Connect your business email with Gmail and work smarter!

Get rid of webmail

Ready to make your life easier? If you have a website, you’ve probably set up (or had someone do it for you), your business @yourwebsite.com email addresses(es). If not, do it. It will make you look professional and like an actual, legit business.

When your email addresses are set up, they are set up to usually do 1 or possibly 2 things. Either they are forwarded to another email address you use like a Gmail or a Yahoo address, or you have to login to your web host’s webmail interface to check and send mail, or both!

Your web host webmail may look something like this. Confusing, huh?

Why use Gmail with your business email?

Gmail is the perfect tool to use with your business email addresses. If you’re not a current Gmail user, this should sell you: it’s easier to use (than pretty much any other email provider), it has more features than any web host’s webmail, and you’ll need a Gmail account anyway for mega-important things like setting up Google Analytics.

Bonus: With a Gmail account, you’ll be able to use Google Drive, which has all kinds of great tools you can use for your business. Plus, it makes it easy to share documents and collaborate with others.

Get the step-by-step to integrate your biz email with Gmail and work smarter! #freelancetips Click To Tweet

Send and receive from your @yourwebsite.com email address within Gmail

1. First things first. If you don’t already have a Gmail email address, set one up here. Set up a different Gmail account for each employee (obviously) in order to keep things private.
2. After you set up your Gmail account(s), now it’s time to create (if you haven’t already) your @yourwebsite.com address(es). You’ll do this within your web host’s cPanel area. Look for the section called “MAIL.” Then, click on “Email Accounts” or “Email Manager” (different web hosts may call it something different). The next step will be clear once you’re on the screen. You’ll create the email, adjust the “mailbox quota” (if that’s an option), enter a strong password (keep this handy), and then click “Create Account.”
3. Next, you’ll see options to “Configure Email Client,” “Access Webmail,” or “More” (which is the dropdown that has those first two options). Click “Access Webmail” to test out your webmail. Go to your gmail account and send yourself a message to your new @yourdomainname.com email address. Also send an email to your gmail from your new email address. Once you confirm that all is working, it’s time to get to the exciting part!
4. Back in the main cPanel in the MAIL section, click on “Forwarders” or “Forwarding.” You’ll want to set up a forwarding email for each address you set up. Each of your @yourwebsite.com addresses should be forwarded to the appropriate Gmail address (your personal email address…or whatever gmail address you check most often).

   If you use SiteGround, (our preferred web host!) it’ll look like this below:

   Click on the “Forwarders” icon in the “MAIL” section of your cPanel to get started. This short tutorial from SiteGround can walk you through it.

   

    

   If you use GreenGeeks – it’ll look like this below:
   Click on the “Forwarders” icon in the “Mail” section of your cPanel to get started. This short tutorial from GreenGeeks can walk you through it.

   

    

   If you use BlueHost, your cPanel will look like this:
   Click on the “Forwarders” icon in the “email” section of your cPanel to get started.This short video from BlueHost can walk you through it. NOTE: When you get the “Destination Options” section, just choose “Forward to this address” and enter the Gmail address you want to forward to (don’t worry about the other options).
   

5. Once that is taken care of, you’re ready to integrate your business email addresses with Gmail. From within your Gmail account, click on the Settings gear/icon in the top right area of your screen.
6. Next, click on “Settings,” then the “Accounts and Import” tab.
7. Scroll down to the “Send mail as:” section and click on “Add another email address.” A gold-ish pop-up screen will appear.
8. Remember above when we mentioned that option in the MAIL section of the cPanel within “Email Accounts” called “Configure Email Client?” Now it’s time to click on that. When you click on it, you’re going to see lots of settings. (FYI – In BlueHost, you will click on “Email Configuration” and then you select which email you want to configure…then the settings come up.) In most cases, you’ll want to copy/paste the Incoming/Outgoing Mail Server (it’s the same for both) under “Private (with SSL).”
9. In the gold-ish pop-up, enter your name and the @yourwebsite.com email address on that screen (you can keep “Treat as an alias” checked off). Click “Next Step.”
10. On the next screen, enter the server name you copied (i.e. secureus35.sgcpanel.com or box111.bluehost.com), your username (which is your full email address, not just the part before the “@” symbol) and the password you created when you created the email.
11. Click “Add Account.“
12. Now, leave this window open and go to your Gmail inbox, find the email they just sent, copy the verification code, paste it into the box of the gold-ish window you have open, and click “Verify.” Once verified, the window will automatically close.
13. Since you set up your emails to be forwarded to your Gmail, the next steps are totally optional. But, if you’d like to set up an extra safety net to receive emails from your @yourwebsite.com email addresses (not just have them forwarded from webmail) then follow these 2 additional steps:

    Go back to Settings (in Gmail), click on “Accounts and Import,” scroll down and click on “Add a mail account” which is next to “Check mail from other accounts” (it’s directly underneath the “Send mail as” section). A similar gold-ish screen will open. Enter your full email address and click “Next Step.”

14. Enter your username (full email address) and password (the same one you entered before). You’ll likely need to enter that server name again as well.

    Then, choose one of these options:

    • A) Check the box labeled “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.” The reason you’d want to do this is so that if there ever WAS a problem with your email, you could access your emails in your webmail account within your web host. (If you have a space limit restriction for your webmail inbox and you check this box, you’ll want to periodically clean out your webmail inbox via your web host. Otherwise, when someone sends you an email and your webmail inbox is full, the email will be returned to them. You won’t be notified, and they may not notice it was returned. It’s highly possible you’ll miss something important!)
    • B) Don’t check this box if you do NOT want to have emails saved in your webmail account (and in your Gmail account). We only suggest you do this if there is a space limit for your webmail inbox.

    After you decide, click “Add Account.” The window will automatically close.

15. Now, let’s test it. Go to compose a new email (in Gmail) – you’ll see that there is now a drop down feature in the “From” field of your email. Click on the little down-facing triangle to choose which email address you’d like to send from. Nifty, isn’t it! Don’t forget to send a test email to a friend (or another email you own) to make sure it’s all working properly!
    
16. One last thing: Back in the main “Settings > Accounts and Import” screen, you can set your default email address by simply clicking on “make default” next to your preferred default email address. You can also specify which email address to use “When replying to a message.” You can “Reply from the same address the message was sent to” (which we recommend) or “Always reply from default address.”

    This way, when people send an email to your @yourewebsite.com email address, you just simply respond (no need to choose from the drop down list), and they’ll receive a response from the same email they sent the original email to.

Ta da! That’s it! Bye-bye are the days of checking two inboxes or working with not-so-user-friendly webmail. You’re all set to work easier and smarter by using Gmail!

Questions? Go for it…in the comments or email us here.