My great challenges with Domains

Hey guys,

as you know, we now have a frynfly-restaurant.com website. It's basically the same site as before, just with a new domain.

I bought the domain via Hostinger because it was really cheap. I didn't go for the 3-year plan since I'm quite spontaneous and we might switch domains later anyway.

After that, I noticed it required verification. It was just clicking a link in an email, but the status didn't update in the panel. I then contacted support (I had BEEF with the AI, to let me speak to a human), and they finally got it verified for me.

Afterwards, I changed the nameservers to Cloudflare. So now, only the payment side is handled via Hostinger. Not gonna lie, I didn't even know Cloudflare had nameservers, but the UI is really good.

The first thing I did after that was trying to connect the website to the domain. Of course, it didn't work at first because Hostinger still had a default root page. So I asked ChatGPT to generate a simple HTML file, which I uploaded via Cloudflare Pages. It just redirects from the root page to the main site. Luckily that worked.

After that, I wanted to install Mailcow on a VPS (credits to vo_rtexx13). It initially looked like it worked, but port 25 was blocked by Oracle, which is essential for sending emails. I also had to stop a running Docuseal instance because it was already using some ports.

By that time, it was already around 3 AM (CEST).

The next morning, I went on Discord and vented about the whole situation, saying I'm "too broke for Zoho Mail / Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace".

Then I considered using Cloudflare Redirects, but I wasn't really happy with that since I also want to send emails, not just receive them.

Someone mentioned that Zoho has a free plan, so I tried it. It didn't show up at first (probably to push paid plans), but after randomly going back, I ended up in the setup wizard.

I got 5 licenses and can create unlimited email aliases per account, which was exactly what I needed.

I created 3 accounts, including one super admin. Every leadership staff member now has an email like name@frynfly-restaurant.com, roblox@frynfly-restaurant.com, rank@frynfly-restaurant.com. I don't think we'll use all of them except name@frynfly-restaurant.com but it's cool to have.

Each department director also gets a department email.

I also noticed Zoho has groups, which is perfect for support. I created support@frynfly-restaurant.com, which forwards emails to the entire leadership team.

Now, I also activated the Docuseal again (https://sign.frynfly-restaurant.com). The only thing Zoho can't do is SMTP, which is required for a cool email so Docuseal can send them, but it's alright, we can just use the links!

Overall, it's actually a really solid setup - lots of emails, but still one central support inbox.