I see you. It gets better. Eventually.