It looks more professional to use email addresses from your website domain when you’re dealing with others. Typically website owners will want to set up emails like info@mydomain.com or hello@mydomain.com. Most domain providers will offer a web interface where you can access the email. This works, but is quite basic and not as convenient as using a proper email client.

Instead of using a web interface you can send/receive emails using the pop3 protocol and an email client like Thunderbird. My preferred way of accessing my work email is using a Gmail account. I use Gmail for my personal emails because it’s easy to access on a laptop or on my phone. Being able to access work email in the same way is most convenient for me. Here are the steps you need to perform in order to access another email account using Gmail.

 

 

1. Get your email configuration settings

a) Hosting through a third party

Ask your service provider for the email configuration if you are hosted through a third party. You will need:

username: user@yourdomain.com

password: yourpassword

incoming server: yourdomain.com

incoming port: 995

outgoing server: yourdomain.com

outgoing port: 465

now skip to step 2.

 

b) Blacknight Self-Hosted Accounts

First – log in to your Blacknight account then go to the Emails section in your dashboard.

 

You can add a new email address or access details of an existing email address by clicking on that email in the list.

 

In the Change Password section you can also view the existing password or change it .

If the password is Very Weak, as below, then use the Generate link to set a new one, and use the Show link to see what the password is. Take a copy of this password as you will need it later. If the password has been changed then use the Submit button to apply the change.

 

 

2. Configuring your Gmail account

Log in to your gmail account.

Go to the settings section.

The wheel icon on the top right of the screen has a drop down menu with the Settings.

 

 

 

Go to the Accounts and Import tab

 

Under the “Check mail from other accounts” section use the ‘Add an email account’ link.

 

3. Configure Gmail to retrieve email from your account

In the pop-up screen enter your full email address and click Next Step

 

Choose to import the emails from a POP3 account.

 

Enter the full email address that you want to retrieve emails for, then enter your password.

Update the POP server to the correct one – for blacknight hosting use mail.blacknight.com and port 110. Other users set it to the yourdomain.com and the incoming port you were given.

You can leave a copy of the email on the server if you wish.

You can add a label to emails coming from this account so you know where they came from in your inbox

Click Add Account to apply the settings.

 

4. Use Gmail to send emails from another account

Now you’ll be asked if you want to send email as this user. Say Yes. You can also configure this back in your Accounts and Import tab in the ‘Send mail as’ section.

Enter your full email address again. This email will be treated as an alias. The Learn more link gives you more information about this setting.

Enter the SMTP server (yourdomain.com or mail.blacknight.com), and your email password again. Set the port number to 587 for Blacknight hosting and to the outgoing port you were given for all other users.

Click add account

 

Now you’ll be asked to click a link or enter a confirmation code based on an email sent to your @mydomain.com email address to verify that you should be able to send email from this account.

If you’re a Blacknight customer then you can access webmail to get the confirmation code email.

 

5. How to use your email through Gmail

Your incoming messages will arrive into your inbox marked with the label you specified (if you did) so you can tell which emails have come from where.

To send an email, you click the From section of any email you are composing and use the drop-down menu to select the email address that you want to send this email from.

That’s all you need to be able to access your email through Gmail.