Send and receive your domain email with Gmail

This is my guide on how to send and receive your domain email with Gmail. If you are like me you don’t want to have to log into several email accounts to check your email. Luckily you you don’t have to.

As you know, I have several websites. I use emails from each of them as I feel it is much more professional than using a free webmail address. Anywaay, when I see a hotmail, gmail or yahoomail address from a company I have to wonder if it’s genuine.

Despite having several email addresses I only log into one email account (gmail) regularly. From there I manage most of my email. How do I do it?

So you want to send and receive your domain email with gmail too?

It’s easy. I have created a two part guide below. Just follow these steps. (I am using DreamHost but the steps should work for most hosts.)

Create Email and Email Forwarder with DreamHost (you need both)

1. Click Manage Email in the sidebar and then click Create New Email Address. The important parts here are the email address and the password and the Email Box name but check over the other settings if you are interested.
2. Click Create Address.
3. Make a note of your email address and password.
4. Scroll down and you should see your new email address under Mailbox and a link to the Mailbox Manager (forget this, you won’t need it as you will manage your email from gmail). Over on the right click Edit.
   
5. In the Fully Hosted Email section next to the line List all email addresses to forward to, one per line add your gmail address.(Important: do not use the Forward-Only Email section.)
6. Click Save Changes.

How to best set up Gmail to Send and receive you domain email

1. Log in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Accounts and Import tab.
4. In the row Send mail as click Add another email address you own.
5. A new window should have opened in a pop-up. Enter the name you want associated with this account and the new email address you just created.
6. Make sure Treat as an alias is checked.
7. Click Next Step.
8. You have two options here. You should select Send through YOURDOMAIN SMTP servers. (*See why below.)
9. Now you have 3 fields to fill in.  The SMTP Server for Dreamhost is mail.YOURDOMAIN (eg. mail.deadhippo.com). The username and password are the email (use the whole email address) and password that you just set up in Dreamhost.
10. Select 587 from the drop-down.
11. It’s up  to you to use TSL or SSL but they recommend TSL.
12. Click Add Account. (If you get an Authentication Failed message, it might just mean that Dreamhost hasn’t added the email address yet. Be patient.)
13. An email with a confirmation code was sent to the email address that you just created. You need to open that email and click the verification link or copy and paste the verification code back into the previous window. And that’s it.

*Sending through gmail is easier to set up. There is no doubt about it but I strongly advise against this option as there is a high chance that email you send through gmail is likely to be marked as spam and may even be blocked my web servers. If you are a gmail user you have probably seen the warning Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be… That could also happen if you choose the first option.

Another benefit of this is that you don’t have to deal with your web hosts webmail outages.

You don't have to worry about your host's webmail outages anymore!

I hope this has helped you out. I’m not saying that this is the best way to manage your email but it is easy and it’s how I currently do it. If you have any questions or comments please use the comment form below.