[Nemi]

For what it is worth, I ran into the problem of forwarding emails to gmail but having to reply with the gmail address when I setup email for my domain for my personal website. I have a vanity website and wanted to use the domain for email as well, but as little as I use it I did not want to pay even $6 a month for the privilege so I tried both forwarding and having gmail check “other accounts” using smtp.

My web host for my website gives me “free” SMTP services with my hosting so I did initially setup smtp for sending and receiving though gmail, but I ran into a problem where the web host’s smtp servers were often flagged as spam for outbound email, so that sucked. I could get email, but felt like I had to reply using my gmail address to guarantee delivery.

However, I had previously setup outbound email using AWS SES (Simple Email Service) for a different website that sends out transactional emails and had an idea. I setup AWS SES to send out my personal domain emails from gmail and now delivery is great. I rarely have emails flagged as spam. Unfortunately, AWS SES is outbound only, so you cannot use it for both inbound and outbound. I get inbound email to gmail by having it setup to check the web host’s smtp (but you could use forwarding like you mention), and I send outbound email through AWS SES with great delivery results, all through the gmail web client.

Now, this is not a route I would casually recommend. It is arguably a pain in the a* to setup AWS SES. But since this audience here on Hackernews is more of a geek/DIY crowd I thought I would mention it. You can setup AWS SES to send out emails from a personal account for pennies a month. You could arguably setup a Free tier AWS account and never go over the free limits. If you are willing to do some upfront work, it can be dirt cheap to do, and you get to learn the intricacies of email setup like SPF, DMARC, and DKIM.