How to Use Your Custom Domain Name with Gmail for Receiving and Sending
Sending and receiving emails with a custom domain name generally implied subscribing to a full-fledged email provider such as Google’s G Suite or Microsoft’s Office 365. This tutorial shows how you can send and receive emails using Gmail for free.
Many domain name registrars offer free email forwarding to every domain name you register with them. I’m using Namecheap which does exactly that.
While I cannot discuss the setup procedure for every single registrar out there, I hope to lay it out to you by showing Namecheap as an example for receiving and forwarding emails to your Gmail account.
- In the list of your domain names, click Manage for the domain name you want to receive emails with.
- Under the “Domain” tab in the nameservers section, ensure that name servers have been set to “Namecheap BasicDNS”. If you have set custom DNS settings for your domain name, be sure to know what you’re doing because changing nameservers can break running systems.
- In the “Redirect Email” section, you can add email forwarders like shown in the screenshot below. Add as many as you want, or add a catch-all alias that forwards to your Gmail address.
Give it a spin and test whether emails sent to your custom domain name arrive in your Gmail inbox. Once they do, proceed to the next step of setting up sending emails from your Gmail inbox.
An email address is of little use if you can’t send from it. Right now, you can receive an email, but once you want to reply to it, the recipient will see your Gmail address as the sender. Let’s change that.
There are two paths from here and it depends whether you’ve set up Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) in your Google account. 2FA is highly recommended as it protects your account with a unique sign-in token generated on your mobile phone.
Sending Email Without 2FA:
- Go to Gmail settings > Accounts > Add another email address
- Enter the name and email address you want to send from (first ensure that email forwarding to your Gmail inbox is working), uncheck “Treat as an alias”, click Next.
- SMTP Server:
smtp.gmail.com, Username: Your Gmail email address, Password: Your Gmail password, click Add Account. - Wait for the verification code to reach your inbox. Enter it once you’ve received it and done.
Sending Email With 2FA:
Create a New App Password
In order to sign into any Google service using a 3rd party app, you’ll have to do so with a dedicated app password. This can be generated within your Google account.
- Go to your Google account > Security > App Passwords (refer to Google’s documentation if you don’t see the App Passwords option).
- Create a new app password by assigning an app and device. These fields are merely used for your own reference and have no further significance. I selected “Mail” for app and “Other” for device so I could give it a custom name such as “Gmail”.
- Click “Generate”.
- The password will be shown to you temporarily. Copy it to your clipboard and proceed to adding another email account in your Gmail settings.
Add Another Email Address
- Go to Gmail settings > Accounts > Add another email address
- Enter the name and email address you want to send from (first ensure that email forwarding to your Gmail inbox is working), uncheck “Treat as an alias”
- Click Next.
- SMTP Server:
smtp.gmail.com, Username: Your Gmail email address, Password: The password generated above. - Click Add Account.
- Wait for the verification code to reach your inbox. Enter it once you’ve received it and done.
Set as Default Sending Address
In the Accounts settings page, you can now set the new email address as the default sending address by tapping the make default button.
I would also select the Always reply from default address option to ensure that you reply back with your new default address even if someone still sends to your Gmail address.
Conclusion
You’ve now set up email receiving and sending from your custom domain name without paying for a full-fledged email service.
This is a great and cheap solution for small businesses or freelancers who want to give a professional impression to their clients. The only expense is the yearly renewal fee for your domain name.
