You probably don’t own your email address. Skiff wants to change that

If you rely on a major web mail provider such as Gmail or Outlook, your email address doesn’t really belong to you.

Perhaps that’s an obvious point—of course you can’t transfer your Gmail address to an entirely different email service—but it doesn’t have to be that way. By using your own domain name for email, you can more easily move between email providers and maintain more control over a core piece of your online identity.

That’s the argument, at least, from Skiff, a privacy-focused productivity startup that’s adding custom domain support to its free email service. (Previously, the feature was reserved for paid subscribers.) Users can now connect a domain they already own at no charge, or they can register one through Skiff for as little as $2 for the first year.

“You can use that domain your whole life,” says Andrew Milich, Skiff’s cofounder and CEO. “Whether you go to a new email service, or a new provider, or you want to host your own website, domains are just so much about that freedom on the internet for us.”

How Skiff’s free email domains work

After signing up for Skiff, users will find a “Custom Domains” section in the app’s Settings menu. From there, they can either configure a domain they already own or register a new domain name through Skiff.

For the latter, Skiff automatically configures the domain, so users don’t have to muck around with DNS records on their own. Its registration also includes privacy settings that hide the user’s personal information from internet directories—a perk that usually costs extra with other registrars. Milich says Skiff is acting as a reseller for a handful of domain providers, and is offering domains essentially at cost as a way to bring people into its email service.

Registering a domain with Skiff has a few caveats. While Skiff will support other uses for the domain, such as hosting a website or setting up a custom Bluesky handle, users will first need to ask customer support to make some changes to the Domain Name System. (Milich says a self-serve system for this is coming.)

Skiff also doesn’t disclose pricing beyond the first year. Milich says renewal prices typically increase by $8 to $10 after the first year, but users have no way of knowing this until it’s almost time to renew.

Most important, registering a domain with Skiff comes with the expectation that you’ll use the company’s email service. Milich says that if users decide to switch email providers, the company will assist them in moving their domain registration elsewhere. This is less of a hassle than switching email addresses, but it still requires a bit of technical know-how.

“We don’t really want to be a self-serve platform for managing domains,” he says.

Skiff vs. alternatives

Most other email providers with custom domain support charge a premium for it. Apple requires an iCloud+ subscription (starting at $1 per month) to use your own domain, and Gmail requires a Workspace for Business subscription at $6 per month. With Outlook, custom domains are reserved for Microsoft 365 subscribers, and only Business plans will be able to add them from November onward. In all cases, users have to register and configure the domain on their own.

By offering free custom domain support and simple registration, Milich hopes to give Skiff a new differentiator. The company originally launched with a focus on privacy, but it’s hardly alone on that front, and even Google is now adding end-to-end encryption between Gmail users.

Skiff also tried leaning into Web3, letting users log in through their crypto wallets and opt into decentralized file storage. While those features aren’t going away, they’re unlikely to draw in lots of users as crypto hype comes crashing down.

Custom domains are a way for Skiff to broaden its audience while sticking to its principles of privacy and autonomy. Once users have set up a domain, they’ll also be able to set up an unlimited number of email aliases, with different names before the @ sign. By handing out different email aliases, users can more easily filter their inboxes and protect their privacy from marketers.

“We find that people just start to get much more value out of our product once they transfer their domain,” Milich says.

Of course, Skiff also hopes its free custom domain support will lead to more paying customers as well. With its free tier, users get 10 GB of storage and one custom domain. Skiff’s $4 per month Essential tier offers 15 GB of storage, and its $10 per month Pro tier offers 200 GB and three custom domains. A $15 per month Professional plan provides 1 TB of storage and up to 15 custom domains.

But first, Skiff needs to sell people on switching to its service in the first place. While Skiff Mail has come a long way since its launch last year—adding table-stakes features like filters, calendar integration, and undo send—it’s still a VC-backed startup that requires a leap of faith to start using.

Custom domain support will make that leap a lot smaller, as users won’t have to switch email addresses if they decide to change their underlying email provider.

“Anyone who has a domain today probably also has an email provider,” Milich says. “We want to make it easier to consider new ones.”