Porkbun bundles free email forwarding with every domain and, unlike Namecheap, it works whether the domain is registered at Porkbun or somewhere else. Twenty aliases per domain at no cost; $3 per address per year beyond that. Point the domain’s MX records at fwd1.porkbun.com and fwd2.porkbun.com, add the rules in the Porkbun dashboard, and mail routes through to whatever inbox the operator already uses.
The forwarding is receive-only. No SMTP relay for outbound, no catch-all, no wildcard. Sending from the custom-domain address is a separate product (Porkbun’s paid hosted email at $3/month per mailbox) or a dedicated transactional sender.
(For a category overview, see the email forwarding services roundup.)
Where Porkbun forwarding fits in a WordPress stack
Porkbun forwarding solves the inbound half of the domain-matched-address problem: [email protected] reaches the Gmail or Outlook inbox the operator already runs. It sits next to a dedicated sending service (Postmark, SMTP2GO, Mailgun) that handles WordPress’s transactional traffic on the outbound side. Different DNS records, different traffic directions, one shared domain.
The distinctive slot is the “registered anywhere” part. Namecheap’s forwarding requires the domain to sit on Namecheap DNS; Cloudflare Email Routing requires Cloudflare as the authoritative nameserver. An operator whose domain lives at a third registrar (a GoDaddy leftover, a Squarespace-absorbed Google Domains legacy, a Gandi or Hover holding) can point MX records at Porkbun without moving the registration and pay nothing for up to twenty addresses across every domain in the account.
Setup
For a domain using Porkbun’s nameservers, enable forwarding at Account → Domain Management → Email icon → Email Forwarding; the MX records are added automatically. For a domain whose DNS lives elsewhere, add the two MX records at the external DNS host:
| Type | Host | Value | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| MX | @ |
fwd1.porkbun.com |
10 |
| MX | @ |
fwd2.porkbun.com |
20 |
Any existing MX records for the same host must be deleted first, or the domain will split-brain between the previous mail server and Porkbun. A domain already using Google Workspace or Fastmail MX cannot layer Porkbun forwarding on top; the operator has to pick one inbound path.
Limitations
Twenty-alias cap. Free forwarding covers twenty addresses per domain. Beyond that, $3/address/year, which is reasonable for a handful of extras and expensive as an aliasing habit. Operators who want dozens of aliases per domain are better served by Forward Email (unlimited on the free tier) or the dedicated aliasing services (SimpleLogin, addy.io).
No catch-all, no wildcard. Porkbun’s knowledge base states explicitly that wildcard or catch-all forwarding addresses are not supported. Every alias must be enumerated. This is a real difference from Namecheap and Cloudflare, both of which support a catch-all destination for unmatched addresses.
No SMTP sending. Forwarding is one-directional. Replies from Gmail or Outlook show the personal inbox, not the custom-domain address. Sending as the custom domain requires either Porkbun’s paid hosted email or a transactional relay configured through a mailer plugin.
No SRS or DKIM signing documented. Porkbun’s knowledge base does not describe SRS (envelope-sender rewriting) or DKIM signatures on forwarded mail. Forwarded messages may fail SPF or DKIM alignment at the destination when the original sender’s DMARC policy is strict, a class of intermittent deliverability problem Cloudflare, ImprovMX, and Forward Email document explicit protection against.
No forwarding API. The Porkbun v3 API covers domains, DNS records, SSL certificates, and hosted-email passwords, but forwarding rules are dashboard-only. Programmatic alias management is not available.
The verdict
For a WordPress operator whose domain is not on Cloudflare and not registered at Namecheap, and whose need is a handful of role addresses rather than aliasing per vendor, Porkbun’s free forwarding is the least-friction path. It works on any domain, requires no monthly subscription, and coexists cleanly with a transactional sending stack on the same domain.
For higher-volume forwarding, catch-all support, SRS-protected deliverability, or SMTP send-as, Forward Email at $3/month or ImprovMX at $9/month cover the same ground with fewer of Porkbun’s ceilings. Porkbun’s forwarding is a registrar-adjacent convenience: free, functional, and honestly labelled about what it does and doesn’t do.