How do I setup an email address for my website?

[Shaun5617]

I have made a website that I am hosting from my own PC. I was wondering if there was anyway to make a email address for my site([e-mail]) and not have to pay for a mail server. If possible I would like to use outlook express to retrieve the emails.

Please Help!

[Romeo]

Hi Shaun, and welcome to WebMasterWorld.

If you want to receive mail for your domain "example.com", you need a mail server, which accepts mail for "example.com".
Technically, this could be a mail server on your own server box, or anywhere else.

The hard part is finding a foreign server's owner who is willing to configure his server to accept mails for your domain "example.com" and handle the further delivery to you. It may be even harder to find such a service for 'free'.

If you have found such a remote mail server, you just need to set up an MX record within the DNS zone of your domain that points to that mail server and negotiate with the server's owner, what should further be done with incoming mails, in your case perhaps setting up a POP3 mailbox to put your mails into.

If you don't find such a mail server elsewhere, you would have to build one on your own server. This would not be 'free' either, because you have to invest own work efforts to do this.
If you decide to do this, make sure that you build it in a way that it cannot be abused as a public spam relay.

Regards,
R.