Since I first met Gmail, in the very beginning of the service, I became addicted to the interface and, this days, I can hardly imagine myself using something else.
Yet using public email addresses is a big problem because if one day you change to another service you will have the headache of telling everybody about your new address. Having your own domain and your email within it is much better.
You may also want to handle old email accounts within Gmail transparently.
In this article, I will show you how to configure Gmail to manage multiple accounts in a transparent way and using your own domain email address or any other you may like.
Update: See the sequel of this article and learn How to manage all your main in Gmail: Filters, Labels multiple Id’s and even backups
Step 1 – Forward your current addresses to Gmail
The first thing to do is to put a forwarding rule on all your other email addresses.
If you own a domain, creating fordward email accounts is probably very simple, on your registrar’s site. You can create an email you@yourdomain.com that has no mailbox associated and the email will be simply be forwarded to you@gmail.com.
If you own an email from a free mail service, it is likely that you can configure a forward rule to another address. Some email systems don’t allow you to do that. If that is the case you won’t be able to manage it through Gmail.
Keep in mind that if your email system doesn’t allow you to create a forward rule this is a very good reason to get rid of it as soon as possible.
With this done, you will receive all your mail on your Gmail account.
So far, so good, but this is pretty basic, huh? We are suppose to handle all email through Gmail and not just receive forwaded mail, correct?
Read on, gentle reader, you’ll find your answers.
Step 2 – Defining an email management policy
So far you have set up all email accounts you have to forward to Gmail. But still, if you reply a message addressed to you@yourdomain.com the sender will still be you@Gmail.com. So your managing address will be shown and this may bring up two problems
- You lose the authority of your domain on email you replied.
- You are disclosing an address you don’t want email to be directly sent to.
If people send email to you@yourdomain.com, they expect a reply from this account. If you send a reply from a different account that may undermine trust and authority your domain has. To say the least, you will disclose how your inner email management system works.
The second problem is even worse. If one day you want to quit Gmail and use something else to manage your mail, you will have to care about people sending email directly to your Gmail account.
Say that one day, someone manages to get access to your Gmail account and takes over it (I’ve know cases like this before), you’ll need a new one. If you don’t receive direct email to that account, you only have to redirect you@yourdomain to your_new_account@Gmail.com.
So you what we want is
- All email you want to manage should be replied from the same account it was sent to
- All email sent to obsolete accounts should arrive, but should be replied with the new address
- Set a default address attached to your identity, and not to Gmail or any other public email service
Step 3 – Setting Gmail to assume different identities
Now, we want Gmail to assume a different Identity for different email accounts you have forwarded to it.
For this, let’s assume you have these accounts forwarded to your Gmail:
- you@yourdomain.com
- Your account within your domain. An account you plan to keep for countless years and have full power to manage.
- contact@yourdomain.com
- Your contact account within your domain. You want to keep it as a separate identity because one day your little business may grow so much that you’ll need to hire someone else to handle contact email while you play CEO.
- you@oldwebmail.com
- An old account of yours in a web provider you don’t really like but you can’t get rid of because people still send you email to it.
- grandma@GrandmaCakes.com
- Your grandma’s account. She is not quite good at email, but she needed a contact address since she launched a website to sell her wonderful cakes out. She left you in charge of handling customers on her behalf (she will bake your favorite cake in return)
What we want is:
- Your default email will be you@yourdomain.com. Every email you start writing will be sent with this identity.
- Incoming mail to you@yourdomain.com will be replied as you@yourdomain.com
- Incoming mail to contact@yourdomain.com will be replied as contact@yourdomain.com
- Incoming mail to you@oldwebmail.com should be replied as the default identity, once you’d like this account to be lost forever instead of perpetuated
- Incoming mail to grandma@GrandmaCakes.com will be replied assuming the nice old lady’s identity.
Now, let’s do it.
- The first thing to do is to set up the default reply mail policy. Go to Settings»Accounts and click in Reply from the same address the message was sent to. With this, if a message is sent to an email managed by Gmail, when it is replied, Gmail will use as sender the same identity the email was sent to.
-
Now, let’s configure your default mail. Click Add another email address and put your name and the email address you want as default, you@yourdomain.com in our example.
Gmail will send this address a confirmation email to verify that you own it. Because is already redirected in our example, you will receive the message on your Gmail account, no problems about it.
-
Then, repeat the process to contact@yourdomain and grandma@GrandmaCakes.com, but do not include you@oldwebmail.com. Why? Just because you don’t want to manage that account, it is already redirected to you, but you don’t want that identity anymore.
If you don’t include an email account, Gmail will not assume its identity as sender, and the default address will be used. Now you are able to read mail from this account, but you won’t send email from it.
- The Last step is setting your default account. Right now is you@gmail.com. That means that all email you start and all email sent to unmanaged accounts that are redirected to it, will be replied with this identity. But you want to hide your Gmail account from public, so click on the make default link to the right of you@your_domain.com.
Now you are done. You can manage all your email within Gmail and nobody will even know you have one.
99 Comments
Only one problem… Outlook (and possibly other) users see the from address as “Soandso at gmail.com on behalf of realaddress at domain.com”. So everybody still knows that you’re using gmail. Good for avoiding spam, but bad if you’re trying to manage multiple addresses without everybody figuring out the main one.
The one problem I have with this is that in some email clients, gmail messages sent as something like you@your_domain.com sometimes appear as “you@Gmail.com on behalf of you@your_domain.com” which, I think, really kills the desired effect. I have yet to find a good solution for it.
Sorry, I missed Jeremy’s message the first time through.
You don’t have to forward mail from your other accounts. You can use ‘Get mail from other accounts’ – via POP3 – to grab it.
What Jeremy and Josh said – caused me lots of trouble because I had set up all my emails that way and for some time wasn’t aware gmail showed itself to most everyone.
It’s the ‘sent on behalf of’ that has me literally going back to Thunderbird to send a reply to something after I read it in Gmail; it’s just too obnoxious and confusing to some of my recipients, and me, sadly.
For people who have their own domain, the best solution is to use Google Apps for your domain ( http://www.google.com/a ). Then your gmail account will actually BE you@yourdomain.com, and you won’t have a problem with ‘sent on behalf of’. And you can always just point your email somewhere else if you decide to stop using google apps. This involves changing MX records though, so it might not be for everyone.
The major problem with using Gmail this way, particularly with the “Get mail from other accounts” setting for POP3 email is the propensity for Gmail to just sort of forget to check those POP3 accounts.
Both my wife and I have been bitten by this. The problem comes from the fact that Gmail doesn’t give you any indication that anything is amiss until the people who’ve been emailing you start asking you why you aren’t responding. In my case, I had almost three weeks of unchecked mail from my POP3 account. Since this is the account I use professionally, obviously this is a major non-starter.
I’m back to a traditional desktop email client now, thanks.
I’m using a catchall mailbox on my domain that allows me to use different addresses like website.com@example.com, etc. I use this to register to different sites with different addresses. It’s easy to filter / block / whatever those mails based on a header “X-Original-To: ” my mailhost adds.
But so far I have not been able to filter in gmail using this header which is crucial to me.
I attempted to replace Outlook with Google products, and I had mixed results.
Some things work well, but other things were just really broken. In addition to the “on behalf of” problem, it also seemed that messages to my Outlook address that contained multiple recipients looked like they were addressed only to me when they got to my Gmail box. (Very bad for doing a “reply to all”.)
Now, I’m back to Thunderbird accessing my Exchange server email address, but I still forward copies of received emails to Gmail so that I can take advantage of Google’s excellent searching.
I am yet to read the post but I love this design!
I set up my desktop e-mail clients to use Gmail’s smtp server. This way I can easily access all mail sent from home, work, or notebook!
The thing I am missing most in Gmail is a simple substring search, or, better still, search with wildcards. I think it is really embarassing: the “search company” has a very week wildcard support in their web search and none at all in the mail search.
#10 filtering alternate addresses.
gmail supports “+suffix” syntax on email addresses.
Like yourname+website.com@example.com will get sent to yourname@example.com.
You can just filter on the “to:” field.
Unfortunately I had used “-suffix” for a long time and they do not support that.
I am not an Outlook user and I wasn’t aware of the problem pointed out Jeremy, Josh, Angelika and Balu. Thanks for bringing it to light.
Of course gmail information goes along with the email, but I didn’t know some mail clients (particularly one so widely used as outlook) would be so explicit.
@George Entenman –
Quite true! But seems that some people like Wood had some problems with it. I haven’t used because I don’t currently keep my email on any POP3 box, most of them are just send straight to Gmail.
@Wood –
@Sam Jackson, @drew – I see your point. Still, I am a strong supporter of online management instead of desktop, as much as possbible. Certainly a solution for the Gmail problem would be nice.
@Constantinos Neophytou –
Google apps seemed to me like a very handy way to manage a domain with very little effort, very nice for someone that has the domain as a customized address on the web. But If I’m not wrong, that doesn’t handle at all the problem for those who actually need to host a site (I may be wrong on that, I haven’t subscribed to the trial yet).
@viju – Thanks! You can find more about it here and here
@Maciej – That is a nice mixed solution. Seems to be the best of two worlds for people willing to live with desktop mail applications.
@Joe – Thanks for sharing it.
@Constantinos – By the way, are you using Google Apps yourself? Would you share your impressions on it?
I would love to see it in it’s ideal state, but based on what these folks have said – why bother?
@Snatch Mahoney – Well, I actually thought putting a disclaimer on the post stating that Gmail info would be sent along but I didn’t (though I didn’t know it was so obvious in outlook, if I did then I would certainly chose to put it).
I Think that the main point here is that you are able to strength your domain info, and help your contacts to keep the email associated with your domain, this is what will keep them updated even if you quit Gmail some day. That was my main point and, despite the outlook problems, I think this is still valid.
I agree it would be nice to completely hide Gmail information but for the time being I think the system is worthy for many scenarios.
I’d love to see the Gmail interface to some webmail application you can run on your own site, I’d certainly forward my own Gmail to this in-site mailbox, but for the time being I, personally, prefer to stick to this solution, with all the related problems, that going back to a desktop solution
In fact, I think that the more you can send outside the desktop, the better, be that your own server or a trusted 3rd party’s.
gMail used to be great for the ‘Single Email Box.’ However, as earlier mentioned in the comments, they now TAG everything w/gMail – crippling the value of using gMail as the single email aggregator.
Anyone w/input or information on this please respond. Thanks.
I believe that, if you want to have an address of ‘yourname@yourdomain.com’ and manage it easily, you should look into Google Apps. It is really just a GMail account under your domain name. It has all of the functionality of GMail and you do not need to pay unless you want over 2GB per e-mail account or more than 50 accounts to your domain.
I have found this post helpful because I am involved in more than one business venture and we have Google Apps running for each venture or website we run. Thus I have myname@mycompany.com, info@mycomany.com, myname@project1.com, myname@project2.com, myname@website1.com, and personal@gmail.com. I have forwarded all of the e-mail addresses to my mail business account (myname@mycompany.com) and setup the aliases (step 3 of this post) on that same account.
I conduct all of my e-mail from my main business account unless I explicitly do not want the “sent on behalf of” information to be included on the e-mail. Then I have to log into one of the other accounts. It can be frustrating to have to log into the other account to reply to e-mail, but on the bright side, you can be logged into as many Google Apps accounts that you want at the same time. What I mean is you do not have to logout out myname@mycompany.com to log into myname@project1.com; you can be logged into both in the same browser.
There are a few limitations to Google Apps like the lack of Google Reader for the Google Apps account, and a contact sharing capability for accounts withing the domain. I believe that Google’s lack of web-hosting services is on limitation that prevents people for using Google Apps. Google only hosts simple web pages in conjunction with your Google Apps account; however you can have your website hosted with a full-service web-hosting company and point your MX record to Google. This way you would be able to have full access to Google Apps and still be able to present a commercial strength website or blog.
So, in short (hehe), that is all that I know about Google Apps so far. I think everyone should at least try it out. Thank you.
One other downside not mentioned so far is that some receiving domains will filter emails sent from gmail under the name of another domain. I have run into this issue with .gov email accounts. I will send a message and never get a reply – and it took a while for me to sort out that the message never made it to them and was marked as spam. I have also seen other situations where the message is marked as [SPAM], but still delivered – and I see this when the person replies to me.
Anyone have an answer to these issues other than NOT using gmail to pretend to send from other domains?
@PixelRogue – I think THE great thing about Gmail is the amazing user interface. IMHO, no email system I’ve seen before is nearly as good as Gmail’s.
The possibility to handle several accounts in an almost transparent way, is also a very valuable added benefit.
But of course, Gmail can’t just open the door for all kind of spammers to use it to forge email. In a way, this is what happened some years ago, when mail servers did relay openly and spammers used them, today, leave such a hole is unforgivable.
The great problem, I guess, is how obvious Outlook and perhaps other mail clients, show the fact that Gmail handled the operation.
Not an Outlook bug, problem or bad design, I guess, but really ruins the transparency of the operation, even for those with good intentions (a.k.a not-spammers and forgers).
@Pucel – Wow, long comment, very useful one, as well, thank you for it. This seems to solve the problem that afflicts so many people here.
Now, having fully hosted systems Vs. using public systems is a discussion on its own right, but desktop seems to be in process of becoming obsolete form many things and I think an online solution is always a better option whenever possibly.
As I said previously, I would just love to have a Gmail-kind-of webmail system to your own site. It would be nice to have this option, because old fasioned webmail systems doesn’t seem to handle at all the volume and use email have today.
@Jeanne – Well, this is true as well
But in any case is no worse than just using the plain old Gmail account.
Pucel has explained a nice solution to the problem that I am keen to see working
very nice description. although i tried this and hated this approach . I use a much better approach, will probably write about it soon on my blog.
@Ansi – I’d love to see it. Leave us a link here when you are done writing
Hi. Thanks for nice post. I have translated into Japanese.
Plesese link to me.
Sorry for not telling you about my translation.
And I have some trouble that some reader of my site says don’t understand using forward mail and not using POP3.
I thought using forward mail means that some mail service doesn’t have POP3mail service.
I also read comment 15, but I couldn’t understand.
Wood says:The major problem with using Gmail this way, particularly with the “Get mail from other accounts” setting for POP3 email is the propensity for Gmail to just sort of forget to check those POP3 accounts.
I don’t understand why it’s the propensity for Gmail to just sort of forget to check those POP3 accounts.
So, would you explain about it more?
@GoogleMania – You are linked! If anybody else has a translation, please tell me and I will gladly link to it.
Forward is a push method, means that every email you receive will be delivered to another account as soon as it arrives. If your mail system has this feature, you are able to configure it to send you email to a different address and you don’t even have to log in to read it.
POP3 is the old traditional method of getting email, is a pull method. When you configure a mail client to get email from your server one of the ways of doing it isby using POP3.
Gmail allows you to use POP3 to periodically log into other email accounts you may have and retrieve the messages, even if the server doesn’t forward to you. This is a way for servers like Hotmail that don’t do forward.
I guess Wood meant that POP3 retrieval in Gmail is not reliable and you end up losing messages.
I, too, was thrilled to get an invitation to gmail way back when, but recently I was a bit annoyed when I realized that Google was reading and indexing all of my emails. That ain’t cool in my book. The way I found out was when I was emailing a friend about having a bbq and happened to look at a couple of the web ads and half of them were for barbecue products or stuff. Ever since then, I’ve kind of tempered my use of “free” stuff on the web, especially gmail. I don’t doubt hotmail does the same.
I landed here via Lifehacker! Great article.
I was actually catalyzed into motion by your article in doing bundling my gmail ids into my GAfyD Email ID.
I use Thunderbird to get my email into my computer (archaic, I know, but a creature of habit and need to keep my email accessible!).
Prior to bundling, the smtp set up made sure that the sent mail also shows under ‘sent’ in GMail. After doing the forwards; I downstepped my email accounts in Thunderbird from individual inbox to global inbox on local folders. This meant that I do not have a copy of the email under ‘sent’ in Thunderbird and nor in GMail, since I forwarded. It maybe something I did not do right…but it just did not work for me….hence reverted to the old segregated setup.
Thanks for the article anyway. It is in my Google Notebook for posterity!!
@pstamant – I know what you mean. Sometimes in conversations, comparing with proprietary products, people say wonders about google and finish with “and it is free”. I always like to answer “Is not free, but instead of money you sell your soul.
I guess It is ok, up to certain point and I think that in my case, with the use I give to Gmail, I don’t really bother, I don’t use Gmail for things that I really don’t want to disclose.
In any case, I think is a fair argument for anyone that doesn’t feel comfortable with it. Just one thing though: Every mail systems has such access to your info, the difference is that the guys at google are extremely good in make an use out of it.
@RJ – You are welcome, I am glad it was useful.
I don’t think that Thunderbird is something that terrible, is just that the Gmail way of categorizing emails as a conversation is really a nice perception of how email is really used this days. I can’t live without this anymore.
When I first see it I immediately thought that it would be copied over and over all around the web. I am amazed (an somehow frustrated) that it didn’t happened.
Thank You!
I understood different between Forward and POP3.
@Ryosuke –
i just started to use google apps, ive been using a few different gmail accounts all forwarding into one for some time now. i had a domain with office live, but now moved it to google apps and it works great. you can use the whole gmail interface, but with your own domain.
you could use only the gmail if you want, and have everything else hosted at your normal spot, or you can host you webpage with google using the google pages.
@james – I am willing to try Google Aps for a domain to see how it works.
I’ve been using gMail since the beginning, about 6 months ago I started using Google apps for my domain, and recently I imported my emails from my regular gMail accounts into my Google Apps account and am using that for all my email activity.
There are a few irritating things about it and features missing (a default send-to email for contacts would be nice), but so far it is working well.
@Aaron – I know what you mean! One thing I find really missing is the ability to organize your contacts in groups, so you don’t have to hunt contacts one by one or use Google groups to send group emails.
Very informative. After 14 years in Corporate Life, I am on the verge of Chucking up a silver coated job and hence Googling what my Technology Department may never have before. Some things I figured from the above comments by other users are:
1. Google Apps slightly Tech Challenging for a layman (With the Change of MX records)
2. The Fact that Google “Barbeques” your mail, completely Not Acceptable. Ihave worked for Risk and Governance
3. yourname@yourdomain.com hosted with a Reliable Registrar of Names and someone who also offers a reliable email solution, with a 99.9% SLA on Uptime, seems the best way forward.
4. POP3 with Outlook Express works beautifully for me.
5. In the age of Mobile Mail, a mail solution which pulls mail rather than one where one has to go to retrieve mail, should be preferred.
As a first time user, I have a feedback for the webmaster of this site. Please provide one line headers right at the top, for all comments and maybe after going through the post, you could filter the good ones, say e.g. “Recommended for Read” next to it, to hep a quick browse. This way who ever is leaving a comment will also be tempted, to leave a good one, rather than just some stuff.
“Everything is Possible”
Thanks again.
@Puneet Sachdeva – Thanks for the comments and sorry for the late reply, I am in a very busy moment of my life.
I think that in the case of working for Risk an Governance, I wouldn’t even use google, I would use a particular email system and even cryptography on top of it, but yes, barbecueing your email is indeed totally unacceptable.
Thanks also for the suggestion, I’ll try to put it into practice.
Likewise, you can set up filters in gmail to apply different labels for different accounts, so that you can easily look at the mail from just one of those accounts by selecting the label. If you’re going to manage your accounts with Gmail, then this is probably an essential thing to set up.
@Peter Cruickshank – You are totally right, it is a veey handy way to deal with multiple accounts.
hi,
i want to receive mails simultaneously on 2 accounts… (i mean another id parallel to my existing id) could it be done ? please let me know and I would be grateful to you.
@pramod – Well, it can certainly be achieved, that can be done folowing Peter‘s suggestion and set up a filter so you select the messages you want to send and forward to the other address.
You can even delete the message after forward it so it is like it has been directly sent to the other id.
Now a question: would you share with us why you want to do this?
Very useful. Thanks!
Google Apps is killing webhosters world wide But a gift for small business, students and internet citizens who can’t afford web hosting costs. 100MB webspace provided for google pages can be used as general purpose webhosting after applying few tricks. Keep experimenting you’ll find a way.
how can i creat a saparate folder in Inbox in gmail,so that the mail which is sent by a single person should come to that folder only.Eg:In outlook
@Venu madhav Manthena –
Gmail is based on the filosofy of “Search, don’t sort”, meaning that you don’t have folders, you perform searches instead.
Even though, you have labels to help you manage your mail. Read this post to learn how
Thank you! I have been using gmail to manage muliple accounts, but was stuck on hiding the gmail part…. not any more!!!
@gail – I’m glad it helped
Hey People! Great post and comments!
So, I’ve already setup Google Apps on my domain and have 3 email addresses, i.e.:
– support@mydomain.com
– sales@mydomain.com
– personal@mydomain.com
the last one for personal mail).
I would like to control the three using a single inbox (i.e. personal@mydomain.com) and be able to send email as the other three without having to open a new browser window for each account I would like to send from, and without having the “sent on behalf” problem.
So, though Google Apps lets you receive the other account’s email on one inbox through POP, if I understand well (I’ve gone trough all posts), there’s still no way to achieve this. Am I wrong?
Thank you very much!
Hi:
On the other hand, I would like to know how you do this. I’m using Firefox and (as I thought it would happen), all browser windows logs me on the address I’m currently using (cookies?). So I don’t know how to log in on different email accounts at the same time…
Thanks!
Pucel says:
It can be frustrating to have to log into the other account to reply to e-mail, but on the bright side, you can be logged into as many Google Apps accounts that you want at the same time. What I mean is you do not have to logout out myname@mycompany.com to log into myname@project1.com; you can be logged into both in the same browser.
69: lobo
If I understand your question, go to Settings. Accounts, Add another email address. Google will send a link to that email address to verify you have access. Then you have the choice of “from” address.
An aside. You can also forward from the other accounts instead of waiting for POP to pull.
Neh, I’ve already done all that. If you read well, what I want is to avoid the “sent on behalf” problem, where gMail sends an email with the field “Sender:” on the header.
Sorry if I didn’t explain myself before..
Hi there I buy Media Deals and I’m trying to find out how do I place all of the names of the Medias in one folder I’ll give you a Example Like lets say I Developed a Folder with OUTLOOK Express and under that one name I developed a name called Medias But when I click on it, it shows all of the names of the medias on a seperate Folder I’m trying to Figuire out how do I develop 10 different Folder names of media names under one Folder name? If u can please Send me a Film or a picture of how to do it step by step I would realy appreciate it thank you
Steve
@Steve – Hi, Steve. Gmail does’t have a folder system, they use labels instead. I think you can learn what you want on this other post
Great Thread! Thank for all the information.
I may be a little slow, but is Pucel saying that you can use Google Apps and avoid the sent on behalf of Google?
@Mark –
Hi Mark, yes, that’s the idea.
If you set up your own domain name email address (yourname.com) using Yahoo, then when you sign into your regular yahoo.com email, yahoo also provides a link to (and the identical yahoo email interface for) the yourname.com email. Does gmail not offer this? Are we always obliged to log in separately through google apps if we want to avoid the “sent on behalf of” problem mentioned above in the forwarding and POP access solutions?
@Liz – Oops, I left your comment unanswered to see if somebody did know the answer and forgot to come back, sorry for that.
Unfortunately I don’t have an answer for your question, but if I understood correctly once you have integrated your domain in google apps, it automatically sends email using it. Isn’t that the case?
I have a few domains and websites and am VERY happy with my current domain provider and don’t want to switch my domain to Google. Is there ANY other way I can kill the gmail account coming up as the sender? I personally send all gmail to the spam folder on my accounts, and only let known senders come into my inbox (I do the same for hotmail, yahoo, etc. to decrease spam), and I know plenty of others do the same, so to keep my mail OUT of spam folders I don’t want the gmail address associated with it. This is a dealbreaker for me.
@Keri – AFAIK, no, but you don’t have to switch your provider to be able to use google apps.
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