Top all-time · #1839
Forward Email
Company blog · forwardemail.net/en/blog · on HN as forwardemailprogrammingsecurity
Forward Email is the company blog at forwardemail.net, writing about programming and security. Since 2017, 39 different Hacker News readers have linked it 103 times, most often “Free DNS-based email-forwarding service built on Node.js”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Often recommended · 23 of 34 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Forward Email, an email forwarding service, as a cheap or free way to route custom-domain mail to Gmail. They praise its open, transparent site, FAQ and privacy policy.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 34 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Get free email forwarding for custom domains. Send & receive as you@yourdomain.com with unlimited aliases, 10GB storage & 100% open-source security.
Most-linked posts?
- Free DNS-based email-forwarding service built on Node.js14 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2018-08-14
- /11 people · 42 mentions · first linked 2018-06-25
- Show HN: Forward Email – Open-Source Quantum Safe Encrypted Email Service5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-01-18
- Email service using encrypted SQLite mailboxes2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-14
- Free, Encrypted, and Open-Source Email Forwarding Service for Custom Domains2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-10-28
What Hacker News says?
I don't store their emails, I use forwardemail.net and they have a pretty reasonable privacy policy: https://forwardemail.net/en/privacy Some people in my family use it as their main address, others don't, it's entirely their call. But yes, ultimately I control the domain and could be nefarious if I wanted to. But there's a certain baseline level of trust as a family, I'm reasonably certain my wife won't poison the…
Comment linking /en/privacy
on “.name Termination”Submitted Why email startups fail as a story · 141 points
HN discussionI just released webhook support! See https://forwardemail.net/free-email-webhooks and https://forwardemail.net/en/faq#do-you-support-webhooks .
Comment linking /en/faq
on “Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?”Submitted Show HN: Forward Email – Open-Source Quantum Safe Encrypted Email Service as a story · 35 points
HN discussionhttps://forwardemail.net
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?”Submitted Forward Email: Technical Whitepaper [pdf] as a story · 13 points
HN discussionA customer wanted me to help them integrate the API I built for https://forwardemail.net with it. They have client-side bundles that threw errors and the pages rendered blank.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?”Submitted PayPal's 11-Year API Disaster: We Built Workarounds While They Ignored Us as a story · 11 points
HN discussionhttps://lad.js.org used to build https://forwardemail.net
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?”Submitted Self-Hosted Email (100% open source, privacy focused) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionhttps://forwardemail.net if you are just forwarding domain aliases and want to switch off
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?”Submitted Free DNS-based email-forwarding service built on Node.js as a story · 7 points
HN discussionyou could just use our /dev/null approach at https://forwardemail.net with "!" prefixed wildcard alias for this haha
Comment linking /
on “foo@bar.com”Submitted Show HN: Free, Open-Source, Encrypted Email Forwarding Service as a story · 7 points
HN discussionToo bad it is broken: > Your message wasn't delivered to demo@bye.fyi due to an error. > > The response was: > > write EPROTO 140451178456960:error:14094438:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:tlsv1 alert internal > error:../deps/openssl/openssl/ssl/record/rec_layer_s3.c:1544:SSL alert number 80 > > > If you need help, forward this to support@forwardemail.net or visit https://forwardemail.net .
Comment linking /
on “Heyyyyyyyyyyyy.com”Submitted Free, Encrypted, and Open-Source Email Forwarding Service for Custom Domains as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFormerly worked with DuckDuckGo My advice: Install ungoogled-chromium: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium Install these extensions: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/ilGur1132/Smart-HTTPS There is also a Chromium extension that lets you install from Chrome Web Store: https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store Set duckduckgo.com as your default search engine with a blank home page.…
Comment linking /
on “DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers”Submitted Free, encrypted, open-source email forwarding service, with self-hosting option as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI was recently looking for an email forwarding service to use for a few months, initially I was searching Github for a decent OSS project that could do this for me, which is when I found your repo for Forward Email. The repo code was exactly what I was looking for, but after browsing your site and noticing how open and transparent it all was, I was instantly sold and bought the Enhanced package. So ultimately, your…
Comment linking /en/open-startup
on “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell”Submitted ForwardEmail – Free (open source), private, and secure email for custom domains as a story · 2 points
HN discussionForward Email is doing several thousand per month now just one year in. Site: https://forwardemail.net Open Startup: https://forwardemail.net/open-startup
Comment linking /open-startup
on “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell”Submitted Forward Email: Free Email Forwarding for Custom Domains as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've been very happy with https://forwardemail.net but I'm planning to migrate over to Cloudflare's email forwarding service if it ever comes out of beta or I get accepted as a beta tester.
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on “Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying”Submitted Forward Email – Free Email Forwarding Service for Custom Domains as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://forwardemail.net/ seems like a decent option for forwarding email from custom domain to @gmail.com (or any other free mail host).
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on “Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying”Submitted Email service using encrypted SQLite mailboxes as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis looks a lot like a direct clone of https://forwardemail.net/ , except that ImprovMX isn't open source. I wonder which came first? I like simplelogin.io (also open source, so can be selfhosted) because the aliases can be used to send and receive, though you do have to set the domain up on their platform first.
Comment linking /
on “Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying”Oh neat, glad to hear about this. Do they have any blogs/content about why to do this for people like the parent of this thread? While their FAQ seemed great to me, I'm someone already familiar with why this is important and generally how to do it. I could see it being overwhelming to someone just considering the idea. https://forwardemail.net/en/faq#table-of-contents
Comment linking /en/faq
on “YouTube suspended my account for posting DeFi hackathon video”I can vouch for Forward Email ( https://forwardemail.net/ ). It's easy to set up if you have your own domain, you can continue using Google Mail if you like (for both receiving and sending), their message size limits are higher than Gmail's, you can set up multiple aliases and (optional) catch-all addresses, and they offer a free tier if cost is an issue. The big advantage of the reasonably-priced paid tier is priva…
Comment linking /
on “YouTube suspended my account for posting DeFi hackathon video”You will almost certainly be able to continue to use forwardemail.net as your SMTP forwarding host for sending traffic. That means that you do either one of two things: - keep using forwardemail.net SMTP credentials in all your e-mail clients, such as snappy. Only point those clients to your own server for IMAP4 access (accessing the mailboxes where mail is flowing into your own server). - or else, point SMTP to you…
Comment linking /en/faq
on “Mox – modern, secure, all-in-one email server”
