Flap · useflap.online
Cloudflare Email Routing alternative when you need a real inbox
In short: Cloudflare Email Routing is excellent for forwarding and Worker hooks. Flap is a hosted custom-domain mailbox (send + receive) for founders who need to reply as hello@theirbrand.com from one inbox across many domains.
Keep Cloudflare for DNS or the website if you want. When forwards are no longer enough — you need threads, send-as identities, and a product inbox — Flap is the upgrade path without inventing a ship date for IMAP or claiming Cloudflare is “bad.”
What Email Routing is great at
Forwarding to Gmail, simple address rules, and Worker-based ingest. Many founders start there for a single project. It is not trying to be a full multi-domain founder mailbox with compose, filters, and plan-based quotas.
- Stay on Email Routing if forwarding-only is enough
- Move on when you need to reply from the custom domain in a dedicated inbox
What Flap adds
Flap stores mail in your account, lets you compose as project identities, and prices primarily by domain count. Customer mail runs on Amazon SES; the Flap app runs on Cloudflare Workers. Your DNS can stay at Cloudflare, Namecheap, Porkbun, GoDaddy, or anywhere else.
Honest tradeoffs
Email Routing is free for many forwarding use cases and deeply integrated with Cloudflare zones. Flap is a paid product (with a free trial tier) focused on multi-domain inboxes — not a Cloudflare dashboard replacement, not Docs/Drive, and IMAP/SMTP client access is not available yet (use the web app and PWA).
How the switch looks
Add the domain in Flap, publish the MX/SPF/DKIM records Flap shows (SES inbound), create mailboxes, then Check setup. If you previously pointed MX at route*.mx.cloudflare.net for Email Routing, replace those with Flap’s SES MX values — pick one inbound provider per domain.
FAQ
Do I need to leave Cloudflare DNS?
No. Publish Flap’s SES MX/SPF/DKIM at Cloudflare DNS (DNS-only for mail records). You do not need Email Routing Worker rules for the current Flap path.
Can I keep some domains on Email Routing?
Yes. Move only the domains that need a real reply inbox. Each domain should have one clear inbound MX target.
Is Flap “better” than Email Routing?
Different jobs. Routing wins for free forwards. Flap wins when you need a product inbox across startups.