So many unpaid invoices!

[kevsboredagain]

The easiest way to use Gmail - at least I think it's the easiest - is to set up email forwarding on all your domain emails. No farting about with either POP or IMAP.

That is what made mine end up too complex. I had 5 domains, plus Gmail itself and hotmail, each with 10-20 email addresses.

Forwarding, which is how I did it, means that you see all your received emails in Gmail, which is fine but if you use Outlook or other email programs on other machines then it all becomes messy. Your sent folder will be different on every device unless you use the web Gmail interface everywhere. If you want to delete an email, then you have to do it in 2 places, in Gmail and the account it was forwarded from. I also needed offline access to emails, for example if I have to look up a booking and am roaming on a mobile.

It probably depends on your volume of email as to how maintainable a forwarding solution is.

All email, no matter what you use, is read using either IMAP or POP3. Gmail itself is IMAP, which is why you see the same emails from any device.

[French Cricket]

I have 5 domains too (soon to be 7) though not as many addresses for each, and I find it all very simple ... Gmail's web interface does everything I need to do so I use no other program, anywhere. I have my originating domains set up to not keep a copy of the forwarded email on the servers.

And there is an app for offline use now, though I've never used it.

[kevsboredagain]

I have 5 domains too (soon to be 7) though not as many addresses for each, and I find it all very simple ... Gmail's web interface does everything I need to do so I use no other program, anywhere. I have my originating domains set up to not keep a copy of the forwarded email on the servers.

And there is an app for offline use now, though I've never used it.

It's the fact that you limit your access to only the Gmail interface which makes that system work.

[Nemo]

I use Outlook when on my computer and then have two Apple devices, so use the mail app there. I have used the gmail interface but having used Outlook since I first started using email however many years ago that is now, I remain wedded to it. It's all very confusing trying to get it synced.

[kevsboredagain]

I use Outlook when on my computer and then have two Apple devices, so use the mail app there. I have used the gmail interface but having used Outlook since I first started using email however many years ago that is now, I remain wedded to it. It's all very confusing trying to get it synced.

Several solutions:
- Use Gmail for everything, everywhere, like FC and many other people
- Read your email from the server on each device with POP3 but leave on server for X days before removal. In X days, you should have also read them all with the other devices. You have to delete on each device though and sent folder will never be in sync.
- Use IMAP on all devices. Archive emails older than X years on main machine.

For those that don't use Gmail and don't have spam filtered by their ISP, there are several 3rd party software apps which can do the job. They tend to cost around $20-30 per year and none of them are ideal. I'm currently testing Cloudmark DesktopOne as it was free for 1 year. That's fine for my desktop machine but I pick up most of my emails first on my mobile. Luckily a mobile will only read the header first so a quick swipe deletes these "invoice" emails as they arrive.

[DebsPlace]

Watch out for the one from RS Components, it looked so genuine I phoned them to report it just incase they were unaware. The girl told me that hundreds of people had received them and they were trying to track down the culprits but not proving easy!!