How To Create A Custom Email Address Using Gmail (Step-By-Step)

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Sure, Hotmail or Gmail email addresses work just fine for emailing your friends and family. But when you send and receive emails with your customers then you need to look professional.

If you’re using an email address like [email protected], that’s no bueno because because your business looks unprofessional!

Here in this blog post you will learn step-by-step, how to create a custom email address, using your own domain like [email protected] and how you can connect it to your Google Gmail account.

This way, you can send and receive emails using Gmail, but your customers will see the emails as coming from your domain name.

What you’ll learn:

• Step 1 – Create a professional and custom email address with your own domain name
• Step 2 – Use your newly created email address to send and receive emails using Gmail

What you need:

1. Domain name and web hosting (from around $5/month, for both!)
2. Free Google Gmail account
3. Approx 20-30 minutes of your time

Step 1 – Create a custom email address using your own domain name

First, you need to go and get web hosting. We recommend that you use Bluehost or GreenGeeks (both companies offer a free domain name when you sign up for hosting with them).

The good thing about getting a domain name and hosting all from the same place is that you don’t have to configure nameservers or fiddle around with DNS settings Everything is already set up for you!

Okay so you went and got yourself web hosting and a domain name, and they’re connected (again, we recommend Bluehost or GreenGeeks as you don’t need to do any DNS setting updates).

Now it’s time to go and create a custom email address, something like [email protected].

1. Log in to your Bluehost or GreenGeeks cPanel > Email section > Email Accounts
2. Select the domain you want your email account to be associated with in the drop-down list and enter the desired email and a strong password of your choice
3. Make a selection for Mailbox Quota (choose unlimited or set your own quota)
4. Click Create Account.

All done! You have now created your custom email address, something like [email protected].

So now what?

cPanel email settings

Let’s go back to cPanel and find your email settings.

Log in to your cPanel > Email section > Email Accounts

1. Click the cog icon that says Configure / Set Up Mail Client (next to the custom email address you created)
2. Under Manual Setting there’s a Secure SSL/TLS Settings box (copy & paste this or keep this window open because we need this info later when we configure Gmail)

Good! Because you’ll need to have these settings in front of you to be able to configure Gmail to send and receive emails (later step).

Step 2 – Send and receive emails using Gmail

Gmail (Google Mail) is awesome and it’s free. You get 15GB of storage and you also get access to Google Drive (cloud storage for your photos and files, and you can create and share documents, spreadsheets and make presentations).

You can also be logged into multiple Gmail accounts at once (meaning you can easily toggle between your personal and business email inboxes).

Go and get yourself Gmail account, sign up here http://mail.google.com/mail/signup

You should now have a sparkling new Gmail email address created, something like [email protected].

Add email forwarding

Before we configure Gmail we need to create an email forwarder.

Now let’s head back to cPanel and create an email forwarder. I.e. we want to forward your [email protected] to [email protected])

1. Log in to your cPanel > Email section > Forwarders
2. Click the Add Forwarder button
3. Set what email address you want the email address to be forwarded to (destination).

That’s it. Now all emails to [email protected] will be forwarded to [email protected].

Receiving emails in Gmail

1. Login to your Gmail Account
2. In the top right hand corner, click on the Settings cog icon and choose Settings
3. Click Accounts and Import
4. Click ‘Add a POP3 mail account you own”
5. Enter your Email address, e.g. [email protected]
6. Click the Next Step button.
7. Enter your full email address as the Username
8. Enter Password for your email account
9. Enter the incoming POP Server. Choose the Always use a secure connection (SSL) option. Make sure the port is changed to 995
10. Choose any additional options you may want
11. Click the Add Account button

Sending emails in Gmail

1. Choose ” Yes, I want to be able to send mail as e.g. [email protected]”
2. Untick the “Treat as alias” checkbox (if left ticked the receipents of your emails will see a message saying “email is sent on behalf of …@gmail.com” – which doesn’t look very professional)
3. Click the Next Step button.
4. Enter the outgoing SMTP Server
5. Enter your full email address as the Username
6. Enter Password for your email account
7. Choose Secured connection using SSL. Make sure the port is changed to 465
8. Click Add Account
9. Verify your email address
10. Because we setup email forwarding before, a confirmation email will be sent to your Gmail
11. Click the confirmation link in the email or copy/paste the PIN
12. All done! You can now send and receive emails using Gmail

Wrap up

If email is important to you then you owe it to yourself to get yourself a professional looking email address. Because having a @hotmail, @yahoo or @gmail email address simply won’t cut it!

Here we have walked you through (step by step) how you can create a custom email address using your own domain name. We recommend getting a domain name and web hosting from either Bluehost (review here) or GreenGeeks (review here).

We have also shown you how to connect this email address to a free Gmail account, so that you can both send and receive emails from Google’s email solution.