One Inbox, Many Masks: Running Several Products as One Person

I run three products — Zestimer, Furioke, and Tefuda — plus a studio domain, magicparklabs.com. All four domains sit on a single Google Workspace seat, because Workspace charges per user, not per domain: a product needs an address, not an account.

Below is the whole click path for adding one new domain, newproduct.com, so its mail lands in the inbox you already have open. You’ll work in two tabs — the Cloudflare DNS dashboard and the Google Admin Console — and the order between them is the entire trick:

Publish the record in Cloudflare first. Only then tick Google’s confirm box.

Every Google screen that says it’s verifying is doing one thing: reading a DNS record you were supposed to have published already. Two of them hand you a checkbox reading come back here and confirm once you have updated the code on your domain host — that’s the whole instruction, and it means exactly what it says.

1. Cloudflare: buy the domain

Cloudflare → Domain Registration → Register Domains. Buy it here and DNS is already on Cloudflare — no nameservers to point, nothing to wait for.

2. Admin Console: add the domain as a secondary domain

admin.google.com → Account → Domains → Manage domains → Add a domain. Type newproduct.com, choose Secondary domain, then Add domain & start verification.

Not Domain alias, the radio button above it. An alias mirrors every existing username onto the new domain, so [email protected] and [email protected] become one mailbox. A secondary domain gives the new domain its own namespace, so each product’s contact@ is genuinely its own address. Switching later means removing the domain and starting over.

3. Domain setup: let Google write the verification record

You land on Let’s set up your domain, a two-item checklist — verify ownership, then start using Gmail. Get started.

Verify you own newproduct.com is the one place in this path where you don’t touch DNS by hand. Because the domain is on Cloudflare, Google offers Sign in to Cloudflare, which opens a new tab on Cloudflare’s Authorize DNS records from Google with the exact record Google intends to write:

Authorize. It’s a one-time grant, not standing permission for future changes. The tab hands you back to Google on Getting your domain ready, a polling screen with nothing to click — leave it open, a few minutes is normal.

If the authorization screen never appears, press Sign in to Cloudflare again; Other verification options falls back to a TXT record you paste yourself.

Done when the page reads Your domain is verified! — which means only that Google believes the domain is yours. Not one message is delivered yet.

4. Activate Gmail: publish the MX record

1. On Your domain is verified! → Activate Gmail.

2. Start using Gmail with your domain → Continue.

3. Activate Gmail for everyone on newproduct.com lists the users who’ll receive mail on the domain. As a one-person studio that’s just you → Proceed with activation.

4. Add Gmail activation code is the MX record. Google’s fields read Set to default value for Name and Set to lowest possible value for TTL; in Cloudflare that means:

   Type	Name	Mail server	Priority	TTL
   MX	@	smtp.google.com	1	1 min

   Delete every other MX on @ — Google’s own screen opens by telling you to. Registrars leave parking and “email forwarding” MX rows behind, and mail follows the lowest priority it finds.

   Go to Cloudflare only opens a tab. It publishes nothing for you.

5. Back on Google’s screen, tick Come back here and confirm once you have updated the code on your domain host → Confirm.

Done when you get Gmail is now ready. Delivery can take up to 24 hours to move over completely.

5. DKIM: sign the outgoing mail

That success screen files DKIM under Optional setup steps → Authenticate outgoing emails. It’s the one item there worth doing immediately, because unsigned mail from a brand-new domain is how your replies end up in spam.

The order bites hardest here: Google generates the key before you publish it.

1. On Add verification key, keep Key bit length at 2048 → Generate key.

2. The screen fills in Name and Content. Copy both, and don’t tick anything yet.

3. Cloudflare → DNS → Records → Add record → Save:

   Type	Name	Content	TTL
   TXT	google._domainkey	v=DKIM1;k=rsa;p=MIIBIj…	1 min

4. Back on Google’s screen, tick the confirm checkbox → Confirm. Press it before the record is live and Google reports it couldn’t find the key.

6. Admin Console: add the address to your one user

Mail now reaches the domain. This is the step that puts it in the inbox you already have open.

admin.google.com → Directory → Users → click your own name, not the checkbox → User information → Alternate email addresses (email alias) → ADD AN ALTERNATE EMAIL. Type contact on the left, pick newproduct.com from the domain dropdown, then SAVE.

No new seat, no extra bill. That dropdown only lists domains in this Workspace, so it doubles as a check that step 2 landed. [email protected] and [email protected] are different addresses and both arrive in the one inbox.

The ceiling is 30 aliases per user, so keep it to one public address per product. If a second person ever needs to answer it, convert that address to a Group — free, and it doesn’t spend alias quota.

To answer as the product instead of from your primary address, add it once in Gmail → Settings → Accounts and Import → Send mail as (leave Treat as an alias checked), then set When replying to a message → Reply from the same address the message was sent to.

That’s it. The domain has mail, and the mail has an inbox.

Optional: SPF and DMARC

Cloudflare will nag you for both. DNS → Records → the Recommendations panel: Prevent unauthorized email senders and Block fake emails sent from @newproduct.com addresses.

Add an SPF record opens the Email Record Creator. Leave IP addresses empty, put _spf.google.com under Domains, keep the policy on Soft fail: ~all, and the Record preview assembles it for you:

Submit. A domain may have exactly one SPF record, so if something already published one, edit that record to add the include rather than adding a second.

Add a DMARC record lands on DMARC Management → Enable DMARC Management. Cloudflare publishes the record and collects the reports for you.

Optional: label it on arrival

Gmail search bar → the filter icon → To: newproduct.com → Create filter → Apply the label → New label → [NewProduct]. One filter per domain, created the day you add the domain rather than the day the inbox becomes unreadable.

One inbox, many masks. The masks are cheap; the inbox is the asset.