BYOD — Bring Your Own Domain to Mail.sb

BYOD — Bring Your Own Domain to Mail.sb

One $2 activation (promo, normally $10 — until 2026-07-01), per account, not per domain. No monthly domain fee. Use it for yourself, or open registration to the public and keep 80% of whatever you charge.

BYOD plugs your own domain into the same mail stack that runs @mail.sb itself. The same outbound IPs, the same DKIM signing infrastructure, the same delivery reputation — only the address says [email protected] instead of [email protected].

The deal, in two numbers

• $2, once. Promotional activation fee, down from the regular $10, valid until 2026-07-01. Non-refundable, charged the moment your domain is approved. This is a one-time, account-wide fee — not per domain. Once you've paid activation on your first domain, any further BYOD domains you add to the same account are free. After 2026-07-01 the rate returns to $10 for new accounts; the per-account rule still applies.
• 80 / 20. If you turn the domain public and resell mailboxes, you keep 80% of every markup dollar; Mail.sb keeps 20% to cover Stripe and operations. Earnings land in an append-only ledger and are withdrawable on request.

Two modes

Private. Your domain, your mailboxes, standard plan prices. Buy seats for yourself, your family, your team — nobody else can register on the domain.

Public. Same domain, but registration is open. You set a flat markup per plan and an optional length-based premium so short usernames (x@, ab@) cost more than longer ones. Stripe takes the card; Mail.sb does the billing math; your share lands in your earnings balance.

Real mail, real keys

BYOD domains are not aliases. Each one gets its own DKIM key pair generated on the server and published in DNS. SPF and DMARC are configured with sane defaults the day the domain goes live. MX, autodiscover, and autoconfig are pre-set so any modern client (Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird) self-configures from a single email address.

Setup is a wizard, not a manual

After approval the dashboard hands you a BIND zone file you can copy or download — minimal for a "just-make-it-work" Cloudflare paste, or full if you want every record including the ones you can ignore. The verify step queries DNS live and shows you each record as expected vs. found, in green for matches and red for misses, so you know exactly which line to retype.

Active domains stay on the dashboard with a live DNS health indicator (Healthy, Unhealthy, Unchecked) and a Refresh button — drift becomes visible without paging anyone.

Owner controls and a safe exit

As the owner you see every mailbox on your domain — useful for support, billing reconciliation, and making sure no one is squatting on a name. You manage your own mailboxes the usual way through the same UI.

Want out? File a 30-day closure notice from the dashboard at any time. Mailbox data is preserved and not auto-deleted; we'll work with you on what to migrate, transfer, or simply turn off.

The honest fine print

BYOD domains aren't @mail.sb. That distinction matters in a few practical ways, and the post wouldn't be honest if it skipped them.

• The address isn't ours. A buyer of [email protected] is using your domain, not Mail.sb's. If your registration lapses, or you decide to close it, the address goes with it.
• 30-day advance notice on close. When you file a closure with us, every mailbox holder on your domain gets at least 30 days of email notice to migrate. Data isn't auto-deleted — the wind-down is something we walk through with you, not a guillotine.
• Delivery infrastructure is still ours. The stack that moves messages — DKIM, SPF, MX, anti-spam, IMAP, SMTP — is the same one running @mail.sb. Buyers get our delivery reputation; the only thing that's "yours" is the domain itself, and the social and operational stewardship of it.
• Buyers can spot a BYOD address. Public BYOD domains carry a ★ marker in the /mail picker so they're visually distinct from official @mail.sb. We aren't going to disguise the difference — better nobody is surprised later.
• Choose your domain like a name you'll keep. The point of BYOD is that the address persists for as long as the domain does. Pick a domain you actually intend to renew, and the trust model takes care of itself.

This shape is deliberate. Mail.sb would rather BYOD owners and BYOD buyers go in clear-eyed than over-promise and disappoint either side. Most domains stay live for years, and most owners renew on autopilot — the fine print exists for the small percentage of cases where they don't.

Who BYOD is for

• Founders and small teams who want [email protected] without running a mail server.
• Owners of community or niche TLD domains who want to monetize signups without standing up infrastructure, payments, or DKIM.
• Anyone who has watched a per-domain monthly bill quietly grow and would prefer a one-time fee.

Getting started

You need an active mail.sb mailbox first — that's the account BYOD runs from and the one your earnings credit to. Submit the domain in the BYOD panel at i.mail.sb; Mail.sb staff review each one before activation. Pay the $2 promo fee on your first domain (or nothing on subsequent domains — activation is per account), follow the setup wizard, and your domain is live.

— The Mail.sb Team