Email forwarding to Gmail from Bluehost
Hi everybody! Today we are going to tackle an issue for those of us that have just set up our first hosting and domain!
The last thing we want as new developers, new designers, or new business owners is to receive communications from prospective clients or employers and completely miss the boat because we forgot to check our new domain’s mail server! Yikes!
Today we are going to set up simple email forwarding from your domain hosted with Bluehost to your Gmail (or really any email) account!
Now, if you are like me and are in the process of setting up your very first domain and hosting package, you may not have a clear idea of what you want out of your domain’s email service. Do you want it accessible only on a desktop? Or a mobile device? Do you want to be able to access your domain email through a different email service? Do you want to do so through POP or IMAP? AH so many decisions!
So for the purposes of this post, we are going to simply set up email forwarding from our domain’s email service to a personal email address, to make sure we don’t miss any important communications until we have more answers to the questions above.
Now with this method, we cannot, I repeat, CANNOT send emails back through your hosting server as a reply to these emails. While that is definitely possible to set up, you may want to wait to decide what method will best suit your needs as you become more familiar with what types of communications will be coming through your domain. There are two types of email protocols (called POP and IMAP), and you would need to decide which is best for you. An explanation for the differences between the two may be found here.
Should you wish to go straight to setting up email sending and receiving through your new domain name, and excellent resource for these steps may be found on this blog!
While I may write an article on POP and IMAP protocols for Gmail in the future, today we will be setting up simple email forwarding from your Bluehost account. This is quite easy on Bluehost, but let’s walk through it together!
- Log in to your Bluehost Account
Starting from the Bluehost homepage (above), log into your Bluehost account. The login button is in the top right corner, and will redirect you to the login page, where you will enter your information to log in.
2. Select the Email Heading in the Side Menu
Once you are logged in, you will find yourself on the My Bluehost homepage (above). Click on the Email heading in the side menu on the left-hand side of the home screen to navigate to the email page.
3. Add an email account to your domain
If you have not already, you are now going to create the email account for your domain! The last part of the address will be @yourdomain.com, but you can pick whatever you like for before the @ symbol! We recommend picking something easy to remember, like yourname@yourdomain.com, or contact@yourdomain.com, but really, it is up to you!
In the Email field, you will type whatever you would like to be before the @ symbol in your new email address. As you can see above, I am using my name!
Next in the domain field, you can use the dropdown menu to choose which domain name you are creating this email account for (if you have more than one). If not, then don’t worry about this part! You can see mine is for chelseakeeley.com!
Next you decide on and enter a secure password for this new email account, and re-enter it in to confirm that it is spelled as you want (because you can’t see the characters). Make sure you keep this in a safe spot in case you forget!
And finally, we will choose an unlimited mailbox quota, and click on Create Account!
You did it!
If you scroll down on that page, now you can see the email account you just created! Look, you can see mine in the image in the next step!
*NOTE: to access and manage your domain mailbox, you need to install an email client on your desktop or mobile device. Today, we are only setting up email forwarding to keep track of incoming emails until we decide where we want to install this email client. For instructions on how to do so, see this link here.
4. Set up Email Forwarding
Alright, we have an account, now we want to set up the forwarding feature! On the left side of the screen, locate the Email heading (highlighted in blue), and click on the Forwarders subheading beneath it (as seen above).
Once we are on the Forwarders page, click on the blue Add Forwarder button, located under the Create an Email Account Forwarder heading (as seen above).
On the Add a New Forwarder page, enter the address to forward, which is the email account you will be forwarding emails FROM. This is the SAME email address for your domain that you just created! As you can see, mine will be from chelsea@chelseakeeley.com!
Next, under the Destination heading, click on the Forward to Email Address radio button, and type in the email address that you want to forward your emails TO. In my case, I will be forwarding to my Gmail account! Once entered, click the Add Forwarder button.
You should get a confirmation screen that looks something like this!
I highly recommend that you test out this new email forwarding, just to make sure it works. For myself, I tested it by sending an email from my old Hotmail account to my new domain email address, to ensure that it would forward to my Gmail account. Look, it worked!
I hope this tutorial helped, and be sure to check out the links near the beginning of the article once you clarify your new website’s communication needs!
Happy coding!
