Gmail "Send mail as" ends January 2027:How to keep sending from your own domain

If you send email from your own domain through a free Gmail account, that setup has about two months left.

Google is removing “Send mail as” for any address it doesn’t host. That covers Yahoo and Outlook.com addresses. It also covers the setup thousands of small businesses run on: mail for you@yourbusiness.com forwarded into a personal Gmail inbox, with replies sent back out through an SMTP server like SMTP2GO.

In January 2027, the “From” dropdown in Gmail stops offering that address.

So what happens to the outgoing half of your setup and do you actually have to move everything?

What’s changing and when?

Google is rolling this out in stages, and the first stage has already passed. If you try to add a new third-party “Send mail as” address today, Gmail may refuse it.

When	What happens
Q3 2026	Google announces the “Send as” removal. Affected users get a notice inside Gmail.
Q3 to Q4 2026	Transition. Existing “Send as”, Gmailify and POP setups still work, but Gmail may block new ones.
January 2027	All three are removed, on the web and in the Gmail mobile apps.

Three features are going, and they’re easy to mix up:

• “Send mail as” for third-party addresses. This is the one that matters for sending. It lets you pick a non-Google address in the From field and send through that address’s SMTP server.
• Gmailify. It applied Gmail’s spam filtering, tabs and search to a linked Yahoo or Outlook account.
• “Check mail from other accounts”. Gmail logged into another mailbox over POP every so often and copied new mail in.

How to check if you are affected?

Open Gmail on a computer. Click the gear icon, then See all settings, then the Accounts and Import tab. Look at two sections.

• Send mail as. Ignore your own @gmail.com address. Any other address listed there that isn’t hosted by Google is affected. If you click “edit info” and it shows an SMTP server such as mail.smtp2go.com or mail.yourhost.com, that’s a third-party setup.
• Check mail from other accounts. Anything listed here is POP fetching or Gmailify, and it’s going away too.

Not sure whether your domain is “hosted by Google”? If you pay for Google Workspace and your domain’s MX records point to Google, it is. If your mail lives with a web host, a registrar, Microsoft 365 or anyone else, it isn’t.

Your setup	Affected?
Free Gmail, sending as you@yourdomain.com through SMTP2GO or your host’s SMTP	Yes. This is the main group.
Free Gmail, sending as a Yahoo, Outlook.com, iCloud or AOL address	Yes
Free Gmail, pulling mail in with “Check mail from other accounts”	Yes
Google Workspace, sending as another address on your own Workspace domain	No
Free Gmail, sending as a second Gmail address you own	No
Domain mail forwarded into Gmail, but you always reply from @gmail.com	No, though your recipients already see your Gmail address
Google Workspace, sending as an address on a domain hosted elsewhere	Unclear. See the Workspace option below.

What stops and what keeps working?

A typical custom-domain Gmail setup has four moving parts.

Part of your setup	After January 2027
Forwarding: you@yourdomain.com forwards to your Gmail inbox	Keeps working. Google confirms auto-forwarding is unaffected.
Your Gmail inbox, its search, its spam filter	Keeps working
Gmail’s own IMAP access, used by Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail	Keeps working
Your SMTP relay account (SMTP2GO or similar) and your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records	Keeps working. Nothing changes on the relay side.
Choosing you@yourdomain.com in Gmail’s From field	Stops
POP fetching and Gmailify	Stops

Mail you’ve already imported stays in your Gmail account. Sent messages stay in your Sent folder.

So you don’t have to rebuild everything. What you need is a new place to compose mail as your domain. That place has to send through an SMTP server you’re allowed to use, and it doesn’t have to be Gmail’s web interface.

Your options…

Which one fits depends on two questions: do you want to keep reading mail in Gmail, and do you have a real mailbox on your domain, or only forwarding?

Option	Keeps your Gmail inbox	Needs a mailbox on your domain	Cost	Effort
1. Mail client reading Gmail, sending through your relay	Yes	No	Free (relay plan aside)	Low
2. Move the domain to Google Workspace	Moves to a new Workspace inbox	No, Workspace becomes the mailbox	Per-user subscription	Medium
3. Gmail mobile app with your domain as an IMAP account	Partly	Yes	Free	Low
4. Your host’s webmail	No	Yes	Usually included with hosting	Low
5. Switch to another mailbox provider	No	Provider becomes the mailbox	Per-user subscription	Medium to high

Option 1: Keep Gmail as your inbox, send through your relay from a mail client

This is the closest thing to what you have now, and honestly the one most solo operators should try first.

The trick is that Google is only removing sending from Gmail’s own interface. Gmail’s IMAP access for outside mail apps stays. So a desktop client can read your Gmail inbox, forwarded domain mail included, and send as you@yourdomain.com through SMTP2GO. Your forwarding, DNS and relay stay exactly as they are.

Thunderbird does this best, because each sending identity can use its own outgoing server:

• Add your Gmail account to Thunderbird. It signs in with Google, so no app password is needed.
• Go to Account Settings > Outgoing Server (SMTP) > Add. Server: mail.smtp2go.com. Port: 587 with STARTTLS (or 2525; use 465 for SSL). Username and password: your SMTP2GO SMTP user, not your Gmail login.
• Open your Gmail account’s settings and click Manage Identities > Add. Enter you@yourdomain.com and pick the SMTP2GO server as its outgoing server.
• In that identity’s Copies & Folders, save sent copies to your Gmail Sent folder. That way your sent mail still shows up in Gmail on your phone.
• Send a test to an outside address and check the headers show your domain passing SPF and DKIM.

The catch: you now write email in Thunderbird instead of a browser tab. For a lot of people that’s fine.

Option 2: Move your domain to Google Workspace

If you want to keep working in Gmail’s web interface, this is the clean answer. Google itself recommends it for custom domains. Once your domain’s mail is hosted in Workspace, sending as your own address isn’t third-party any more, so the change doesn’t touch you.

It costs a per-user subscription, and you’ll switch your MX records to Google and migrate old mail across. You can still route outgoing mail through SMTP2GO from Workspace if you want separate sending reputation or relay-level reporting. See our Google Workspace setup guide.

One grey area. Workspace admins can let users “send mail through an external SMTP server when configuring a ‘from’ address hosted outside your email domains”. Google hasn’t said whether a Workspace user sending as a non-Workspace domain falls under the January change. If your business relies on that, test it before January rather than assuming.

Option 3: Add your domain mailbox to the Gmail mobile app

Google says third-party accounts added to the Gmail app on Android, iPhone and iPad keep working. That’s a separate feature from “Send mail as”. The app connects straight to the other mailbox over IMAP and sends through that account’s own SMTP settings.

The limit: you need an actual mailbox on your domain to connect to. A forwarding-only domain has nothing to log into. And it only helps on your phone, not on the web.

Option 4: Use your host’s webmail

If your domain already has a mailbox with your web host or registrar, you can simply log in there to send. It’s free and it works. It’s also usually the least pleasant option: weaker spam filtering, clunky search, and a host SMTP server that may land you in spam if it shares IPs with thousands of other sites. Pointing your host mailbox’s outgoing mail at a relay fixes the last part.

Option 5: Move to another mailbox provider

Fastmail, Zoho Mail and Proton all host custom domains and are actively courting people leaving Gmail’s third-party features. It’s a bigger move: new inbox, new apps, mail migration. It makes sense if you were already unhappy with how your mail was split across services. Most of these providers send through their own servers. If you’re sending application or volume mail from the same domain, keep that on a relay so it doesn’t share reputation with your personal inbox.

Don’t break your authentication on the way out

This is where migrations quietly go wrong. Mail sends fine, nobody gets an error, and three weeks later replies start landing in spam.

The rule is simple. Recipients check SPF, DKIM and DMARC against the server that actually sends the message, not the app you write it in. So:

• Keeping your relay (options 1 and 3, or 2 with outbound routing)? Your records are already right. SPF already includes your relay and DKIM is already signing. Changing mail clients changes nothing here. Run one test send and check the headers anyway.
• Moving to Workspace or a new mailbox provider (options 2 and 5)? You’re adding a new sending source. Add its SPF include alongside the existing one rather than replacing it, set up its DKIM key, and only then switch over. If you remove the relay’s include while apps or your website still send through it, those messages start failing DMARC.
• Sending from your host’s webmail (option 4)? Check your SPF record includes the host’s servers. Plenty of people set SPF up for their relay years ago and never added the host, because they never sent from it.

Watch the SPF 10-lookup limit while you’re in there. Each include: costs at least one DNS lookup, and stacking Google, a relay, a CRM and a newsletter tool can push you over. Over the limit, SPF returns a PermError and many receivers treat that as a fail. Our SPF record guide covers how to count them.

If you have a DMARC policy at p=quarantine or p=reject, keep an eye on your aggregate reports for two weeks after the move. They’ll show any source you forgot. Don’t have DMARC yet? This is a good moment to start at p=none and look.

Be careful with “Send as” replacement extensions

A small wave of browser extensions and add-ons now promises to bring “Send mail as” back inside Gmail. Some may be perfectly decent. But think about what they need to work: access to your Gmail account, usually through an OAuth token, plus your SMTP credentials, so they can send on your behalf.

Google’s own help page warns that these tools often need email credentials or OAuth tokens, and that it can’t vouch for their security or data practices. That’s a lot of trust to hand a small company to save yourself opening a different app. If you do use one, check who runs it, where your credentials are stored, and what happens to your mail if they shut down. Then use a dedicated SMTP user with its own password, so you can revoke it without touching anything else.

Migration checklist

• Check Accounts and Import in every Gmail account you use for work. Write down each third-party address and the SMTP server it uses.
• Check “Check mail from other accounts”. If anything is listed, set up forwarding from that mailbox to Gmail instead. Forwarding keeps working.
• Pick your option from the table above. If in doubt, try option 1 first: it costs nothing and changes the least.
• Note your SMTP2GO SMTP username and password, or create a fresh SMTP user for the new client.
• Set up the new client or mailbox and send test emails to a Gmail, an Outlook.com and a Yahoo address.
• Check the headers on those tests: SPF pass, DKIM pass, DMARC pass, with your domain in the From.
• Update your phone. A Gmail-only phone setup loses the From option too.
• Leave the old “Send mail as” entry alone until the new setup is proven. It keeps working until January.

Frequently asked questions

Is Gmail removing "Send mail as" completely?

No. It’s only going for addresses Google doesn’t host. Sending as another Gmail address, or as an alias on your Google Workspace domain, keeps working.

Does this affect my custom domain?

If your domain’s mail is hosted by Google Workspace, no. If it’s hosted anywhere else, or you only have forwarding set up, then yes: you won’t be able to pick that address in Gmail’s From field after January 2027.

Will my forwarding stop?

No. Google has confirmed that auto-forwarding from another provider into Gmail keeps working. Only sending as that address, and POP fetching, are removed.

Can I still add a new "Send mail as" address before January?

Possibly not. Google started restricting new third-party setups during the transition. Even if it works, there’s little point setting one up now.

What about the "on behalf of" fix?

Our guide to avoiding Gmail’s “on behalf of” message relies on “Send mail as” with an external SMTP server, so it stops applying to personal Gmail in January. With option 1 there’s no “on behalf of” issue: the message is sent directly as your domain.