Send Mail As with Gmail Custom Domain

Follow the instructions below to send email with Gmail Send Mail As with your custom domain using outbound SMTP.

Forward Email Team
Written by
Forward Email TeamVerified
Published
7/1/25
Time to read
Less than 5 minutes
New

Step by Step Instructions

Important: Please ensure you have read our Terms, Privacy Policy, e Outbound SMTP Limits – your use is considered acknowledgement and agreement.
Important: If you are a developer, then refer to our email API docs.

  1. Go to My Account Domains Settings Outbound SMTP Configuration and follow setup instructions

  2. Create a new alias for your domain under My Account Domains Aliases (e.g. hello@example.com)

  3. Click on Generate Password next to the newly created alias. Copy to your clipboard and securely store the generated password shown on the screen.

  4. Go to Gmail and under Settings Accounts and Import Send mail as, click "Add another email address"

  5. When prompted for "Name", enter the name that you want your email to be seen as "From" (e.g. "Linus Torvalds").

  6. When prompted for "Email address", enter the full email address of an alias you created under My Account Domains Aliases (e.g. hello@example.com)

  7. Uncheck "Treat as an alias"

  8. Click "Next Step" to proceed

  9. When prompted for "SMTP Server", enter smtp.forwardemail.net and leave the port as 587

  10. When prompted for "Username", enter the full email address of an alias you created under My Account Domains Aliases (e.g. hello@example.com)

  11. When prompted for "Password", paste the password from Generate Password in step 3 above

  12. Leave the radio button checked for "Secured connection using TLS"

  13. Click "Add Account" to proceed

  14. Open a new tab to Gmail and wait for your verification email to arrive (you will receive a verification code that confirms you are the owner of the email address you are attempting to "Send Mail As")

  15. Once it arrives, copy and paste the verification code at the prompt you received in the previous step

  16. Once you've done that, go back to the email and click the link to "confirm the request". You will most likely need to do this step and the previous step for the email to be correctly configured.

Congratulations! You've successfully completed all steps.
Deprecated

Legacy Free Guide

Important: This guide works, however we deprecated it as of May 2023 since we now support outbound SMTP on our paid plans. If you use the guide below, then this will cause your outbound email to say "via forwardemail dot net" in Gmail.

  1. You need to have Gmail's Two-Factor Authentication enabled for this to work. Visit https://www.google.com/landing/2step/ if you do not have it enabled.

  2. Once Two-Factor Authentication is enabled (or if you already had it enabled), then visit https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords.

  3. When prompted for "Select the app and device you want to generate the app password for":

    • Select "Mail" under the drop-down for "Select app"
    • Select "Other" under the drop-down for "Select device"
    • When prompted for text input, enter your custom domain's email address you're forwarding from (e.g. hello@example.com - this will help you keep track in case you use this service for multiple accounts)

  4. Copy the password to your clipboard that is automatically generated

    Important: If you are using G Suite, visit your admin panel Apps G Suite Settings for Gmail Settings and make sure to check "Allow users to send mail through an external SMTP server...". There will be some delay for this change to be activated, so please wait a few minutes.

  5. Go to Gmail and under Settings Accounts and Import Send mail as, click "Add another email address"

  6. When prompted for "Name", enter the name that you want your email to be seen as "From" (e.g. "Linus Torvalds")

  7. When prompted for "Email address", enter the email address with the custom domain you used above (e.g. hello@example.com)

  8. Uncheck "Treat as an alias"

  9. Click "Next Step" to proceed

  10. When prompted for "SMTP Server", enter smtp.gmail.com and leave the port as 587

  11. When prompted for "Username", enter the portion of your Gmail address without the gmail.com part (e.g. just "user" if my email is user@gmail.com)

    Important: If the "Username" portion is autofilled, then you will need to change this to the username portion of your Gmail address instead.

  12. When prompted for "Password", paste from your clipboard the password you generated in step 2 above

  13. Leave the radio button checked for "Secured connection using TLS"

  14. Click "Add Account" to proceed

  15. Open a new tab to Gmail and wait for your verification email to arrive (you will receive a verification code that confirms you are the owner of the email address you are attempting to "Send Mail As")

  16. Once it arrives, copy and paste the verification code at the prompt you received in the previous step

  17. Once you've done that, go back to the email and click the link to "confirm the request". You will most likely need to do this step and the previous step for the email to be correctly configured.