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Use Gmail with your own custom domain for free

Quite often the webmail account provided with your website hosting might not have the functionality you need to use it for day to day emailing. It’s might be great for accessing your emails when on holidays or away from your computer/office but you wouldn’t want it to be your permanent “inbox”. It’s just not MS Outlook after all. On top of that, it’s not likely that your hosting account allows for unlimited storage space for all your emails. If you have a lot of emails (that you don’t delete) and especially if they contain large attachments, you could well be bursting your “quota”.

Enter Gmail. 15 GB of space to play with and a friendly interface that helps you organise your emails well (learn how to use “labels” instead of folders). If you’re a power user of Outlook it might not cut the mustard but for general day to day use, it does just fine.

“But,” I hear you say, “Haven’t you always said not to use free email accounts when you have your own domain name because it doesn’t promote your brand and looks unprofessional?” Yes indeed, you’ve got the message right. You can use Gmail for your email and still send and receive from [email protected] if you set it up correctly and with a bit of help from Gmail’s Mail Fetcher.

Disclaimer: This will not work unless your hosting company provides POP3 email accounts. If your website is hosted by us, Technology Matters, then this comes as standard.

This is how we do it – step by step:

  • Create your Gmail account. Go to http://mail.google.com/mail/signup.
    Fill in the details for the form presented. When it comes to the recovery email, don’t use the email address that you are planning to use with your Gmail account, otherwise you’ll never retrieve your password if you need to. Choose the email address that comes with your ISP perhaps or some other account you have access to. Or you can leave it blank.
  • You should be ready to login to your account at this point. If you are new to Gmail, take note of some of the functions you will come to appreciate that are explained on the welcome page. E.g. Labels instead of folders (sort of the same but better – being able to assign multiple labels to an email helps you to really tightly define what an email is about), archive, built-in chat and video chat, and best of all…Google powered search! If you’ve ever suffered through Outlook’s painfully slow search function, just let Google power through your emails and sort them into the most relevant for your query. Heaven!
  • Click the “Show me my account” button and you are automatically logged in.

Now we are going to set up your account to import any emails that might be sitting around in your webmail inbox and then to have it connect regularly to this account to import mail, and lastly ensure that any emails you send with Gmail come from the “from address” that you have connected to from Gmail.

Disclaimer: this article is not designed to teach you how to use Gmail. You will need to find your own way with that. This is purely to help people connect their domain name email accounts to use through Gmail.

Now that you are into the account follow these steps:

  1. Click Settings at the top right corner of the page, and open the Accounts and Import tab.
  2. Ignore the “import mail” and “send mail as” options right now. Instead in the Check mail using POP3 section, click Add POP3 email account.
  3. Enter the full email address of the account you want to access, then click Next Step.
  4. Gmail will populate some sample settings, but check with your hosting provider to learn the correct server name and port. As a guide, if you use Outlook, check your username, login and POP3 (incoming) mail server settings (usually under Tools/Accounts depending on the version of Outlook you have) and use these. If Technology Matters is your hosting provider, your username needs to be your full email address (not just the bit before the @). The mail server is often mail.yourdomainname.com.au (as per Google’s example) and the Port number suggested will usually be OK. If this does not work, talk to your hosting provider or web developer for help. The password you enter is not the Gmail password, but the password for that original email account.
  5. Decide what options you want to select here:
    >If the point is to clear some space for your hosting account then don’t “leave a copy of retrieved messages the server”
    >Using a Secure Connection (SSL) is a good idea if the host supports it. We suggest you check it. If it is not supported you will get a message when you click <add account> and you’ll need to uncheck the box.
    >Give incoming messages a label if you wish to. This is useful if you import other accounts into this Gmail (and the labeling helps you identify which accounts they came from), but not so useful if you use it exclusively for the one email account.
    >If this account is low activity and mainly historic you might want to have incoming emails archived automatically. Otherwise leave it unchecked.
  6. Click <add account>. If at this point you get an error message saying there was a problem connecting to the mail server, try un-checking the “Always use a secure connection” box and try again. If you still cannot connect, there is a problem with the account login, password or mailserver details. Check all these and try again. Note: you might need to re-enter your password if you get an error message.
  7. If all is well, you will be told “Your mail account has been added”. And you will be asked if you want to be able to send email with your domain name email address. Select that option and click <Next Step>
  8. Confirm the name of the email account that will appear in the “From” details <Next Step>
  9. When you send email, you can send it through your own SMTP server, if you have one. If you are a client of Technology Matters check with us about what applies for your hosting setup. Otherwise just choose to send through Gmail. <Next Step>
  10. Nearly done. Gmail just needs to send a verification email to the account you are wanting to channel through it. Why? Otherwise anyone who knew your email password could get access to your emails and send them “on your behalf” without your knowledge.
  11. If the connection to your POP email account is OK, the verification email should soon arrive in your Gmail account. Find that verification email. Click on the link or copy and paste the code into the box provided. If the verification email is late arriving, you can verify it later. You only need it to send emails with your own domain name, you can still receive emails into Gmail without it.
  12. One last step. Once you have “verified”, go into “Settings” again. Select the “Accounts and Import” tab and in the “Send Mail As” section, click on the “make default” link next to the email address you have just set up. If you miss this step you will still be sending email from your Gmail address which is not the point of this whole exercise.
  13. You are good to go. You will still need to login to Gmail using your Gmail email and password that you set up originally, but any emails you send will be labelled as your domain name email. You might like to bookmark your Gmail login page for easy access (or just enter Gmail into Google search).

Gmail will now be checking your POP3 account every 2 or 3 minutes and moving the emails into Gmail for you.

If you’d like to view these steps above, complete with screen shots, Sadhan PAl from technet.gr has provided this helpful guide to connecting your gmail account to your domain name email .

 

Note: If you have a lot of emails stored under webmail and they were sorted into folders, Gmail will not import the emails that are in folders until they are moved into the main body of the inbox. You might like to do this in batches so you can label the incoming emails appropriately.

If you are having any problems getting the “send” address to work as it should, have a look at this help page from Google.

Janet Pearson
Janet Pearson
Janet founded Technology Matters in 1998, back in the days of animated GIFs and competing search engines. As well as charting the course the company, Janet's 20+ years of business, marketing and IT experience bring a strong business focus to all of Technology Matters' projects.

96 Comments

  1. budapeste says:

    Thank you it helped 🙂

  2. ESraa says:

    Your article helped me ALOT

    THANK YOU

    I want to add that “In the part of how to make your Gmail send as your domain email
    you skipped it saying if you are technology boy you can do it otherwise send from gmail
    will actually it is easy
    You can go to the domain mail settings
    [email protected] setting page
    and bring the user name and password and also SMTP number and just copy and paste it and take care of the portal numbers
    just copy and it will be activated easily
    I did it in my website domain
    http://www.quranconnection.com and really worked

    just pay attention to notices PLus
    you ll get 2 email confirmations with codes one in gmail and one in your domain email

    just confirm as usual and
    Congrats 😀

    • Nathan Dorey says:

      Hi ESraa, glad to help! And all we meant about sending outgoing mail through your own SMTP server is that our clients will need to get the right details from us before they set it up.

      Otherwise, sending through Gmail is just about as good! Nice to see you figured it out all out, though! 🙂

  3. Jason Scott says:

    My business uses a similar function. These steps are easy to understand. I wish I would have had this article when I was setting it up. I will make sure to send this to a friend who is looking at setting his own up.

  4. Akib Ali says:

    Very Good Detail… It solved my problem!

  5. Pavel D says:

    Do other webmail providers such as Hotmail offer the same function or is there an app that could take care of that?

  6. Mimi says:

    Would you mind elaborating on the last point,

    “Note: If you have a lot of emails stored under webmail and they were sorted into folders, Gmail will not import the emails that are in folders until they are moved into the main body of the inbox”.

    I have three domains, all with tons of folders/sub-folders/sub-sub-folders etc. – a folder for each customer with lots of email correspondence in each. I am not sure I understand what you mean by “Gmail will not import the emails that are in folders until they are moved into the main body of the inbox”. How exactly should I import or move all the folders into Gmail? Thank you very much.

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Mimi.
      Gmail only imports email that is sitting in the main Inbox, it does not recognise what is in folders (even though they might be IN the inbox itself). This means that you need to set it up in stages. First let Gmail import your un-filed emails and clear the inbox on the original server. Then, using webmail, move the filed emails out of the folders into the main inbox area, one folder at a time. Then let Gmail grab those emails and pull them through. You’ll need to locate that batch of emails in Gmail and apply a label to them as Gmail uses labels rather than folders (but they function much the same). It will take some time to do this if you have a lot of folders to move.

  7. Ivan says:

    Hi,
    My website is http://www.ISFit.com.au and I want to setup my email hoting through gmail.
    However, I am worried that a .com.au domain wont work on gmail? I have only seen examples for .com

    Are you able to setup email addresses (example):
    [email protected] via gmail?

  8. Abid Bhatti says:

    I found your site for the great source of information. Thanks for setup Gmail to send and receive email.

  9. Ellen says:

    Hi there, I have been successful adding my business email to Gmail BUT in order to send with that email address one needs to verify the address and the VERIFICATION EMAIL with that code from GMAIL/Google NEVER comes through. We tried several times, did re-send, deleted email and added it again, used different computers – no email with the code is coming from google/gmail. Worst, there is NO solution anywhere on the web. Both, gmail and business address are working perfect in outlook – I’m actually playing with this for a friend who doesn’t have outlook and we are both at a loss. That’s your great chance to be the hero if you know how to get this to work ;o)

    Thank you for your time.

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Ellen,
      That’s a tricky one! I’ve never had that issue, however I’d suggest that the problem may be with your friend’s email hosting.
      It’s likely that a server-based system like Spam Assassin might be turned up too high and is deleting the email before it gets anywhere near your inbox. Have a chat with your friend’s hosting company. They might be able to see what is blocking the email.

  10. Jay says:

    I am SO glad I found this article! Your step by step directions are very clear and easy to follow. I would like to ask a couple of questions to help me decide if using Gmail to send and receive emails from [email protected] is the best solution for me.

    I will be sending emails to prospective customers and would like to know if and when my emails are opened and read. I will be personally crafting emails one at a time to each prospective customer using Gmail or my own domain. I know that email services like MailChimp make it easy to track info like open rates but the only tool I have heard about for checking open rates outside of email services like MailChimp is streak.com. Streak.com only works with Gmail which is why I was searching for “how to send and receive emails from [email protected]” (I literally just found out about streak.com minutes before finding your article and have no experience with it).

    My primary goal is to send emails to prospective customers using an email address that contains my own domain name and to know if and when my emails are opened and read. Adding Gmail to the process is an extra layer I would like to exclude if possible (though your article made it seem simple). I guess my question is whether you know of any tools / products I can use to track email open rates for emails sent from [email protected] or is Gmail plus Streak.com my best option. Any suggestions and feedback would be appreciated.

    Thanks in advance.

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Jay,

      Glad you found the post useful. A tool that I have used for checking if emails are opened/read is ToutApp. It integrates with Gmail, Outlook and Salesforce and has some nice templating tools. Check it out and if you find it a good fit for your needs, let us know.
      http://www1.toutapp.com/ will take you there.

      Janet

  11. Adam says:

    Great article thank you, when you say POP3 , can this be set up with IMAP as well? Please advise, thanks 🙂

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Adam,
      Good Question! Last time I looked, Gmail needs a POP3 account for it’s Mail Fetcher program to do its thing. The mail will be imported into Gmail and then deleted out of your original email account. There might be some confusion around whether your email account is IMAP or POP3. Basically if your email account has an inbox (rather than just forwarding elsewhere) and it can be accessed using the POP3 protocol (which is most), then you can do this. It maybe that you are currently using IMAP to access your emails. That shouldn’t matter. I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t use POP3 on the same account as well.

  12. Vie says:

    Hi dear,

    I see that they have limit it to 5 email account under this function, how to go about having more than 5 account? i see that outlook does not limit my account import, but i prefer gmail, what do you think?

    Vie

    • Technology Matters says:

      You can only work with what gmail allows you to do. If you need more than 5 you’ll need to look for an alternative approach

  13. Michel says:

    Truly superb, thorough article.

    2 important questions, though, before I follow your excellent advice. I’ll try to be as systematic as you were:

    My current webmail that’s related to my actual .com domain has a tiny inbox, but the big problem is although it receives okay — let’s call it [email protected] — when I SEND/reply/forward messages, my sender name is very lengthy, sort of recognizeable as me but with a rather meaningless “@………..”

    So I use gmail largely — I have now a lot of family, personal and non-personal contacts (such as vendors, services etc.) that have me in their address book or even as a registered customer – again, let’s call it [email protected]. Vendors for example send me important newsletters, updates, even statements, etc. to that [email protected] address, and friends all use that address.

    Q1. If if follow your instructions and change to the original name I own: i.e. [email protected], routing send-receive through gmail what will happen to OUTGOING messages I send to folks, from gmail — in other words, what will the sender name show, and also might it get rejected/bounced by vendors with whom I registered accounts as “[email protected]” ?

    Q2. Will it all fall into place automatically, or is there a drop-down menu I keep having to remember for each email I SEND out via gmail , to choose between the [email protected] and the great new(original) one I set up following your instructions to go through gmail?

    Many thanks for a superb post, and sincerely hoping for your answers (also, sincerest apologies for the caps — I saw no other formatting option).

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Michel,

      Sorry for the slow response. I hope it will be worth the wait!
      Your questions rotate around what happens to “from address” when you reply or send an email.
      This is all under your control from the Settings> Accounts & Import tab.
      Look at the “send mail as” options shown in this section. From here you can set the email address you wish to use as default when you compose an email. And also which address to use when replying.
      You can choose to reply from the same address the email was sent to OR to choose a specific email address as a default.
      As well as this you can override this default choice anytime you like.

      How to do this is well hidden, and I didn’t know how to do it myself until I found this knowledgebank article: Change the “From” address when replying or forwarding

      Hope that helps.

      Janet

  14. aleona says:

    Can you use gmail spam filter for that account too?
    For example I use roll.up for my gmail subscriptions and gmail spam is pretty good too. But my own domain emails (with crazydomains) are atrociously managed and cannot be added to roll.up as they only support major providers.
    So if I was to set up my emails in the gmail, could i have access to gmail’s spam filtering and would i need to re-set them on my phone and laptop via gmail set up too (to avoid double collection of mail)?
    Thanks

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Aleona,
      If you use the setup as I described and route your @domain emails through Gmail, spam filtering will automatically take place in Gmail.

  15. Chris says:

    Hi. Good article, thanks. But I have two questions:

    1. What is the benefit of using POP3 to collect emails over forwarding the emails directly from the hoster through email configuration ther?
    2. It seems like using gmail with a personal domain based smtp still inboxes less than other ways of sending emails. Your have any idea if that is the case?

    Regards,

    Chris

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Chris,

      It may be feasible to use forwarding to Gmail rather than using POP3 to retrieve emails however, you WILL need an email account from your own domain to route the outgoing SMTP emails. Otherwise you will not be able to use your own domain’s email address with Google.

  16. CJB says:

    Thanks for this stream. I experience about a 20 to 30 minute lag receiving emails using this process. They are instantaneous using another application, like Mail, so I’m not sure where the hold-up would be. Any ideas?

    • Technology Matters says:

      Unfortunately this is Gmail taking its time to access your POP account and pull in emails. if your POP3 account receives a high volume of mail, Gmail will check it more frequently, if low, less frequently. Unfortunately it’s not possible to force Gmail to check at set time intervals.

  17. Faisal says:

    My question is if domain host provides slow services then is it works faster or still slower delivery due to routing via slow server.

  18. Mez says:

    I have a problem – gmail is forwarding emails to my outlook account ok, but all senders of these emails are receiving an error message
    “Mail delivery failed : returning message to sender – Could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. Mailbox is full : retry timeout exceeded
    Action failed
    Final-Recipient
    rfc822 Status 5.0.0

    This has only just started happening after 2 years + of no problems. I’ve deleted all unnecessary emails and cleared lots of space but it continues to send this to all senders of the emails. Weird, because I’m getting all emails ok. If I use the gmail account then no error message so this has to be a problem with outlook ? What now ?

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Mez,

      This problem is best looked at by a local IT person who can help trace the specifics of your email traffic. A PC support person should be able to handle this for you.

      regards

      Janet

  19. DOOJ SAHU says:

    thank you !
    It’s really helpful…
    Thank you again ♥♥♥

  20. Your guide is great. I was able to fetch Zoho emails to Gmail. Thank you. Much appreciated.

    I suggest to add a small comment to step 4: “Make sure you have disable two step authentication in the mail server you are fetching”.

    TFA in Zoho was busting the connection and I didn’t know, because the login in Chrome was automatic, since Chromed stored the password and was a ticked as a “trusted browser”.

  21. Leiha says:

    Fantastic! I was able to connect my email accounts thanks to this. My question is, my gmail has a profile picture attached to it but it’s not showing up when I use the email connected to my domain name. Is there a way for me to fix this? Thank you!

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi there Leiha,
      I’m glad the instructions helped you. Unfortunately I can’t advise on the other “inner workings” of gmail other than to suggest that your profile picture is connected to your Google account, and so if you an email address that is not your Google account then the profile picture would not be connected. This is exactly what you are experiencing, but I doubt there is a way to alter that behaviour.

      regards
      Janet

  22. gapsel says:

    It works! Thank you.

  23. Bikash Agarwalla says:

    hii,
    i have a gmail id which is [email protected] can i convert it to [email protected]. Plz help

  24. Cacey says:

    Hi,
    I have just purchased a business with this set up (im not tech savvy), can I add my email to outlook? If so do you know how. I’ve been trying for a couple of days now.

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hello Cacey,

      Your best bet would be to find a local IT consultant who can help you personally with this.

      regards

      Janet

  25. Hannah says:

    Hello,
    I ran through this tutorial to set this all up today and everything seems to be working. However, no matter how many times I open or mark a message as read (in Gmail), it continues to refresh as ‘new’ and unread every few minutes when (I’m assuming) Gmail is checking my other account. I have been fiddling around in Settings pertaining to POP3 accounts, but to no avail. Any ideas? Thanks!!

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Hannah,
      I’ve never seen that happen before. Perhaps see if “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server” (in your POP3 import settings) is checked.
      If so, switch it off. Gmail may be trying to retrieve that email again if it has not been cleared from your POP3 account and this might be resetting the read/unread status.

      Janet

  26. Michelle says:

    I’m stuck at step #6. What password should I be using? My gmail login password or the login password from my DNS (namecheap)?

    Thanks in advance for your help Janet!

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Michelle,

      The password you need to enter at Step 6 is the password for your POP3 Email account which you should have already created as part of your website hosting.
      If you don’t already have a hosting account for your domain name you will need to set one up (assuming you have a website) and create the email account that you want to use with this exercise.

      regards

      janet

  27. Scott says:

    Does that work without having to purchase a G Suite plan? I created my domain name email address when Google Apps was free, but now I see they charge a monthly fee.

    • Technology Matters says:

      Hi Scott,

      This process avoids the need to pay Google for a Google Apps plan.
      This is how you get the email benefits for free!

      regards

      Janet

  28. Christelle says:

    I’ve been using a gmail account for my business and am looking to start using a domain email (synced to gmail). If I have two “aliases” going into my one domain inbox, for example [email protected] and [email protected], I’m assuming that doing the above steps will pull all the emails in the domain inbox right?

    Also, when I send an email or reply back, what will the “from address” address be? Will gmail be able to distinguish the two aliases domain emails and respond accordingly or can it only do one? Am I making it too complicated with the two aliases? TIA!

  29. Heather says:

    I’ve been a long time user of Outlook and Gmail, using Outlook for business and Gmail for personal. However, Google offers so many features, including calendar sync and Google Drive. Plus Outlook is terrible when it comes to syncing up a calendar on my Android. I am considering switching to Gmail. I have a couple of questions:

    1. My Gmail account already has a lot of emails in it (personal). Do you recommend that I set up another Gmail account for business, or do you think I can manage it all using labels? I’d prefer to just use 1 Gmail account so I’m not having to switch back and forth, so appreciate your suggestions on this.

    2. If Gmail pulls all of my emails from my Outlook into Gmail, does it leave a copy in Outlook, or does it empty my Outlook Inbox?

    3. I have multiple domain names (and email addresses). I would probably start by trying 1 domain in Gmail. If that works, is it possible to set up several domain names in the same Gmail account?

    4. You may have already said this, but in Gmail settings can I set it up so the incoming emails from Outlook would automatically be labeled when they come into Gmail? (I’m trying to make sure they aren’t jumbled up with the personal email.

    Thanks so much for your article and continued responses. This looks like a terrific option.

    • Hi Heather,

      A lot of questions! Most of which can be experimented with yourself, to see what happens. One thing to be aware of. Gmail does NOT access Outlook. It accesses the mail server at your hosting account. Once it pulls in emails from the mail server they will not be available for you to download into your Outlook on your PC. It does not do anything with any emails you already have stored in Outlook on your PC as it has no access to these.

  30. Thank you. It works 100% okay. Explained very simple way. You are ow-some.

  31. dose that makes google store all the incoming mail so the incoming msgs will be stored in gmail not in my web mail

  32. Anurag Gupta says:

    Thank you very much for the detailed tutorial to setup Gmail for my domain. I just switched from MS Outlook.

  33. LINDA ALLEN says:

    Gmail Issues sometimes happens when your gmail account not synchronizing properly and you not able to get mails because of Gmail Server down or your data is not active you can go on http://articles.abilogic.com/198164/gmail-account-outage-continues-past.html and you can even check your status for Gmail problems and fix them.

  34. Maju says:

    Hi There,
    we have a domain name and currently using outlook2016 as our mail service provider

    Just recently realise that we are little bit unsure about outlook2016 features, more like complicated, as we already very familiar with g mail.

    Can we switch to g mail from outlook2006 (that currently using) under the same domain name.

    i.e Basically we just want to get out from out look and use g mail .

    Is there any way we can change please?

    • Richard Pearson says:

      Hi Maju, this is something you would be best contacting an IT Support Technician to set this up for you especially if you are using Office 365 and have your email DNS settings posting to cloud.

  35. Akash says:

    thanks for information – time saved

    • Constantinos says:

      Hi is this free?
      I mean, once I pay my domain and connect it with gmail is it free next?
      Thanks

  36. Victor says:

    Dear Richard,

    Thank you for your awesome and very generous help. I have read almost every post in this thread to try and not bother you with a question. But here goes. I have bought a domain and set up email forwarding to a gmail account. I dont want to set up a mail box or email account with my domain host. I have set up a “catch all” and “forward all” to the gmail account. Does your method work when one does not have a mail box set up with the domain host? I own the domain and I have a password to access my account. But I have not set up a mail box and therefore do not have a mailbox box password. I am not very tech savvy and it seems some of the codes i need to use to verify my ownership of the domain are only available once i have set up a mail box acct with my domain host. Something i dont want to do unless it is absolutely neccesary.

    • Richard Pearson says:

      You need to have a an email account for your domain (not just a forwarder) for this to work.

  37. Virendra says:

    I am stuck with one situation, while I have performed all steps, still, my webmail contains mail copy. I don’t want to keep any mail copy to the server rather it should stay with Gmail account. I had ticked on such setting, but it is not working. I have set up POP account. Also, now I want to revisit this setting for confirmation, but there is no option in setting to check. will you guide me, please?

  38. Mark says:

    If you have your website hosted a honest host, why would you have any problems setting up your personal email accounts?
    Of course, if you are with some expensive Australian host/registrar, chances of you being screwed, are very high!

    Still, the option of going with Google, just another internet tyrant, would be out of question for me!

    I’d better go back to pencil and paper than submitting myself to IT criminals.

  39. Damilola says:

    I came in contact with your blog for the great source of information via google search. Thanks for setup Gmail to send and receive email.

  40. Shaun says:

    I’m having issue trying to setup a non gmail email account to send mail. It works fine to receive mail but won’t give me the option to send mail. I get the popup to add name, email address, and treat as an alias but as soon as I click next step it says,

    “You must send through abeautifultaste.com SMTP servers when you send as ____________. However, this functionality is not available for your account. Please contact your domain administrator for more information.”

    Not sure why or how to fix this. Any recommendations will be appreciated.

  41. Bibek says:

    I was really in need of a solution something like this. I was sick of opening different web-mail accounts individually. Thanks author !

  42. Arindam says:

    I’ve done it and it works 100% . Used a different Gmail account than my usual one, and been accessing the two accounts on two separate browsers. Thank you so much for the wonderfully helpful post!

  43. Nice, it helps me to connect my custom email to my domain email account
    Thank you

  44. Works like a charm! Thanks for sharing such handy information Janet!

  45. Stacey says:

    Loved this!!! Thank you so much for sharing.

  46. Thank you for the great web page it helped

  47. Roomba says:

    Thankyou so much for this resourceful post i have been having issues sending mails via my webmail reason being that my local ip has been delisted, so my question is this if i config the gmail to my webmail, will this solve the problem???

    • Janet Pearson says:

      Hello Roomba,

      To make the process work, you need to route your outgoing emails through your hosting mail server, otherwise Gmail won’t let you send emails with your own address.
      SO…if your mail-server’s IP address has been blacklisted, this method won’t help you, as you will still be using that IP for your outgoing (sending) email.

  48. Gambino says:

    i appreciate your well detailed step by step instruction on setting up your domain email using Gmail to send and receive but there is one thing that i am still yet to understand. when you said in quotes “When you send email, you can send it through your own SMTP server, if you have one… Otherwise just choose to send through Gmail. ” I cant find an option to choose to send via email. i have tried to no avail or do you mean choose to send through the primary Gmail address ? i was hoping i can set up sending emails through my domain email address using gmail server as an alternative to setting up my own smtp server. Please kindly correct me where i am wrong. Your prompt response will be highly appreciated. Thanks

  49. Gambino says:

    sorry i meant “I cant find an option to choose to send via Gmail” not (email). that was a typo.

  50. Amanda Tabbah says:

    I want to know that if i got email of my web, is it going to use space on email server also or it will use gmail space?

  51. Is there an option in gmail for deleting emails from host server once they are downloaded into gmail? We have several domain emails set up in gmail. The email boxes on the host server continue to fill up. We have to go into the host server and select all and delete all often OR open yet another email program Mac mail and select and delete all. (Mac mail has the option to delete from server once downloaded)
    We love gmail but It is a real pain to constantly train new staff on how to delete email from server.

    • Janet Pearson says:

      Hi Judy,
      It sounds like your setup differs from the approach I have outlined, because email should be removed from the original account once it is received by gmail.
      Make sure you are using the “Send Mail As” in the way I describe and not just relying on “check email from other accounts” (which I don’t use).

      Janet

  52. Chris Lopez says:

    I am unable to send messages from my gmail account. How do I set up the settings I need so that when I compose a gmail message I will be able to send it. When I create a message in the to box with body to create message, I see no selection to send the gmail message?

    • Janet Pearson says:

      This might help (see the tiny down-pointing arrow at the end of the default email address):

      selecting the

  53. Ashif says:

    Really appreciate it.

    I have successfully added my custom domain name mail to Gmail.

  54. abhadatech says:

    Thanks for sharing it

  55. Coldfire says:

    You can still get Free Custom Domain Email accounts setup with Google Domains without G Suite Subscription. For a complete step by step guide, please check out our blog http://blog.coldfiredesignstudio.com/free-custom-domain-email-accounts-setup-with-google-domains/

    Regards,
    COLDFIRE DESIGN STUDIO

  56. Mohsin Afsar says:

    I have followed your steps successfully thanks, I can send email now with custom domain, but where could I receive my incoming email, should it will receive in my webmail or can I set this in gmail…..

  57. Ian says:

    A Big Thank You, Janet,

    This is exactly what I was after. I know a few others I’ll be sending your way.

  58. Gmail Customer Support says:

    Great to know about Gmail custom domain. I Used a different Gmail account than my usual one and been accessing the two accounts on two separate browsers. Thanks, It is working.

  59. Lefteris says:

    Hello to all,

    this solution works perfectly however there is an issue.

    When sending an email to the [email protected] there is a copy stored in the hosters mailbox and also the same mail in gmail mailbox. Which means when the hosters mailbox will be full, the email exchange will stop till we free up some space.

    I activated the mail forward but still the hosters mailbox keeps a copy.

    I deactivated the hosters mailbox and yes the mail reaches the gmail mailbox BUT the sender receives an error message that the mail is not delivered because the hosters mailbox doesnt exist (remember i have deactivated it).

    Any ideas how we can overrun this issue?

    Thank you very much in advance.

    • Janet Pearson says:

      It is because you are using a mail forwarder that you have the problem. My solution does not suggest setting up a mail forwarder.
      If you follow our process exactly you will not have the problem of mail being left in the hosting mail box.

  60. I can send the emails now with domain name email address but not able to receive emails on Gmail with domain address? Please revert back if have any solution for this

    • Janet Pearson says:

      If you are having this problem it means you have missed some steps in our process. I suggest you double check everything you have done against our instructions.

  61. Matthew says:

    Hi, I’m trying to decide between this type of forwarding and paying for g-suites. It seems like it would be fine for just me but I’m worried it might hamstring me later with growth or if I want to use it for managing a newsletter and what not.

  62. Vasanth Kumar D says:

    Thanks for the detailed information.
    I have a query :
    When I try to import the mails it works fine and imported all my mails in the inbox to personal gmail but when proceeding further to configure the ‘Send on behalf of Domain id’ an error mail will appear stating “Was not able reach or As not found “.
    Verified all the MX records,server related settings are properly set.

  63. James Hendley says:

    Hey,
    Thank you for this article, you’ve just saved me a lot of time, because I was planning to use Gmail for 5 different projects, so now it is going to be a lot easier. Thanks!

  64. Ian Sims says:

    Many thanks for your article. However as I read it, I realized I was already doing this. In fact I have it set up so that I send from my domain name as the default, but can also use my Gmail address if required, as there is one or two USA servers which reject my domain emails.

    My problem is apart from the occasional bounces which are annoying, my domain email has recently been hacked , with some lowlife sending demands for money to my customers in my name. This never happened with my Gmail account.

    My webmaster has suggested using an dedicated email provider. However this costs a lot, and seems to be a way of just covering his own hoster’s failings.

    My I please have your comments?