Anyone who has ever tried to use Gmail as a central hub for their Email has likely fallen prey to one of the service’s annoying flaws: there was no way to use another site’s outgoing SMTP servers to send Email. For the vast majority of people this wasn’t an issue — Gmail was happy to send your Email for you from your Gmail account, along with message indicating that it was being sent “On Behalf Of” your other account. But those three words were still there, serving as a constant thorn in our sides. And to make matters worse, it could also confuse people: they might start sending messages to your Gmail account rather than your primary Email address. Today, you can kiss those “On Behalf Of”’s goodbye, as Gmail has just started allowing users to send their messages from third party SMTP servers.
If the previous paragraph confused you, here’s an explanation: Many people like to use Gmail’s web interface for their Email but don’t have the option of using Google Apps on their mail server, especially when it’s for their work account. Fortunately there’s a work around to this: simply have your work Email account auto-forward all incoming messages to your Gmail account. The option even allows you to send messages and make them look like they’re coming from your work account, rather than you Gmail account, but with one caveat: rather than actually send these messages from your work address, Google includes a message that says the message was sent “On Behalf Of” your address, while still showing the name of the Gmail account it was actually sent from.
It’s true that most people never noticed this (in fact many mail clients don’t show the “On Behalf Of” at all under default settings), and even if they did see it they probably didn’t care in the slightest. But it’s still been a source of annoyance for many of us.
They shoulda done this a LONG time ago.
Better late then never
Better earlier than late.
Nice, this has been a long time coming.
finally!
i just changed to the new way. it works when using the web interface but it is broken when sending from my iphone which uses that account. still seeing the on behalf of junk.
that is when using the imap interface on the iphone
If I remember correctly, I think they did fix this few months back. However, it does not record the email in the ’sent mail’ (even if the other account is gmail) – so no tracking.
I just sent myself an email using one non-GMail account to send to a second but different non-GMail account. GMail seemed to record the email in the “sent mail” just fine.
Rolling up my sleeves and finally ready to dig the fuck in. Thank you Gmail. You delaying bastard. But thank you, seriously.
The big winner here is going to be the fact that my emails are not going to end up in spam folders anymore. Specially when I email people working in companies where they use strict spam settings / Microsoft Exchange !!
That’s good news!
does this mean the “reply-to address” becomes redundant if i set up an external smtp in my accounts settings?
This is great.. but does it support TLS?
hooray! I have been waiting for this for A long time!
No back and forth testing to see whether or not “on behalf of” would show on email. Finally! \o/
does this mean the “reply-to address” is now redundant?
sorry for the double-comment. didn’t mean to.
Gmail is no longer in beta.
It will always be in Beta. In our hearts.
Gmail is now even beta.
Sorry.
It seems as though we cannot specify custom SMTP ports, however.
yeah – which means it doesn’t work with my email provider. Mountain View, add 2525 to the dropdown list of ports, pleeeease.
Too bad it doesn’t work right on the iPhone. It doesn’t sync a copy of the sent email back to GMail when using this method on the iPhone…
So, on my iPhone I’m still doing it the old way but on my desktop/laptop, this new way works well.
Goddam it – just last week I moved all my gmail shit over to Google Apps JUST FOR THIS REASON.
Yay!
This is the greatest thing ever. Bye-Bye Scalix.
Finally! No more mix-ups with Gmail and my other email addresses.
Yep … I am gonna move my smtp needs from one of the most reliable stable widely used services that happens to be free to some service operating at a fraction of those capabilities and is not free.
Everyone seems to be hurraying about this new feature of google, but just remember guys, what gmail is doing now is to forward all outgoing emails where you have the FROM address as the non gmail address to your domains SMTP servers and most of you might not have an SMTP server that allows you to relay off it. In which case, gmail will give you the option of using the old way. The reason why gmail forwards your email to YOUR server is so that the recipients system doesnt take it that you are spoofing.
My 2c worth
Sorry what does this mean in simple words?
OH YES!
who uses gmail these days?
if you use it… how often is this down…
1 more thing…. is that still in Beta?
1 more thing…. r they reading your emails?
huh…
Hi Robin, the answers to your questions are
- tens of millions of people
- it’s hardly ever down. Certainly less than most local solutions
- no
- no
- I do and millions of others.
- For me, never so far. For others, a couple of hours a year.
- No, it’s not in Beta.
- No, but a program scans the content and matches Ads to keywords found there.
I use gmail for ALL of my email. I have all of my other email addresses forwarded to Gmail and I use google apps for all of my domains.
Gmail has by far the best spam filtering of any email service.
- a recent lifehacker poll of 4,000 users found that most people use webmail. And most people who use webmail use Gmail.
- in the last 6 months I have never noticed it down
- Nope
- No more than SpamAssassin or any other spam blocker does.
One more reason for the corporate network admin people to be annoyed by staff using gmail….
Ehhhhh . . . I like Yahoo mail better
It doesn’t work for me. can someone help me out? The error message i’m getting is : “Couldn’t reach server. Please double-check the server and port number.”
i am 100% sure that all of my information is correct. do you think the system is too busy?
It’s always been possible to send email with a different address. Go to ‘accounts and imports’ in settings and enter any other addresses for ’send mail from another address’. Your emails are properly addressed from anything you enter there.
Reading comprehension fail.
I suspect you never noticed the “On Behalf Of” part on outgoing mail. Not all clients display it, but I believe Outlook does which was obviously a major issue.
FINALLY they listen.
Does this apply automatically to other gmail accounts? I don’t see an option for them in Account settings.
the “on behalf of” is gone but your original email address is still in the raw email header under the sender field (at least for me…) =\ so i still can’t send emails from my primary account as if i were using my secondary email address _and_ keep my primary address private.
never mind. i forgot to select the edit the options for that email address.
So how do I use my send mail through my google apps domain SMTP server from my other gmail account?
Finally! Thank you thank you thank you, Google.
Why doesn’t it allow me to use this function for my other gmail accounts? I thought I would be able to consolidate my 2 gmails accounts with this, but seem possible for gmail addresses.
This is something they should have done years ago. I don’t understand why they left it so long giving that many people already have the Google App account.
Thanks to them anyway for implementing it.
very useful….thnx
I use Gmail as my SMTP server for my non-Gmail Outlook account (necessary because of a security issue using my email host from foreign countries). The “on behalf of” wording is still there, as far as I can tell. And yes, I often get replies sent to Gmail intend of my regular account. Is it possible to get rid of this annoying “feature” now?
I’ve been waiting for this news for a while. Now I can move all my IMAP Outlook accounts (about 4) to Gmail and I can access all my mail accounts from one central account on my Android phone =)
What about custom SMTP ports? That is totally missing.
fastmail is still better for power users;
though gmail blackberry integration is compelling (fastmail lacking)
anyone concerned about google harvesting all your addresses and personal notes/messages (see wired article on googlopoly)?
jk – I was thinking the same thing re: Big Brother as I read through the comments. Very frightening to think about the scope of private information to which you are willfully giving a Corporation unrestricted access. And you thought a list of names, addresses & credit card #s was tempting to steal/sell/issue a warrant for?!
Thanks for the info!
Unfortunately, for those using Google Apps Standard Edition with their domain, the problem remains. Here’s what the Gmail Blog had to say:
So, if you are a loyal Google Apps Standard Edition User and don’t have a separate SMTP server, you’re either out of luck or $$.
Thanks Google!!!
So, what if I have multiple gmail accounts under one central gmail account??? Since SMTP is the same for all those gmail accounts, no problem is solved there, right??
I have exactly the same case! Multiple Gmail accounts but still the problem is not worked out!
“SOS”
Unfortunately that is the problem I have too. I can’t get rid of the ‘On behalf of’ when sending from a second Gmail address. And there is no option to change the SMTP setting from additional Gmail accounts. This is disappointing.
The way Google phrased it in relation to Google Apps is a bit confusing. It almost sounds as if this new trick isn’t available in the free edition of Apps, but it is. It works in the very same way as in a personal Gmail account: for the alternate e-mail address, you can edit the sending info and specify an smtp server from your own mail system or your host’s systems.
As indicated before, this does not work when you use a mail program like Outlook or Thunderbird locally with Gmail or Google Apps as the mail sending vehicle. In that scenario, the recipients of mails send this way will still see the ‘on behalf of’.
My 2 cents worth – those looking for an SMTP to take advantage of this could start the search here: http://www.smtp...of-smtp-server/