Make sure that your hosting plan covers email hosting. If you do, somewhere in the interface of your hosting package will show IMAP and/or POP3 server settings.
This example will cover Godaddy domain registrar and Ionos (formerly 1and1) web hosting provider. Your specific situation will likely be similar enough for this to be useful. Just substitute your favourite web host and domain registrar.
- First, you’ll need your own domain such as: WilsonHui.com from your domain registrar (Godaddy)
- Set your web host (Ionos) to accept requests from your domain (wilsonhui.com)
- Log in to your domain registrar (Godaddy) and set the DNS name servers to entries provided by your web host (Ionos).
At this point, visiting your domain (https://wilsonhui.com) in a browser should show what you’ve uploaded to your web host (Ionos). - Setup an email address with an actual inbox with your web host (Ionos). You don’t want just a forwarding email address. You’ll be asked to enter an email address (wilson@wilsonhui.com) and a password (not password)
*Optional: If you want to use Gmail as your primary email interface, you can now set that up.
- Create a Gmail account
- Go to your web host (Ionos) and forward your emails to your Gmail email address
- At this point, emails sent to wilson@wilsonhui.com will be received in your Gmail inbox.
You can take it a step further and send emails from your new email address (wilson@wilsonhui.com) from Gmail.
- Log into Gmail and go to Settings
- Go to Accounts and Import
- Click Add another email address
- Enter the SMTP email server settings from your web host (Ionos)Note: This is why you needed an actual email account and not just a forward.
That’s it, you should now be able to receive emails from your own custom domain and send from that address using Gmail.