Namecheap E-mail Forwarding to GMail

Alright, so I've seen several posts of this and experienced it myself and I couldn't seem to find an answer. Luckily, in mucking about I seemed to stumble about a solution that has worked thus far.


The Issue:

The issue was that if you registered for a Namecheap domain, and wanted basic e-mail forwarding, it didn't seem to work with GMail. No, I'm not talking about using Namecheap's e-mail servers, no I'm not talking about Google Apps for business, I'm talking basic forwarding of one e-mail address to another. For example, forwarding info@mydomain.com to myaddress@gmail.com. For some reason, it would work with e-mail service providers like Hotmail but not with GMail - and GMail really is my favourite.


The Solution:

Alright, the solution that has worked for me seems to lie in assigning an e-mail alias in GMail. But the only way you can do that is temporarily forward your e-mail to a non-GMail account.

So what you end up doing is temporarily forward your domain e-mail address to a non-GMail account, and then add an alias to the GMail account (which sends a verification e-mail to your non-GMail account). Once the GMail alias has been verified, now you can set your Domain to forward to your GMail account.

Here are the steps:

There are 3 accounts we're dealing with:

• a. Domain account - in our example "info@yourdomain.com"
• b. Non-GMail Account - in our example "me@hotmail.com"
• c. GMail Account - in our example "me@gmail.com"

Register Your Domain and setup e-mail forwarding to non-Gmail Account

1. Hit up www.namecheap.com and register your domain.
2. In your domain settings, click on "E-mail Forwarding"
3. Setup an entry to forward "info@yourdomain.com" to non-GMail account like "me@hotmail.com".

Test E-mail

1. Send an e-mail to "info@yourdomain.com", you should get it in your hotmail.

Setup your GMail account

1. Log into your gmail account, and go to settings.
2. Under Accounts and Import, look for "Send mail as..."
3. Add your "info@yourdomain.com" account.
4. This will cause GMail to send a Verificaiton e-mail to "info@yourdomain.com" which should end up in your non-GMail account "me@hotmail.com".
5. Enter the verification code
6. Make "info@yourdomain.com" your default account.
7. GMail is now setup send mail as "info@yourdomain.com" and for some reason this unblocks the namecheap forwarding.

Switch Forwarding E-mails to GMail Account

1. Now that GMail doesn't block namecheap anymore, switch your e-mail forwarding entry "info@yourdomain.com" to forward to "me@gmail.com"