How to send mail from your own domain using Gmail and your iPhone
February 11, 2011 by Phil Montero
In my blog post yesterday I showed you how to configure Google Sync to keep your Gmail, Google Calendar, and Contacts in sync with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Those steps work great if you use your Gmail address as your primary email address but they won’t let you send mail from your own domain.
I have several different email addresses with different domains names all forwarding mail to Gmail and thanks to it’s flexibility I was able to configure Gmail so that I can send or reply from any of them (with one being the default address for new messages). For example even though I use Gmail as my email program I rarely use my Gmail address – instead my FROM address is phil@theanywhereoffice.com.
Although Gmail handles this perfectly I was disappointed when first configured my iPod Touch a few years back using Google Sync that it ignored these settings and always sent mail from my Gmail address. This was unacceptable to me as I wanted emails I sent to come from my business address and didn’t want to confuse my clients, customers, and colleagues. I hunted and searched and tested and finally found out how to get this to work. You can still use the steps I shared in yesterday’s post/video to sync your Google Calendars and contacts with your iPhone but you need to turn off the mail option there and follow some special (and somewhat convoluted) steps to get the mail to sync with Gmail AND send from your own domain.
No worries – I’m here to help. I recorded 2 videos for you below walking you step-by-step through the entire process. The first step would be to have mail from your other domain forward to your Gmail account. I assume you’re probably already doing this but if not you’ll need to go into your current email settings for your domain and set it to forward your mail to your Gmail account. The steps for this will vary depending on how you currently get your email – most likely these settings can be controlled in the control panel of your web or email host.
The next step is to configure Gmail to send mail from your own domain rather than using your Gmail address. Watch this video to learn how to do this:
The final step is the tricky part – how to get your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to sync with Gmail and use your own domain. Make sure to follow all the steps in the next video – there are a few gotcha’s (like one part where you have to set it up with your Gmail address, back out, then go back in and change it). It sounds silly – but you have to do this to make it work. If you follow all these steps in my video you will reach nirvanna and have your Gmail perfectly in sync on your iPhone and be able to send and reply to messages using your own domain. Thing of beauty!!
(NOTE: I know you can use Google Apps to have all mail for your domain integrated with Gmail but for many small business and solo professionals you may prefer to not go through the steps of setting that up and simply use your regular Gmail account. I actually used Google Apps and switched back to using my regular Gmail account. I found it made it easier to use all the other Gmail services and often times new features were released to regular Gmail accounts long before Google Apps got them. Not to mention the iGoogle pages for regular Gmail are MUCH better than those for Google Apps. There are a lot more widgets available and if you use iGoogle as your startup page or a digital dashboard that definitely makes a difference!)
UPDATED (7/28/11) – HOW TO USE MULTIPLE FROM ADDRESSES:
Big thanks to Rafael who posted a comment below on how to configure your iPhone to support multiple FROM addresses (so if you have multiple email addresses you use you can have a choice which to use when sending). Here is what you need to do to set that up:
- Goto imap account information
- At the address box type all your outgoing emails with a comma separator for example Aaa@domain.com,bbb@domain.com,you@gmail.com
This will add a from option when you create new email on the iPhone.
Awesome tip Rafael – what I love about the internet and huzzah to tribal knowledge and the great group we have here at The Anywhere Office!
Please leave me a comment below and let me know if my video walk-thru helped you out or if you have any questions.
