It can be tempting to simply use your personal email address when you are getting started, but do you really take any service seriously when their contact email is fuzzybear3954@gmail.com?
It is really quick and easy – and also, free – to create your own custom email address, once you have your hosting and domain. What’s more, it is easy to integrate that email address with your Gmail account, so you can manage all of your emails from the one account. That means you can check your email on your mobile devices or anywhere you can access your Gmail account.
Every hosting provider will have a slightly different method for setting up emails but hosts that use cpanel will work similar to below. We use Siteground as our hosting partner, so our example is based on their control panel. If you already have hosting and email set up, skip to Step 2. If you don’t have access to your email’s via a control panel, ask your developer/designer for your email configuration settings.
STEP 1: Setting Up Your Custom Domain Email Address
Firstly, you will need to create the email address in your hosting control panel:
- Log in to your hosting dashboard. The following steps are based on the Siteground hosting dashboard specifically but other hosts may have a similar system.
- Click on the My Accounts tab
- Click on the red “Go to cPanel” button
- This takes you to the Siteground cPanel – Control Panel. Scroll down to the section titled Mail
- Click on the Email Accounts icon
- Add the email name you would like – the most common options are info, hello or your first name.
- Use the password generator to generate a strong password and make sure you save the password in a safe place. You will need this to access your email in the future and also to set up integrations with your email client (eg: Gmail, Outlook, Mac Mail etc… )
- Click Create Account.
That’s it – you now have your custom email address.
Accessing Your Email
From here you can access an email client to view your emails by pressing the More button to the far right of the new email address and clicking Access Email.
You will be brought to a page that will give you the option of three different email clients to access your email through. I recommend using Horde – just click the link Set As Default underneath it, so you don’t have to make this decision again, and then click on Horde to access the client.
You can send and receive emails from this client but it is not as full featured or as easy to use as a professional email client like Gmail or Outlook.
If you intend to continue using Horde, an easy way to access it in the future is to navigate to your domain name followed by /webmail and input your email address and password to log in directly. (eg: constructios.com/webmail )
Step 2: Integrating Your Email With Gmail
I prefer to integrate my domain email with Gmail, as it makes it easy to access my emails from anywhere.
1. Find Your Configuration Settings
The first step is to access the Configure Email Client settings, by clicking on the More button to the right hand side of your newly created email address.
Scroll down to Manual settings and, if you have an SSL certificate installed on your website(if a green padlock displays beside your website address in the address bar, you have a working SSL certificate installed on your website), use the Secure SSL/TLS Settings. If not, you can use the Non-SSL Settings, on the right hand side. If you encounter any issues with the SSL settings then try the Non-SSL settings but know that your email connection is not as secure.
Either copy these settings to your website file or keep this window open, along with the email access password that you set up when you were creating your email address.
2. Gmail Integration
Log in to your Gmail account and click on the Gear Icon at the upper right hand corner, and then click Settings.
- Next, click on the Accounts and Import tab
- Scroll down to Check Mail from other accounts and click Add a mail account
- A pop up window will appear asking you to add your email address. Type in your newly created email address and click Next
- Accept Import emails from my other account (POP3) and click Next
- Now you will need to add your Email Configuration Settings from Step 1 (Note: If you lose the yellow ‘Add a mail account’ box, it has probably gone behind your browser window ,so you might need to minimize some windows to access it):
- Username: This is your email address again
- Password: Enter your Email password
- POP Server: This is your Incoming Server Address
- Port: This is the POP3 Port – usually 995
- Tick the following boxes:
- Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail (only if you are using SSL)
- Label incoming messages – you can choose to leave your label as the email address but I prefer to create a shorter label like INFO or WEBSITE as it takes up less room in my inbox subject line.
- Once you are happy with your settings click Add Account.
- Next Gmail will ask if you want to be able to retrieve mail from this account – leave Yes ticked and click Next.
- Change the Name to the name you would like to appear whenever you send an email – it could be your personal name or your company name. Click Next Step.
- Now we are going to input the Outgoing Server details from your Email Configuration Settings:
- SMTP Server: Your outgoing server address
- Port: SMTP Port – Usually 465
- Username: Your email address
- Password: Your email password
- Tick Secured connection using SSL if using SSL settings.
- Click Add Account.
- Gmail will now need to verify that you own this email account by sending you an email with a verification number. To access this email, you will need to log into your Webmail (https://websitename.com/webmail or access it through your Cpanel > Mail > Email Accounts). Click on the email, copy the number and paste it back into the yellow configuration box and click verify, or just click on the link in the email.
- Your Email is now set up to work with Gmail!
Some Additional Settings To Note:
Under Send Mail As, click “Reply from the same address the message was sent to”. This ensures that if someone sends you an email to your company address, you will automatically reply from that address, and not your personal email address.
If you are using this Gmail account solely for your Company address and will not be using the personal address, you can click the Make Default link beside your Company Email Address, so every time you create a new email, it will automatically be from your Company Email Address.
STEP 3: Creating Your Email Signature & Using Gmail
Click on the General Tab in Gmail settings to create your custom Email Signature. Scroll down to near the end to Signature and choose your company email address from the dropdown box.
Add your signature details and scroll to the end of the page and click Save. Now, any time you create a new email using your company address, your signature will appear.
Editing Your Labels
Click on Inbox to go back to your Gmail inbox – you should see the Gmail Confirmation email from earlier, with the label you assigned to your email address to help differentiate it from the other emails, in your account. I like to make this label prominent, especially if I also use the personal email address in this account. To do this, we will change the colour of the label.
Underneath the Compose button on the left hand side, scroll down to your new label (eg: website or your email address) and click the little drop down arrow to the right of the label. Then, click Label Color and choose one of the colours available, or define your own with Add Custom Color option.
Now that label will be much more obvious.
Email Delivery Speed
Sometimes, there can be a slight delay with receiving and sending emails, because they are being routed through your server. They will eventually come through when your connection refreshes, but if you need to check for an email urgently, you can force the connection – Click on the Gear Icon, then Settings > Accounts and Import.
Scroll down to Check Email From Other Accounts. Beside your email address, click the Check Mail Now link. You can see when the mail was last checked and also how many emails were retrieved.
STEP 4: Test Your Email
Many people forget this vital step – you need to test your new email address. Click on Compose and choose your Company Email address from the From: drop down box. If you have set a signature, it will appear in the body of the email. Send an email to another email address you own or to a friend asking them to reply to this email.
Once you have sent and received a successful email then you know everything is up and running correctly.
That is it!
If you have any problems with this process, you should contact your designer/developer or your hosting company, as they are usually great to help, if they can. We always take care of this process for our hosted clients but it can sometimes be difficult getting access to a personal Gmail account and easier to complete the integration yourself.
Happy emailing folks!
