Forward Email Arvostelua 170

Over two years ago, I switched from my web hosting service's MailChannels based email to Forward Email's Enhanced Protection plan. After switching, the amount of legitimate emails blocked dropped from numerous with MailChannels to essentially none with Forward Email. The very few that are blocked are quickly diagnosed because they provide deliverability log access.

The Forward Email documentation is excellent which made migrating to their service, using their APIs, and self-service very easy. On the few occasions that I needed support, they were very responsive and helpful.

I highly recommend Forward Email. Their features, reliability, documentation, and support are well worth the price.

대한민국 업체 및 사용자를 타깃으로 하는 곳은 사용하지 않기를 권해드립니다.

저희는 언론사를 운영하며 약 1년 가까이 보도자료와 업무용 이메일을 수신하는 서비스로 Forward Email을 이용하였습니다.
그러나 지난주부터 대한민국 이메일 서비스의 대다수를 차지하고 있는 @naver.com을 스팸 이용자로 단정하며 아무런 통보 없이 저희 계정을 폐쇄하였습니다.
그 과정에서 대한민국 국회의원, 게임, 국내 스포츠 단체 등 보도자료 및 비즈니스 이메일을 수신하지 못하였고 이로 인한 업무 공백이 발생하였습니다.
이는 대한민국에서 업무를 하지 말라는 선언과 다름이 없습니다.
또한 naver.com을 스팸으로 규정하면서도 Naver Pay 결제를 지원한다는 점이 아이러니합니다.
한국어 서비스를 제공하고 있는 이 업체에 깊은 우려를 표하며 대한민국과 관련한 비즈니스를 하시려는 분들은 이 업체를 이용하지 마시기 바랍니다.

저희는 카드사에 클레임을 제기한 상태이며 향후 기사를 통해 이 업체에 대한 우려를 전할 예정입니다.

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We recommend that you refrain from using it if you are targeting Korean companies and users.

We operate a media company and have used Forward Email to receive press releases and business emails for nearly a year.
However, last week, @naver.com, which accounts for the majority of Korean email services, was deemed a spammer and our account was closed without notice.
As a result, we were unable to receive press releases and business emails from Korean National Assembly members, game companies, and domestic sports organizations, resulting in a business interruption.
This is tantamount to declaring that you should not conduct business in Korea.
Furthermore, it is ironic that they support Naver Pay payments while designating naver.com as spam.
We express deep concern about this company, which provides Korean language services, and we urge anyone conducting business in Korea to avoid using it.

We have filed a complaint with our credit card company and will share our concerns about this company in a future article.

Outstanding support when it mattered.

After accidentally deleting a live domain, Nick was able to recover a full IMAP mailbox backup from secure storage and guide me through restoring it. Calm, professional, and genuinely helpful throughout.

Forward Email combines strong privacy principles with real technical competence — highly recommended.

We have been using their service for more than 3 years, and been very satisfied.
Recently we contacted their support regarding some spam filtering that was a little overzealous. This was fixed within a couple of hours

4 years use and have little to fault about the service; it's been reliable and support have generally responded promptly and positively. I had some feedback for them recently regarding the renewal payment experience which they took this on board, explaining the changes they have implemented.

It's a good value service, especially if you manage multiple domains, and there are plenty of features, with the list growing. I like being able to do both forwarding and have fully functional mailboxes hosted by ForwardEmail; I haven't made the jump to make it my primary email provider but I'm strongly considering it so I don't run all my emails through one of the big names in 'free' email.

Use case: Alias-heavy setup across 15 domains, no mailboxes, SMTP relay via API keys for outbound. Migrated from Gandi after they made simple mailboxes paid and their antispam settings became unmanageable.

What works well

Deliverability is solid. No issues with forwarded mail hitting spam or authentication problems. SPF/DKIM/ARC just work.
SMTP relay does the job. Outbound via API keys is straightforward and reliable. If you need a simple authenticated relay for your domains without running your own infrastructure, it delivers.
Price/quality ratio is excellent. Managing 15 domains on the Teams plan with unlimited aliases is remarkably cheap compared to alternatives. You'd pay significantly more for this with Google Workspace, Fastmail, or Migadu at that domain count.

What needs improvement

The management UI is painful. Navigation is confusing, documentation is scattered and mixed with marketing content, and there's no consolidated overview—you're forced to inspect everything per-domain. For someone managing 15 domains, this becomes tedious fast.
SMTP relay requires separate API keys per sending domain. Not a dealbreaker, but adds friction when you're managing many domains.
Logs lack clarity. It's not always obvious whether you're looking at inbound or outbound activity.

Verdict

Recommended for technically capable users who want affordable, reliable email forwarding and outbound relay across multiple domains. The backend is solid; the frontend needs a complete rewrite with actual UX consideration.

I've been using ForwardEmail for almost 2 years, having run my own mail servers for many years beforehand. Couldn't be happier, I've never look backed, I barely think about it, it just works. I contacted support once, just to give some feedback on a very minor issue with redirection to the correct page after login, and they got back to me within hours to thank me for the feedback and say they'd pushed a fix to production, amazing!

Forward Email is the email provider I genuinely enjoy working with.
They offer fast and professional customer support for any issue, the lowest pricing you can find, and an easy-to-use API.

You’re not limited by the number of domains, and I’ve been using their service for a long time now, everything just works smoothly.

I’ve already built several of my businesses and websites on top of their service, and I highly recommend them to anyone.

I have been with forwardemail.net just a short time and I their support is excelent. I would recommend them as a service. Thanks Tom Seeman

Great feature set, quick to respond and resolve issues. They care about theor customers and a good experience. Have used the product for about a week so far, smooth sailing.

I had an issue onboarding a complex email domain configuration and forwardemail's team jumped right in to help. They provided the tools and resources that I needed to quickly solve the problem. THAT is how you create loyal customers!

Service easy to use and a reactive team, definitely recommend.

Good price doesn't mean a compromise of service quality. The team's professional, and the infrastructure's robust. A kind community and the kind staff are always ready to help.

Immediate ban after requesting SMTP, no chance to fix anything. Domain was fine for months, suddenly a problem. Rude support calling my emails “AI garbage”.

I used ForwardEmail as a paid forwarding/SMTP router for a low volume of transactional emails. One of my domains had been configured there as a catch-all for several months without any issues – no spam, no abuse, no warnings.

The problem started only when I requested manual approval for outbound SMTP (which they explicitly say is reviewed by an admin). Instead of a normal “yes/no” answer, I was effectively banned on the spot, with the explanation that my domain name was “too similar” to theirs.

I was given zero real choice. A domain that had been working fine for months suddenly became unacceptable – not because it was abused, but because someone on support decided they didn’t like how it looks.

Their own Terms of Service do not explicitly state that you cannot use the same name on a different TLD. There is only a generic “impersonation” clause and an “unlimited usage” clause that allows them to restrict or terminate service at their sole discretion. In practice, this means they can retroactively block your account just because they don’t like your domain, even after months of incident-free usage.

I tried to resolve this in the most cooperative way possible:
– I said it’s not a problem for me to stop using that domain with their service.
– I even went as far as to say that if the same name on a different TLD bothers them that much, I would transfer the domain to them for free.
The response? Pretty much none. No real discussion, no attempt at compromise. Account blocked, SMTP access gone, end of story – decided unilaterally.

On top of that, I was a fully paying customer in good standing – never exceeded their limits, never paid late, and had even switched to 6-month billing.

My communication was polite and written in good faith. Since I’m not a native speaker, I used AI (ChatGPT) only to help me phrase my English more clearly. The reply I got from support was rude and dismissive, basically telling me not to send them “AI garbage”. At that point it really didn’t feel like dealing with a professional US-based service, but rather with a cocky admin playing god over other people’s infrastructure.
Overall impression:
– sudden, irreversible disruption of service with no prior warning,
– zero willingness to find a reasonable solution, even when the customer offers maximum cooperation (including giving up the domain),
– a support tone that is arrogant and hostile, especially towards a non-native speaker trying to communicate properly.

Anyone considering ForwardEmail (often because of the attractive pricing) should think very carefully about the risk of dependency here. If you rely on them for dozens or hundreds of forwards and use them commercially, they can cut you off at any time based on a purely subjective feeling – with no clear rule being broken and no practical way to fix the situation.

In the worst case, this can turn into a temporary email disaster for your business – loss of communication, confusion for your clients, and a forced, urgent migration of your whole mail setup.

I’ve left ForwardEmail and, after this experience, I do not see them as a reliable or professional partner for serious business use.
I have kept a full record of all communication with ForwardEmail – nothing I described above is made up or exaggerated. All of this happened effectively within a single night, around midnight (CET).

If anyone ever wants to double-check, I am willing to disclose the exact domain, registrar details and proof that this domain has never hosted anything, is not listed on any blacklist and was prepared solely as an internal forwarding domain. There was absolutely no logical reason to use it “against” their service – especially when SMTP approval is manual, while a simple forward (more than enough for any theoretical abuse) had been active with them for almost a year without any issue.

To me, this doesn’t look like a rational risk-based decision but more like someone with a big red button who enjoys pressing it. Yes, modern SaaS platforms often hide behind “we may terminate at any time at our sole discretion”, but how and when they decide to pull that trigger is what shows their real attitude to customers. Here it felt like: “I don’t like you, so you’re out”, regardless of impact.

I see no reason to believe this couldn’t happen to other customers as well – almost like rolling dice and randomly killing people’s accounts in the middle of the night, just because they can.
For the few leftover dollars from my prepaid period, they can buy themselves some chocolate. It’s nowhere near worth the loss of trust.
POTENTIAL CUSTOMER, It was a very bitter lesson. :(

I was using their free offering for several months before upgrading to a paid subscription in 4 months ago. This was mostly because of privacy but the logs that come with that have been excellent, highlighting why I hadn't been receiving certain important emails.
Their email support responsiveness has also been great.
It's good to feel properly in control of my domain emails.
There are a couple of things I'd like to see improved but still feel they merit 5 stars as the offering is significantly better than alternatives I had looked at.

I am now able to both send and receive e-mails without ANY third-party interference. Straightforward setup, easy-to-follow guidance, and even validation on completion.
Real-time checks against up-to-date blacklists, FE's servers are trusted, so certainty of successful delivery is as high as it gets; USEFUL stats and logs are readily available, and the entire experience is utterly transparent.
I started on the FREE plan, and very quickly realised that the paid-plan (the price of a good coffee per month) was more than justified.
Support from a real human-being is also a bonus.

Simple, effective, great customer support.

Great service. Comprehensive functionality. Thorough documentation. Very responsive when I needed help.

Highly recommended!

They offer a great (really great) service, and lots of features for free. I could not be happier. Also they respond relatively fast to support and github issues, the FAQs are extensive and comprehensive so almost no need for support. Very pleased with my user experience.

As a small business beginner, it help me a lot, and they answer all my questions very detail, i dont know much about setup, but still they help me step by step to build it up. thx a lot