Custom domains on HEY

2024 Update: I no longer use HEY

After my post about de-Googling, a few people asked about my custom domain email set-up with HEY.

Custom domains have been a hot topic since HEY’s launch as they weren’t supported until HEY for Work was released. HEY for Work is a separate plan to their personal email offering and costs $12 per user per month.

If you have a few email addresses running on custom domains the cost quickly adds up. The outlay might not be worth it if the addresses aren’t used much.

HEY for Work’s strength is in collaboration. I’m using it for an upcoming project and those features are brilliant.

So, if you

1. Like the HEY interface
2. Have a personal account
3. Have other custom domains you want to use through HEY

What can you do?

Forwarding + SMTP

The solution is in two parts.

Firstly, most email providers (except hyper-secure options like Proton Mail), let you forward incoming email to another address In this case, that’s your personal HEY account.

The second part is relatively new: HEY now supports SMTP. That means your personal HEY account can ‘send as’ an external email address.

I’m running three custom domains on Fastmail and these are all forwarded to my personal HEY account. Now that HEY supports SMTP, I can now send emails through HEY from my external email addresses.

It’s a pretty useful feature for anyone who wants to use custom domains but doesn’t need the other features of HEY for Work. More details over on the HEY website.