Save $6 Per Employee Every Month with this Nifty G Suite Hack!

Google’s G Suite is no doubt a handy service. But at $6 dollars per user for the basic plan, the costs quickly add up for startups (a team of 10 will pay $60 for just looking professional with custom email addresses!). Given the current pandemic, every dime counts.

At Alpha, we’ve been using a workaround for years now which delivers us the same features as G Suite free of cost. You might need to take some help from your tech-support guy but if a noob like me can figure it out, you can too! Here’s how:

1. Use Firefox (Chrome has some issues, let’s not get into that) to login to your “Gmail” account and click the gear icon “⚙️” then choose “Settings“. Then navigate to the “Accounts and Import” tab. Under “Send mail as:” select “Add another email address“.

Pro tip: I strongly discourage using personal email accounts and recommend that you issue Gmail IDs (e.g. companyname.marketing1/2/3@gmail.com) to your team so that you can retain the emails and contacts if that employee leaves.

2. Fill in details of your company-issued email ID. Keep “Treat as an alias” checked then hit “Next Step“.

3. Your SMTP server will generally be automatically filled out. In case it isn’t, it’s generally in the format “mail.yourwebsitedomain.com“. Fill in the details of your company-issued email ID and password. For “Port” select “456” if your website uses SSL certificate (i.e. starts with https:// instead of “http://”). If your website isn’t using any SSL certificate i.e. your domain starts with “http://”, then select “587” as your “Port”. Hit “Add Account“. Gmail will now ask you for a verification code.

4. Next up, login to your website’s cPanel. It’s URL usually looks like “https://yourwebsiteaddress.com/cpanel“. Navigate to your “Email Accounts“.

Depending on your hosting provider, your interface might look a bit different. From here you can “Create” new account or view emails by clicking “Check Email“. Click “Check Email” for the ID that you are trying to connect to Gmail.

5. Once your Webmail loads, select “roundcube“. There you’ll find the email with the verification code sent by Google.

6. Copy-paste that numerical code inside the pop-up box from Step 3 and click “Verify”

You’re 80% done!

You can now send emails using your company email ID from your Gmail. But how do you receive emails? For that, you need to tweak a few more settings.

7. Under the same Gmail “Accounts and Import” tab you will find “Check mail from other accounts:” there select “Add an email account“.

8. In the pop-up box, type in your official email credentials. In the next window, keep “Import emails from my other account (POP3)” checked. Hit “Next“.

9. In the next pop-up, enter your company-issued official email ID and password. Your “POP Server” should be automatically filled-out and be the same as the SMTP Server in Step 3. Check “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.” (this will save a copy on your mail server AND Gmail) and “Label incoming messages:” (this will create a label in Gmail that’ll let you easily distinguish your official emails (more on that later). Finally click “Add Account“.

THAT’S IT! (Well, almost!)

Although your setup is now complete, and you will now see all the emails you connected in the drop-down menu from your “From” in the compost window as well as the labels you defined in Step 9 should show up on the left side panel of Gmail, there’s still one final step you need to ALWAYS REMEMBER.

Gmail won’t always fetch your emails in real-time

How frequently Gmail will go out and fetch will email depends mostly on the server load. It can be as frequent as after 10 minutes or as late as 2 hours. So if you’re expecting an email, you might want to do the following.

10. Click the gear icon “⚙️” then choose “Settings“. Then navigate to the “Accounts and Import” tab. Under “Check mail from other accounts:” click on “Check mail now” for the email accounts you want Gmail to fetch your emails for.

Congratulations! You just saved your company $6 per employee per month! Now Supercharge it!

Read on to know how you can supercharge your Gmail account.

a) Set your company-issued email account as the default email account from “Accounts and Import” Gmail settings.

b) Enable “Undo Send” from your “General” Gmail settings. This will let you undo and edit the email even after you’ve sent it. Set it to 30 seconds.

c) Add Signatures to all your connected email accounts from the “General” Gmail settings complete with your company’s logo to look more professional.

d) Don’t show up as a faceless avatar. Display your picture or your logo on everyone’s inbox by adding your profile picture in your alternate email. Here’s how:

(i) Change your profile picture first by clicking the camera icon then uploading a picture. After that, click “Manage your Google Account“.

(ii) From there, go to “Personal Info” and click on the arrow in the “Email” tab.

(iii) Navigate to Alternate emails and click the arrow.

(iv) Gmail will now ask your sign in again after which add your company-issued professional email account.

(v) Gmail has sent a verification code to your email which you can fetch faster using Step 10 mentioned above. Click “Verify” after which Gmail will ask you to log in again. Once you’ve logged in again, you’ll see a prompt on the bottom left of the screen that “Your alternate email address is now verified“. Now, where ever you send your email, the recipient will see your profile picture that you uploaded in Step i.