Forwarding to Gmail
Many of our customers use Google's Gmail service for email. This service gives
you an @gmail.com, @googlemail.com or similar, address. Many people choose
to register their own domain so that they can have a more personal email
address, and it can be appealing to simply forward email from your own domain
to Gmail so that you can read all of your mail in once place. Historically,
this arrangement has worked well enough, but we no longer recommend forwarding
mail to Gmail.
Google filters email sent to them, and this can mean they filter out legitimate email They are especially likely to filter forwarded email, as it can be difficult to distinguish email that has been legitimately forwarded from another domain from forged email from that domain. If you forward mail to your Gmail account, you are at risk of not receiving legitimate email. It may end up in your spam folder, it may be rejected, or it may be discarded.
Recommended approach
We still strongly recommend getting your own domain name for your email, as this puts you in control, and gives you provider independence.
Our recommended approach is to store your email in a mailbox on your Mythic Beasts hosting account, rather than forwarding it. It can then be accessed in a number of different ways:
- In a browser, using our webmail service.
- On your computer, using an email client such as Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail.
- On your phone, using a mail app.
The Gmail service vs the Gmail app
The most common mail app on Android phones is the confusingly named "Gmail" app. Despite the name, this is completely different to the Gmail service described above. The Gmail app is just that – a mail app – and it can be used to access mail from any provider.
There is no issue at all with accessing a Mythic Beasts mailbox using the Gmail app on your Android phone – simply set it up as a separate (IMAP) account in the app. The Gmail app has the option to show you mail from all accounts in a single combined inbox view, just as if you had forwarded your mail to one place.
Gmail's POP3 collection service
The Gmail service used to have an option to collect mail from mailboxes other providers (such as Mythic Beasts) using POP3, and put them into your Gmail inbox. This did work reliably, but as of 2026, the feature is being withdrawn by Google.
Technical details
Most of the issues described here are not specific to either Gmail or Mythic Beasts. Unfortunately, the prevalence of forged, fraudulent email, and the measures introduced to counter it, mean that forwarding email between addresses no longer works reliably. You can read more of the technical details in this blog post.