Gmail – Having all mail for the domain controlled by a Gmail account

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I have exampledomain.com (which I control) and a examplegmail@gmail.com email address. I would like to merge my email, so I just have one account – all inbound mail to exampledomain.com would go to examplegmail@gmail.com.

My reasoning – my exampledomain.com isn't that "professional" a name, so (bizarre as it may sound) I actually want examplegmail@gmail.com to be my neutral persona (although want to keep all incoming mail coming into examplegmail@gmail.com for legacy purposes and labeled as such!)

  1. Is this possible? (I'm not sure of the most elegant way to achieve this – do I need to setup Google Apps for exampledomain.com and grant access to this from examplegmail@gmail.com – before I start messing around with MX records, does granting from Apps to Gmail work? My concern is that I'd need to check the exampledomain.com Apps account's Spam box frequently, as this would be separate from my examplegmail@gmail.com Spam box).

  2. Can I just copy across my saved exampledomain.com emails (IMAP4) to examplegmail@gmail.com using Thunderbird, or is there a faster direct web-to-web method instead of it all going via my PC?

  3. If I ever wanted to send "from something@exampledomain.com" (using the examplegmail@gmail.com account) would this be possible?

I'm running myself in circles – if anyone can help, I'd be really grateful.

Best Answer

You have two options, the one that gives you the most control, setting up a google apps account, or the one that is easiest to setup, using your host's pop3 in gmail.

I personally use the first option. I've currently got Google Apps setup on my own domain, dkuntz2.com. The gmail account for my apps (don@dkuntz2.com) is set to forward all mail to my gmail account and archive everything (so I still have it if I need it). This is in settings -> forwarding and pop3.

On my gmail account, I set it up so that I can access the dkuntz2 account (it's in settings -> accounts, just type in the email address, that one will get a message saying confirm, you click the link and bingo, you've got send access). This way, everything is controlled by a central gmail account, but I can still send as dkuntz2. I've also done this with two other domains, and it works soundly so far.

In my own settings I've also told it to respond as the address that's mailed to (so if I get a dkuntz2 email it sends it as dkuntz2, same for the other addresses), and each address also has it's own signature (more fun settings).

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