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. Anyway, 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.
    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 your 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.
To verify, go to your gmail and click on compose. There should be a drop-down in the from area. Select your new email address from the drop-down and send a test email from this account to another that you have to make sure it is working and also send an email from another account to the new email address that you just created to make sure that that is also working. (Don’t use the same gmail account for this as in general it just won’t work. Gmail blocks 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.

This message may not be from whom it claims to be.

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

Dreamhost Tweet
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.

29 Comments

  1. Thank you so so much for this. Im with hostgator and after some time talking with there tech support about trying to find a way to do this exact thing, they did not know!!! your instructions worked so so well !!! this page is bookmarked thats for sure !!

  2. Thanks for the info. I host clients using Hostgator and a lot of them want to run IMAP and run out of disk space in a hurry. Do you know if this method uses Gmail’s disk space or the domain host’s disk space? Usually when I do a forwarder the disk space is accumulated on the server.

    Do you know of a way to run a domain email, through Outlook, that uses the free mail space offered by Yahoo or Google?

    Appreciate the writeup.

    1. This method does use Google’s disk space so you’ll “never” have to delete another email. I will also fill up space on Hostgator but I’m sure they have a setting to automatically delete old email. WHen sending from Gmail though, I think you need to set it up to save your emails. I don’t remember clearly though. I don’t use Outlook or desktop email software but there is a way using POP/IMAP.

  3. Good one, easy to follow.
    Successfully setup the email for the domain and be able to send from gmail.
    One question though, I tried sending from my email@domain.com to my hotmail. The email was filtered to the junk inbox. Do you have any tips to prevent this? This is bad since most of the time when I contacted a person, I’ve to tell them to check to junk inbox.

    1. This method is supposed to help avoid this issue but there are other reasons that your email might go to a spam folder such as the content of the email and the server that the email is being sent from has sent spam before.

  4. What can I do to change settings so that my email sent through gmail which is supposed to always appear as it is from my company’s server is more consistent?

    Sometimes it does exactly as I would like which is reply or send my mail as
    xxxxx@mycompany.com other times it reads with the gmail address I signed up for

    mycompany@gmail.com sent on behalf of xxxxxx?

    I cannot figure out how to avoid this?

    1. When just sending an email you just have to select the right email address to send from but if you are replying to an email you can set it up in Gmail to reply automatically from the correct email in the settings area. Choose the 1st option in the settings area:

      When replying to a message:
      – Reply from the same address the message was sent to
      – Always reply from default address (currently XXX@gmail.com)

  5. Thank you, Alan! This was giving me a hard time, but your instructions made everything so easy and clear.

  6. Hi Alan,

    I have been receiving updates to this thread and I have another related question maybe you can help or one of the others on the thread. This is not an email space issue, but an email host issue.

    I am still with HostGator and I’m hosting about 50 sites that I have developed and some for business associates (for free) and some friends (for free). Hosting is a service I provide, but not at all the focus of my business. Today we are having an email issue, not sure if it’s HostGator or AT&T, but my phone rings off the hook and I lost a days work dealing with it. The hosting is solid at HG and takes very little support time. But when I host peoples email, every time they have an email that bounces or doesn’t send right away they call me. 9 of 10 times it is not my issue. It’s usually a SMTP issue with their ISP. So I am considering not hosting email anymore and reducing the price of my hosting. The hosting is so low margin anyway and the support is taking too much time. I think I would be better off setting them up with a email service elsewhere, that they can contact the support department themselves and not call me every time their monitor blinks funny (yes, bitter I know, been a long week).

    Do you or anyone else know of an Email host that I can run my domain email (jeremy@mydomain.com) through Outlook? Where I could update the MX records and use their service. I am not really looking for a free service because I need it to have a support department that my clients can call when they have a problem.

    Thanks again.

    1. It might be something about sending to and from the same email address.

  7. Thanks a lot. That is exactly what I needed. You made it look very easy.

    Thanks.

    Hanan Badawy

  8. Hi
    Great content, but it don’t work for me.
    🙁

    I set up and i can send mail by gmail whit my new address, but i cannot receive there if somebody send me anything … any idea?

    1. I’m not sure if this is the issue but if you are trying to send from the same gmail account it won’t work. Try a Hotmail account or other if you have it.

      1. Solved.

        I had to set the POP3 section in gmail, too …
        Uncheking ssl certificate and whit the usual dreamhost credential. It seems you can do it whit 5 external email max.

        So the SMTP is to send, the POP is to receive, I soppose.

  9. I keep getting this same error no matter how I try to setup Send:

    Authentication failed. Please check your username/password.
    [Server response: DNS Error: Address resolution of smtp.strathfieldretina.com.au. failed: Domain name not found code(0) ]

    I’ve a Dreamhost acct and email address and I’m using the follow config

    SMTP Server: smtp.mydomain.com Port: 587
    Username: myemailaddress@mydomain.com
    Password: **********
    Secured connection using TLS (recommended)

    I don’t have a Google apps acct. nor have I made any changes to my MX record.

    I have searched for an answer on Google forums. But not even Google have an answer!

    1. I’m not sure but I think that Google may no longer allow this system. I think I read somewhere recently that it’s fine for existing accounts but they will no longer allow it for new accounts. I don’t remember where I saw it and I didn’t quite understand it. Also I could be wrong. If I find the article I will comment again.

  10. Hi,

    I used your guide but at the step where gmail is supposed to send an email I get an email in my gmail account saying:

    Mail Delivery Subsystem
    Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
    emailaddress-to-be-sending-messages-as-from
    Technical details of permanent failure:
    Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the server for the recipient domain by . [ip address].
    The error that the other server returned was:
    554 5.7.1 : Recipient address rejected: Access denied
    —– Message suppressed —–
    ———————————————-

    I would appreciate some help with this – readers, author, aliens, whoever ;).

  11. Thank you! Been ripping my hair out for hours, the dream host documentation was useless. Really helped me solve the problem quickly. 🙂

    Much appreciated,
    Shalom

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