You need two separate things, often confused. The sending domainis what your raffle site uses to send order receipts and marketing emails — that’s your Resend setup. The inboxis where customer replies and human conversations land — that’s what this page is about.

Why you need a real inbox

• Customers reply to your order emails — those replies need to reach you, not bounce.
• Cashflows, your bank, your accountant, and the ASA all communicate via email. A info@yourdomain.co.uk inbox at your own domain is required for all of them.
• When you apply for a Meta gambling-ad authorisation, the domain email is part of the trust signal Meta uses.

Option 1 — Google Workspace (recommended)

£6/user/month, professional, integrates with everything. Set up:

1. Sign up at workspace.google.com with your business email goal (e.g. info@yourdomain.co.uk).
2. Verify domain ownership — add a TXT record at your registrar. Takes 1–4 hours to propagate.
3. Switch your MX records to Google’s (5 records). This is what tells the world “mail for yourdomain.co.uk goes here”.
4. Wait an hour for DNS propagation, then test by emailing your inbox from a different email account. It should arrive in your Workspace Gmail.
5. Set up your signature and the standard support@, info@, winners@ aliases.

Option 2 — Microsoft 365

Similar pricing, similar features, slightly better for Word/Excel workflows. Same setup pattern — verify domain via TXT, switch MX to Microsoft’s, configure inbox. We have no preference; whichever you’re more comfortable with.

Option 3 — Mail forwarding (cheap, fragile)

Most registrars offer free email forwarding: any email sent to info@yourdomain.co.uk is forwarded to your existing personal Gmail. Works for inbound, but:

• You can’t send fromyour domain address — your replies will go from your personal Gmail with the customer seeing the wrong “From”.
• Forwarded emails fail SPF/DKIM/DMARC alignment more often, increasing the chance customer replies land in your spam.
• Most challenger banks reject a forwarded address during onboarding.

Fine for day-0 prototyping; replace with Workspace before launch.

How the inbox and the sending domain coexist

Both must point at your domain. The MX records (controlling who delivers mail to your inbox) and the DKIM/SPF records (controlling who can send from your domain) are differentrecords. Workspace and Resend coexist happily — Workspace adds MX + DKIM-for-receiving, Resend adds SPF + DKIM-for-sending. They don’t conflict.

Order to set up:

1. Buy domain.
2. Connect domain to your raffle site (so site works).
3. Set up Google Workspace (inbox).
4. Set up Resend (sending). It uses the same domain, different DNS records.

The aliases to set up

• info@ — your general contact, on the footer and legal pages.
• support@— what you put on the order confirmation email’s “need help?” line.
• winners@ — winners reply here with their delivery address / bank details.
• privacy@ — required for GDPR subject access requests.
• noreply@ — for transactional sends. Optional, and honestly less professional than sending from orders@ and asking customers to reply if they need help.

All can route to the same inbox via Workspace aliases (free up to ~30 aliases per user).

Related: Email Inbox Setup (Resend sending) · Buy Your Domain · Register Your Company.