Use Gmail as an Alternate SMTP/Sending Server

I recently had to find a way to use SMTP for one of my email accounts which only allowed SMTP access through a port that was blocked by my ISP (AT&T), port 25. I decided to use my Gmail account, but realized my name/email would be changed to my gmail account (including the reply-to address). So I set up a new Gmail account for the sole purpose of acting as my SMTP server, and changed the default sending address using the following steps.

  1. In your Gmail account, click on Settings.
  2. Click on the "Accounts and Import" tab.
  3. In the "Send mail as:" section, click "Send mail from a different address."
  4. In the window that appears, put in your name and your original email address.
  5. After you add your original email address, you need to make it your default by clicking the 'make default' button.

Now you can set up your email client to use the Gmail SMTP server instead of your non-functional one, using port 587 with SSL turned on. Your email client should use [email protected] (for your Gmail account) as the username (just FYI).

More Gmail email client settings here.

Comments

I've been using this for quite some time. My e-mail is hosted at G-mail, but the address I send from is at jsignal.com. It works well.

Interesting... I've thought about hosting the email through Gmail servers for a while, but I'm a man of habit, and I'm kinda stuck with @mac.com for now :-/

Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?

Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?