Gmail for sending / receiving from another account

frankthetank

So I have a hosting provider serving web space and email for my small media company, and not less than two months in we're blowing our email disk space out of the water (such is life in the media business!). So I've been contemplating switching over to Gmail on account of its spam filtering, enormous disk space, and that its cheaper to ask for more storage if I need down the road. Steps to do so seem pretty simple:

-Fetch existing mail from current account
-mail forward all future messages to come to my gmail account
-set up a 'send-as' address under gmail, so as I please I can send emails 'from' my media company address

My question is, has anyone done this before? Are you happy with how it works for you? Do I need to set up another gmail account, or can I use my primary account and just have multiple 'accounts' forwarding email to it (like you can in Mac Mail or Outlook express with setting up multiple email accounts)? Does it correspondingly support sending emails out as my separate accounts easily? Last thing i want if for multiple work accounts to unceremoniously pile into the same inbox as my personal emails.

Thanks!

Six

Why not just use google to actually host the email, rather than bother with forwarding?

http://www.google.com/a

It's free for small organizations, and not very expensive for larger ones. I switched my personal domain over to them a few months ago and have been very happy.

exoplasm

I use the outside accounts feature of Gmail, but only because I'm too lazy to log in to the other accounts since they only get mail once in a blue moon. I would not recommend this for a primary account because it does not check very often (it has some algorithm based on how often it finds new mail or something).

I second using the Google Apps For Your Domain service. You get 200 accounts with the free service or $50/year per account if you want to pay to have no ads and some other goodies.

You then just change your MX records and setup either a redirect URL (e.g. www.mysite.com/gmail) or a CNAME to point e.g. gmail.mysite.com to your gmail stuff.

Edit:

GMail lets you access external POP3 accounts as if it were Outlook/Thunderbird. This lets you send/receive from other accounts easily enough. As mentioned above it checks for new mail based on how often it thinks you get new mail. It has a manual "check now" feature in the options pages, which I have to use every time I'm expecting mail on my other account because it gets so little mail that gmail never checks it.

Also with Google Apps GMail you can still use POP3/IMAP with Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.

oldsak

I did this,

I set up a separate Gmail account and set up forwarding to it. Gmail lets you send as another account if you prove you own that account (i think you just have to reply to some automated email). I then made it the default address for that gmail account to send with.

Asiina

I have my school account automatically forward to my gmail. It's pretty convenient since you can change the senders option just with a drop-down menu of any new email. It really doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

CZroe

!@#!$! POP. Why can't all ISPs use IMAP? Oh well.

Because AT&T/Cingular's outgoing email server (cwmx.com or something... think it means Cingular Wireless Mail eXchange) doesn't work on WiFi and my ISP's outgoing email server doesn't work on the cellphone network (charter.net), I use GMAIL for my outgoing mail on my iPhone. I do the same for hotmail (Hotmail finally started allowing pop access... it's not IMAP, but it's better than nothing). I also have my GMAIL account on the phone. All three email accounts use GMAIL to send outgoing messages. I can pick which account I want it to come from (as far as the receiver is concerned) and GMAIL does this automatically when I reply. In the iPhone, I still have to pick one to default to for iPhone apps that create a new email message.

I created my GMAIL account for this purpose and, once configured, have never logged in online. I know that it is archiving my outgoing messages for all three and that I can configure my GMAIL account to check those accounts and archive all incoming messages also. IIRC, you have to prove that you own that address when configuring it for outgoing email (trivial... just like signing up for a forum).

The iPhone OS tries to fill out the settings for you automatically when it sees what ISP/email you are trying to configure and it defaults to that stupid CWMX server for most POP email despite that fact that it only works on the cellular data network (sounds like they need remote authentication to me). This completely screws users that are using their home's WiFi or that are passing routers/Access Points with the same SSIDs they've used before (free [for iPhone] AT&T hotspots, libraries & coffee shops, common SSIDs that your phone tries fruitlessly to connect to just because you've used one before, etc).

Hopefully my usage scenario can help you with your intended usage. For me, GMAIL is a lifesaver and it does what Cingular/AT&T should have been doing all along with their stupid CWMX server.