ImprovMX and Cloudflare both offer email forwarding, but Cloudflare offers it as a free add-on to its enormous product offering, while ImprovMX offers a solution focused solely on email forwarding.
Choose Cloudflare if you're already their user, prefer your email forwarding handled by a giant provider and don't require SMTP sending. Choose ImprovMX if you're having trouble with Cloudflare's free email deliverability, need advanced forwarding options or SMTP sending.
ImprovMX
Cloudflare
Customer Support
Excellent Human & AI Chatbot Support
Pricing
Free forwarding for one domain, paid plans can scale
Offers basic free forwarding
Sending
Has SMTP sending on paid plans
No SMTP sending
Advanced Forwarding
Rules routing, Regexes and Webhooks
Forwarding Logic
Very simple, no-code Rules routing
Email Workers require coding logic and maintenance
CLI
Offers a CLI through Wrangler
Multi-Recipient
Multi-recipient forwarding supported
Doesn't support multi-recipient forwarding
Logging/Analytics
Offers detailed mail logs and log retention > 7 days
Basic delivery logs and log retention stops at 7 days[3]
Scalability/Limits
Transparent limits, talk to us for uncapped limits
Limits not publicly disclosed
Compliance
ImprovMX is GDPR compliant
Registrar Compatibility
Can use any DNS registrar
Must host domain on Cloudflare
1. Users frequently criticize Cloudflare's support for being slow, generic, and difficult to reach - especially on lower-tier plans - with recurring complaints about unresolved billing and refund issues. User complaints. a. b. c
2. Cloudflare supports a basic catch-all, but they don't listen to their customers who have been asking for regex routing for years. a
3. Users complain in Cloudflare community threads that mail logs are too limited - only showing recent activity and lacking detailed delivery or bounce information. a
4. ImprovMX's CLI is built for terminal workflows, automation, and ai coding tools like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex.
Questions? Reach out to us, we love chatting about email service providers.
Your domain deserves better email
Set up in minutes and forget about it.