August 25, 2014

External Addresses No Longer Use Gmail SMTP Servers

Gmail has a feature that lets you send mail from a different email address. For non-Gmail addresses, you could send email addresses using Gmail's SMTP servers or through the email provider's SMTP servers. Now you can no longer use Gmail's SMTP servers when adding new accounts:

We rolled out a change for new accounts where if you would like to send mail as from a non-Gmail or non-Google Apps account, you can no longer use the option of Gmail's servers to send your mail. Google is a strong supporter of email authentication standards including DKIM, SPF and DMARC. This is one in a series of changes to strengthen email authentication, and end any practices by Google products which break authentication.

Any accounts which previously were using Send Mail As via Gmail servers will not be affected, you can keep the previous set up. If you are a Google Apps user sending from a domain alias or email alias you can also check out the steps listed in this help center article under "I'm a Google Apps for Business user sending from a domain alias or email alias".


The help center article has more information: "Your other email provider has to provide authenticated SMTP support for you to use this option. We'll use TLS by default, or SSL if you enable it. Many email services that provide POP or IMAP support also offer authenticated SMTP support, and you can likely find your SMTP server configuration instructions alongside information about POP or IMAP."

Until 2009, all the addresses you added to your Gmail account used Gmail's SMTP servers. In 2009, Gmail added the option to use the email provider's SMTP servers. One of the benefits was that email clients like Outlook no longer displayed "From username@gmail.com On Behalf Of customaddress@mydomain.com". At that time, Google mentioned that "we recognize that your other address might not have a server that you can use to send outbound messages — for example, if you use a forwarding alias rather than an actual mailbox, or if your other email provider doesn't support authenticated SMTP, or restricts access to specific IP ranges. For this reason, we've kept the original method as well." Now, the original method is no longer available.

{ Thanks, Jan Willem Hengeveld. }

23 comments:

  1. I have the SMPT details as I have already set up to receive emails into gmail, but cannot add it to 'send as'. I constantly get:
    Your other email provider is responding too slowly. Please try again later, or contact the administrator of your other domain for further information.

    Getting very frustrated... any ideas why it won't work?
    Thanks

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  2. Getting the same error messages as Jayne... Does anyone have a solution?

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  3. I'm having the same problem. The cause is probably the same as mine. My other e-mail provider (xilo.net) blocks access from the IP addresses used by google's servers, as mentioned in the article.

    When you add a custom from address and smtp server, it's google's servers that are connecting to the smtp server.

    I contacted xilo.net and they said google uses different ip addresses for this, and there's no way for them to differentiate between people logging in via gmail and hackers / spammers logging in from elsewhere, having stolen your username and password. (I think that's what he was saying.)

    The proper solution seems to be for Google to change to a fixed set or range of ip addresses, which other email providers could then add to their whitelists for their email servers.

    I wonder how widespread the problem is. It started happening to us about a week ago.

    I'm not sure if there's a workaround. I tried putting gmail's own smtp server, smtp.gmail.com, into gmail, but the login failed, I think for the same reason, ie. smtp.gmail.com refuses login attempts from unfamiliar devices or locations (the other gmail servers)! Were just sending from our gmail.com addresses for the time being.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This web page shows a workaround. Didn't try it myself yet so please report back if this works :-)

    http://ellisbenus.com/web-design-columbia-mo/workaround-using-gmail-alias-forwarded-email-addresses/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. didn't work for me... this report still comes up

      >Your other email provider is responding too slowly. Please try again later, or contact the administrator of your other domain for further information.

      Delete
    2. Worked great for me on Windows 10 using Firefox.

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    3. Brilliant! Worked first time. Thanks!

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    4. Yes It's works :) Don't forget to activate the 2 steps verification if it's not actually done.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. Does anyone know an alternative to gmail as i'm not planning to set up a smtp server for our domain? Another stupid google "improvement" that I've just discovered.

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  7. The workaround no longer works...there is no "app password" setting anymore.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It still works -- you have to turn on google-2-step verification.

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  8. The solution offered here worked for me http://superuser.com/questions/817762/workaround-for-adding-forward-addresses-to-gmail-as-aliases

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    Replies
    1. Wow, I don't understand any of this. In the instructions, it doesn't show where we add our email address we're wanting to route through gmail. Also, I have no idea what they mean by creating this strange password which as nothing to do with our email passwords.

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  9. Sending mail with gmail has always worked perfectly here for multiple external SMTP accounts. I am a Google for Business user, and not sure if that helps. But i certainly know that some hosting companies simply don't have good/secure servers/service. Try switching to another (better) hosting-provider.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hence, it is important to give your cell telephone number too interchange email address while joining your Gmail account. The secret key recuperation data will be informed to you by means of portable SMS. https://robetbuckner.quora.com/How-We-Can-Change-Our-Gmail-Password-Easily

    ReplyDelete
  11. The post is explained clearly so that we are able to understand it clearly.http://tipsforapps.com/rediffmail/

    ReplyDelete

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