How To Set Up Gmail for your Website or Business (how to)

Gmail’s interface allows it to play nicely with other email accounts, including those attached to your business or website.

Google Mail revolutionized email delivery because it can replace your mail reading program even when you’re using a business or website email service instead of your Google address.

Catch you later, Outlook. Have a nice life, Thunderbird. Gmail does most of the same things, but online.

The Gmail interface allows it to serve as a clearinghouse for all your electronic mail accounts, whether they’re personal or business. Most email accounts can feed directly into Gmail to streamline your mail.

If you use a business account attached to your website (example, me@mydomainname.com) you can use Post Office Protocol (POP) settings to send that directly to your Gmail box. Even better, you can compose your mail in Gmail and send it out with your business address.

Setting things up in Gmail

1. Go to the Settings menu in Gmail. It’ll be near the upper right corner, and the icon looks like a gear. Click on that, and select Settings from the submenu.
2. Click on the Accounts and Import tab.
3. Scroll down to the “Check mail from other accounts” section and click on “Add a POP3 mail account you own.”
4. Type the email address you wish to check from in the popup dialog box and hit Next.
5. Punch in your username and password for the account you wish to feed into your Gmail.
6. Type in the name of the POP server for your business account. More than likely this will populate itself.
7. Decide whether you wish to keep a copy of any email on your business server.
8. Select a label for your imported mail. This makes it easier to find.
9. Decide whether you want email responses to go out with a default email address or use the same one the original message used.
10. Select Add Account.

Setting up outgoing mail

While the above takes care of feeding your business email into your personal account, you’re still stuck with using your gmail handle as your return (“From”) address. Which may not be a problem, but if your Gmail name has terms like “party” or “420” in it, your business credibility will take a hit. To use your business email as a “From,” go back into the Settings for a moment.

1. Click on the Accounts and Import tab.
2. Scroll down to the “Send mail as” section.
3. Click on “Add another email address you own.”
4. Type the name you wish to show on any mail from that address — such as a business name.
5. Type in the email address, tick the “use as alias” box, then click on Next Step.
6. You will be asked to verify that email address. Click on “Send Verification.”
7. Follow the steps to verify your email.

Taking this further

When you compose an email, you can select which address you want to use. Make your choice on the “From” line.

While your business email specifications will most likely come up automatically when you set it up in Gmail, this doesn’t always happen. You might need to go to your business email site and hunt up the POP mail specs.

Your business mail server probably isn’t as large as Gmail’s, so unless you have compelling reason to save extra copies of your correspondence there, select No. If you’re using Gmail as a front end, you may never go to your business email box again.

Warnings

Don’t use Gmail as your primary, publicly-shown business address. Fly-by-night outfits use Gmail, and you probably don’t want to leave that impression.

Yahoo! Mail does not use POP or IMAP for free accounts; you have to pay for that service. But Yahoo! also isn’t recommended for a business account either.

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