Does Shopify host business email, or only forward it?

What Shopify gives you free: forwarding for incoming mail

When you buy or transfer a domain through Shopify, you can create an unlimited number of forwarding email addresses for free. Forwarding means mail sent to a branded address — info@, support@, orders@, as many as you need — is automatically redirected to an inbox you already check, like your personal Gmail. Buying or transferring the domain into Shopify is what makes forwarding available, and you then add each address yourself; the domain step sits in the launch sequence we walk through in the getting-started guide.

There is one condition: this only works on a Shopify-managed domain. If your domain is registered somewhere else and merely connected to your store, you can't set up email forwarding addresses from your Shopify admin. Your registrar might offer forwarding itself — Shopify doesn't promise that it does — or you can transfer the domain into Shopify so the admin can manage it.

Why forwarding isn't a real mailbox

Forwarding only moves incoming mail. It never gives you a place to log in, read, and reply as you@yourstore.com.

That gap has a visible consequence. Until you connect a hosting service, any reply you send goes out from whatever inbox you actually read the message in — so the customer sees your personal Gmail address, not your branded one.

Hosting, SSL, and the CDN all come with your Shopify plan; email hosting is the one piece that doesn't — see what a Shopify site includes out of the box. That gap covers mail you write yourself; the automatic order confirmations Shopify sends take their From address from a separate Sender email setting.

How to get a real you@yourstore.com inbox

To send and receive from your branded address, you connect a third-party email host to your domain. On a Shopify-managed domain, the admin supports two directly as of October 2026: Zoho Mail and Google Workspace. Any other provider works too — and so do those two if your domain is registered elsewhere; you just set it up manually by editing your DNS settings using that provider's own instructions. On a Shopify-managed domain, check what a full DNS reset deletes before you use it.

Shopify doesn't recommend one path over another, so this is our editorial call: free forwarding is enough if you only need to receive mail at a branded address and replying from your own inbox is acceptable. If you need to genuinely send as you@yourstore.com — for a team, or a more professional impression — you want hosting.

Zoho Mail has a free tier in select data centers (up to 5 users, 5 GB each, custom email for one domain, but no IMAP or POP, so no desktop mail client; from the sixth user everyone moves to a paid plan), while Google Workspace is paid per user, per month.

Is Shopify Messaging (formerly Shopify Email) a business email address?

No — despite the near-identical former name, it is a different product. Shopify describes Shopify Messaging as "Shopify Messaging, formerly known as Shopify Email" — a tool for sending marketing campaigns to your subscribers from the admin, not a mailbox for one-to-one correspondence with customers or suppliers.

Sending those campaigns from your own domain is a separate job from forwarding, and it runs on the DNS records Shopify Messaging needs. For the campaign work itself — segments, flows, deliverability — see our guide to Klaviyo email marketing on Shopify.