How to Use Your Domain Name with Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo

A couple of weeks ago I published a post where I recommended to avoid free email services like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! when sending out business emails, because it makes you look unprofessional. It looks like I struck a nerve there, cause the discussion that followed in the comments was pretty heated.

Most people agreed with me. Some, however, said that they stuck to using Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo! because the interface and overall user experience was so much better when compared to the email clients available with their domain name emails.

Guess what, you can use your own domain name with Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo. That is, you can send and receive emails from an address like you@yourdomain.com from inside any of those free services, so problem solved. Here’s how to do it.

First of all if you are not using Gmail you are doing it wrong.

Jokes aside I am going to explain the process in Gmail (cause that is my cliente of choice), but I am pretty sure it is similar on other services.

Step 1: Inside the cPanel of your domain name create a forwarder to send all the email received by your you@domain.com account to your you@gmail.com account.

Step 2: Inside Gmail open the “Settings”, then go to “Accounts and import”, and then click on “Add another email account you own”.

Step 3: Put your you@domain.com email there, and follow the steps until Gmail says it will send you a confirmation code.

Step 4: That confirmation code should appear on your Gmail inbox (as you are forwarding all email on your you@domain.com account to Gmail already). Put that on the confirmation box and that is it.

Easy huh?

With this method you get the best of both worlds. You get to look professional with your you@domain.com email address and you get to use Google’s state of the art email client (or Yahoo!, or Hotmail…).