It is very easy to use GMail as your email client, to send/receive mail through QTH.com's servers, just as you would do with Outlook, Thunderbird, or other email program.
Benefits of this GMail / QTH integration:
- GMail provides 15GB of FREE email storage, enough for many years of email storage.
- Your domain email address (you@example.com) shows as the FROM address in GMail, NOT your gmail address, by default. In fact, nobody will even know you are using GMail. You can, however, change your FROM address to be your gmail.com address, on any email you send, if you wish.
- Every email is automatically synchronized between your desktop computers, tablets, laptops and cell phone.
- When you get a new computer or phone, there is no software to install or email to synchronize -- just go to gmail.com or use the GMail app on your mobile device and all your mail is there, with no further setup.
- Every email you receive AND send will go through a QTH.com server, so we can still help you with sending and receiving issues.
- Lightening fast searching of your emails.
- Powerful filters to categorize your emails with 'labels' and 'folders'.
Any downsides? Only one that we can think of... this integration works best when you use the GMail website (gmail.com) on your desktop and laptop computers, and the GMail apps on your mobile devices. If you like to use Outlook or Thunderbird, or some other email app on your phone, we think you will find this solution frustrating. You need to be prepared to let go of the concept of installing email programs on your computer... just use the gmail.com website and enjoy the freedom of no longer needing to install and update email software!
Ready to proceed? OK, here are the steps:
- CREATE A GMAIL ACCOUNT (if needed):
Create a GMail account, if you don't already have one. Go to https://www.gmail.com and follow their directions to create an account. Use any username/email address you wish, as nobody else will see it.
If you already have a GMail username and password, you can move on to the next step. - FORWARD YOUR EMAIL IN CPANEL TO GMAIL:
- Log into your cPanel web hosting control panel.
- Click the Forwarders icon, in the Mail section of cPanel.
- Click Add Forwarder.
- Enter in your email address that you want to go to GMail, and then enter in your GMail address. See example below:
- CREATE SPECIAL SENDING-ONLY EMAIL ACCOUNT IN CPANEL:
In order to use the QTH.com mail servers to send mail, instead of using GMail, we need to create a special email account in cPanel that we will only use for sending mail out from GMail.- Log into your cPanel web hosting control panel, if you are not already logged in.
- Click the Email Accounts icon, in the Mail section of cPanel.
- Create a special email account to use for sending mail. We suggest that if your regular email address is , for example, you@yourdomain.com, that you create the sending email account as you-smtp@yourdomain (i.e. just add -smtp after your name). See example below:
- CONFIGURE YOUR EMAIL IN GMAIL:
- Log into your GMail account at https://www.gmail.com.
- Click the Gear icon (toward the top-right corner) then click Settings
- Click Accounts menu option toward the top of the page
- In the Send mail as: section, click the Add another email address you own link.
- Enter in your Name and your Email Address (the one with your domain name, not your GMail address), check the box for Treat as an alias and click Next Step.
- On the next screen, choose the option to Send through yourdomain.com SMTP servers.
- For the SMTP server, enter in mail.yourdomain.com (of course, use your own domain name).
- For the Username and Password, enter in the special sending-only email address and password you created in cPanel in Step 3, i.e. you-smtp@yourdomain.com.
- Change the Port to 465 and choose the Secured connection using SSLoption.
- Click the Add Account button.
- CONFIRM AND VERIFY YOUR NEW EMAIL ADDRESS
GMail will test the settings and, if successful, will send you an email message with a "confirmation code". You will need to minimize this window or move it out of the way, then go back to your Gmail Inbox and wait for the email message from GMail to arrive. Once it arrives, you will then paste the code (usually an 8-digit number) into the message box and click "Verify". Alternatively, in the email they send you, there is a link that you can just click to verify.
- MAKE YOUR NEW EMAIL ADDRESS THE DEFAULT IN GMAIL:
Click the Gear icon (toward the top-right corner), then click Settings, then click Accounts, then click "Make Default" next to the new email account you created (your domain, not the GMail address). You may want to leave the option checked to "Always reply from default address" so that no matter what address an incoming email was sent to, you always reply as from your email address with your domain name and not with your GMail email address.
- OPTIONAL: CHANGE FOLDER (LABEL) DISPLAY OPTIONS:
This step is optional, but suggested. This will change some of the folders (GMail calls them labels) that appear on the left side of the screen.- Click the Gear icon (toward the top-right corner), then click Settings, then click Labels.
- To show the Trash folder (it is hidden, by default), in case you need to look at any emails you have deleted, click "show" next to Trash.
- To show the Spam folder (when there are messages in it), click "show if unread" next to Spam. Sometimes GMail will mark a message as spam by accident, so it is important to review the messages in your spam folder, at least daily.
