Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

pcmofo

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 11, 2008
92
1
New York
I need to figure out a solution that will allow me to manage my 5 email accounts between multiple devices across the internets.

Here is my setup:
I have 1 Gmail account and 4 domains which I own and have email from. Each domain is under Google apps for domains under the same account. So if you email me at myfirstname@anyofmydomainnames.com it will send the email to the same inbox. All of these emails are currently forwarded to a standard gmail account bringing up the total email accounts to 5. This solution works for me right now because using Gmail I can “send mail as” and pretend to be any of the 5 accounts to send mail out. I also receive all of my email at one inbox so it makes everything easy because I can use standard google features and services.

What I want:
I would like to buy an iPhone (yes I am waiting for the 3g) and I would like it to receive all of my email but I would like to “send mail as” any of the accounts. I would also like any email I read on my iPhone to show up as read in gmail or Mail.app in my MBP. I need multiple email accounts to sync with multiple devices.

How do I get it?
I have though of a few solutions. I could separate my domains into separate google apps for domain accounts so that each email address has its own associated Gmail inbox and settings to connect to it. I could then enter in those settings into the iPhone and I could sync and do everything on iPhone as well as Mail.app in my MBP. However if I was using someone elses PC I could not check all of the mail in one place online.

I was thinking I could get a 6th gmail account and forward all of my mail to it so that if I needed to check all of my mail from one account online I could do that but it of course would not sync. I need everything to be IMAP so that it has two way syncing and information sharing.

I was also thinking I could keep my current setup where all of my email shows up in one Gmail account, then I could add that one Gmail account to the iPhone so it could receive all of my email. To send mail out as any of the addresses I could create dummy accounts on the iPhone that did not receive email but had the server settings to send mail out as the correct address.

Is there something simple that I am overlooking? I really want to get the iPhone but I need it to handle all of my email accounts! Would this be hard to use if I had multiple email accounts? I would have to move in and out of inboxes switching between them etc? Thanks in advance for any ideas or help.
 

bstpierre

macrumors 6502a
Mar 28, 2008
542
155
I was also thinking I could keep my current setup where all of my email shows up in one Gmail account, then I could add that one Gmail account to the iPhone so it could receive all of my email. To send mail out as any of the addresses I could create dummy accounts on the iPhone that did not receive email but had the server settings to send mail out as the correct address.

I like this solution. I have a domain that doesn't support imap (or that much space) that I just forward to my gmail account. I have my gmail account set up as imap so I can read something on the phone, web or Mail.app and it appears read every where. I have mine setup to always send from my personalized domain account (actually sends from my gmail account as if it was from my personalized account).

In the mail settings on the iPhone you can select the default account to send from (in the Sending section) and you would use that to select which of the "dummy" accounts you would send from. Unfortunately there isn't a popup to select the from account like Mail.app has.
 

pcmofo

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 11, 2008
92
1
New York
I like this solution. I have a domain that doesn't support imap (or that much space) that I just forward to my gmail account. I have my gmail account set up as imap so I can read something on the phone, web or Mail.app and it appears read every where. I have mine setup to always send from my personalized domain account (actually sends from my gmail account as if it was from my personalized account).

In the mail settings on the iPhone you can select the default account to send from (in the Sending section) and you would use that to select which of the "dummy" accounts you would send from. Unfortunately there isn't a popup to select the from account like Mail.app has.

This was just an idea that I had... would this actuially work? Can I make accounts that can send out but dont receive new mail messages in? I was hoping for someone who has run into the same problem as I have to tell me what they are curently doing. Help!
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.