Forward your email to Gmail
Gmail is a great spam free way to read your emails, and if you set it up properly it can solve all your mobile email hassles. Wherever you have a browser, or wherever your smart phone can operate the mobile Gmail app, you’re in touch with everyone, and all your business. If you have several persona, home, work, private consulting, various web projects, each with their own address, you can set up your Gmail to make it appear as if you are answering emails from any address you like.
However, do it wrong and Google will cut you dead and leave you and anyone else on your server completely out of touch.
Here’s how to set up email forwarders so that Aunty Google doesn’t get pissed at you. The secret is simply to realize that Gmail is not there to act a spam filter for you, and if you throw all your emails at it with forwarders, Gmail will eventually feel that it’s doing too much work, and block your whole IP. The simple rule is:
Don’t forward email to Gmail, get Gmail to pick it up from your account instead.
That way it can choose not to download mail it identifies as spam, so you’re still getting the same protection, and Google will accept mail from your server. Here’s how.
- Step 1
Create one central mail account in your domain – perhaps call it collector@yourdomain.com so that its purpose is obvious. - Step 2
Set up email forwarders to point to this new address. Delete any forwarders that already exist and which point to a Gmail address.Aunty Google really doesn’t like you doing this. - Step 3
In your Gmail account, go to Settings > Accounts and Imports > Add POP3 Email Account, and do what they say to let Gmail access your collector@yourdomain.com account.
Sorted!
16 Sept 2013. I just spotted https://support.google.com/mail/answer/21289?hl=en&ctx=mail&rd=1 which will take you through all the right steps.