Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- > You can continue to use "Send as" for any Google-hosted identities, including other Gmail addresses or aliases associated with your Google Workspace account. The discontinuation will not impact these addresses, which only applies to third-party, non-Google email accounts.
I have "Send as" accounts that have this configuration:
Mail is sent through: smtp.gmail.com
However the actual email addresses are often custom domains with say both google and cloudflare sfp records with cloudflare handling the incoming emails and forwarding them to gmail with gmail handling outgoing via google's own smtp server directly.
They aren't remotely clear if this use case is considered a third-party, non-Google email account or a Google-hosted identity since the outgoing smtp server being used is still a google server.
It's crazy that they don't actually explain what "any Google-hosted identities" means.
- This is really frustrating along with them removing POP for external accounts. I have an old email account that I had configured to have my Gmail account pull in emails from, and I can reply from that email using this feature, and now their only suggestion is to set up forwarding on the old email account to Gmail but that is way less reliable, and even then I wouldn't be able to reply. It's confusing because like, I'd figure they'd want more data, not less.by Throudin
- Related from Oct 2025:
Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP
- Whelp. I’ve been using Gmail since it was invite only. Sending as my personal domain was grandfathered in. This is going to be my push to leave for another service. I wonder if they understand or intend that?by kimos
- Regarding the outrage in this thread: Am I missing something? DMARC/SPF/DKIM enforcement makes third-party relaying fragile and likely to cause deliverability failures. Discontinuing it seems like progress towards reducing abuse. Where am I wrong on this?by josefresco
- IF headline contains (Google OR Musk OR Israel) GOTO outrage.
That's all.
- I bet you there's a lot of people on HN that
1. want their email on their own domain (for professionalism and portability)
2. Want to use Gmail (it is actually a pretty nice service to use)
3. Don't want to use Google Workspace (either because of how cobbled google features are on workspace, because they don't want to migrate google accounts, or because of it's cost)
Google just killed the ability to meet those three requirements. There's lots of people facing either a) showing the world a gmail.com address, b) switching to a different mail solution or c) paying for workspace and accepting it's flaws. It's totally fair for people to be mad about that.
If the "new" infrastructure doesn't support a common and reasonable use case, then perhaps it needs more work.
by advisedwang - This will probably grenade the plans for many small businesses, right now.by Calinterman
- This doesn't apply to Google Workspace addresses that most small businesses will be using.by HugoTea
- Certainly seems intended to drive Workspace subscriptions, but I wonder how many of those users will sign up for Office instead.by Fergusonb
- Hmm I'm confused. I have my own domain that is totally not hosted on google. However, I use Google's SMTP to send mail as that domain (specifically the one email address that is enabled on my custom domain).
For that I'm authenticating to the SMTP with my google account, and I somehow proved to google i own the email a couple billion years ago when we all had pet dinosaurs.
Are they discontinuing that or something else?
And Q2: if this is what they're discontinuing, are there any other email solutions that would support something like this? I.e. incoming email to my server I control 100% but offering smtp relay?
by nottorp - I'm similarly confused/upset, but it really does sound like they're discontinuing sending via SMTP:
> The “Send as” feature will no longer be available. This feature allows you to send email from a third-party address, such as @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com, and others, using your primary Gmail account.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/17101213?sjid=2314716...
by dataflow - As someone who uses their personal Gmail account to forward emails from custom domains to (via MXRoute and other email providers), losing the ability to "Send as" from the given adresses from Gmail means I will have to find an entirely new "home base" for email (and paradoxically start forwarding my peronal Gmail emails these instead?), right?
Similarly to losing Inbox many years ago, this really sucks.
by roesel - Ha I totally forgot about inbox until right now.
But yes enshittification has hit gmail and workspace in a huge way and seems to be accelerating. I'm also looking for a new home after being a heavy user since 2005
by sixhobbits - Same problem here. Forwarding domains into Gmail and using Send as worked fine until it didn't.
I ended up building my own solution (Mailyond) to have all my product domains under one place.
What solution are you looking at?
by raress96 - I have a domain and a contact email address for that domain that I have exclusively used through GMail, I guess this means I need to figure out a different path forward for that, then?by occz
- Same, although I have multiple domains
Are you looking at a real mailbox provider, or trying to keep Gmail somehow?
by raress96 - Good thing they are reminding you to get out of Gmail for realby dietr1ch
- Since you planned ahead, it should be as simple as getting a new provider and updating the MX record. If you are looking for suggestions, I'm on Fastmail's $50/year plan and quite happy with it.by fhdkweig
- This was the last straw for me. I'm migrating to Apple Mail and cancelling workspace ASAP.
ETA: I said nothing about where I'm planning to host my SMTP server. Apple Mail is a provider-agnostic client-side application, like Thunderbird.
ETA2: Those who read TFA carefully will know that, even though this doesn't affect Workspace aliases, it does affect this feature (Send-As SMTP) for workspace accounts.
by ericpauley - > This change does not affect Google Workspace aliases or other Gmail addresses you own.by cptskippy
- With workspace you can add your own custom domains anyway... This seems unrelated.by throooooo
- Before you do that: Consider a more open and transparent email platform such as Proton, Fastmail, Runbox, Tuta, basically just reconsider moving from one evil, unaccountable platform to another. As you may find the evil, unaccountable platform may do evil and unaccountable things.by Calinterman
- So you got burned by a centralized proprietary mail service suddenly making user-hostile changes, and your first instinct is to move to another centralized proprietary mail service by a company with a long history of user hostile changes?
Truly modern consumer sensibilities are fascinating to me.
Personally I do not use any Apple or Google products. There are so many better choices!
Anyway, might I suggest services that run standard open source mail daemons that never restrict you, like Migadu.
by lrvick - Current headline on HN is incorrect - it's not custom domains, it's third-party email addresses, such as @yahoo.com or @outlook.com. Domains and other gmail addresses you own can still be used....by happyopossum
- I don't think folks read the source link. Most responses are a plug for Fastmail.by chrisss395
- Yeah, basically this is terminating the trick some people used where they host a domain elsewhere but want to use an free personal GMail address as the "mail client" for it. Google sells their own domain email product, they'd prefer you use that vs. paying someone else.
And let's be honest here: GMail remains the preferred email client for almost everyone, for a lot of boring but very good reasons (mostly down to reliability and spam filtering).
Basically: people who don't like Google and don't use Google won't be affected and won't care. People who pay for Workspace hosting won't be affected, as those domains still work via Send-As. The people complaining here are in category 1, there are a handful of people (I'm one) in category 2 trying to help explain, and unsurprisingly there are very, very few people here in the actually impacted category of "mail client for external domain" users.
by ajross - The headline is not wrong, its intentionally worded that way to mellow down the message. Its for the people who use their own custom domains to send emails via google without paying for the workspace by verifying the domain ownership (its a extra cost that google bears now for free). The @yahoo.com or @outlook.com are just to give a face to what other custom domains look like.
The whole point is if you have custom domains then pay for the google workspace if you still want to use it. Couldnt find it right away, from what I recollect it used to be $6 or $8 per email address
by sandeepkd - Where does it say that domains you own can be used? I'm looking around and nothing clearly states it afaict.
> This change does not affect Google Workspace aliases or other Gmail addresses you own.
to me, implies that you need to set up Google Workspace for that domain before it'll work.
by striking - This support article gives more details here, even though it's still clear as mud that they are dropping support for custom domains _unless_ that domain is hosted via Google Workspaces:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/17101213
Even more confusing, you _will_ be able to still send to a custom domain via the Gmail mobile app? This appears to be an anti-spam move I guess? Though personally, this is a big breakage for me...
by lenova