Gmailify [Or How to Link Other Accounts to Your Gmail Account and Get All of Gmail’s Features]
We’ve been touting Gmail’s reliability and security for a long time. We use it for personal emails and business emails and we’ve never been disappointed. Gmail’s security is second-to-none and their spam filtering is the best anywhere.
You can add any Yahoo, AOL, Outlook (Outlook.com now includes Hotmail, MSN.com, Live.com, Live.ca) or some ISP accounts and use Gmailify to get Gmail’s features with your other email address. But while you can check mail from other accounts using Gmail, you can only Gmailify one. If you want to know how to set up Gmail to check mail from several other accounts with out using Gmailfy, see this page..
Now let’s get on with Gmailify. First choose the one account you want to Gmailify. You’ll need your user name and password for the other account to set this up. As soon as you enter your username and password for the account you want to link with Gmailify, you’ll get an email at the other account asking if it’s OK for your Gmail account to access the account. If you want to receive email from your other account in Gmail, and Gmailify it, you’ll need to allow Gmail access.
We’re going to give you the instructions on how to Gmailify an email account directly from Google’s Gmailify page.
Get Gmail features for your other email accounts
If you have a Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, Hotmail, or select non-Gmail accounts, use Gmailify to get many of Gmail’s features with that address.
To do this, you’ll need to link your account to Gmail. After you link your account, you’ll see all your messages in your Gmail inbox, plus these changes:
- Spam protection
- Better mail notifications on mobile
- Automatic email sorting based on type (Social, Updates, Promotions)
- Faster search, with advanced search operators
Note: If you link another account to an existing Gmail account, you might reach your storage limit. Learn how to clear your Google storage.
Link your address to Gmail
- Open Gmail.
- In the top right, click Settings
Settings.
- Click the Accounts and Import or Accounts tab.
- In the “Check mail from other accounts” section, click Add a mail account.
- Type the email address you want to link, then click Next.
- Select Link account with Gmail (Gmailify), then click Next.
- Follow the steps on the screen, then click Next or Sign in.
After you link your account, “Gmailify” will appear next to your email address. When you open Gmail, you’ll be able to read, reply to, and organize messages from your other account just like you do in Gmail.
I tested Gmailify this morning with a Yahoo account. (The only reason I even have a Yahoo account is for testing and never for anything personal.) It worked amazingly well. Although we’ll give you a hint. If you have thousands of emails in your other account(s) inbox(es), you might want to archive some of them, or you’ll end up with thousands of email from your other accounts in your Gmail inbox.
Gmailifying one account and adding other email accounts this way to Gmail, makes it really simple to set up your email in email clients like Thunderbird. Let’s say you have 3 email accounts in addition to your Gmail account. Let’s say you have an @outlook.com address, and @hotmail.com address and a @yahoo.com address. You could Gmailify all three of those accounts and get all your email via your Gmail address.
Try Gmailify and see if it doesn’t simplify your email. It sure simplifies mine. And who couldn’t use a little more simple in this complex and complicated world?
In your article, you have mentioned
“Let’s say you have an @outlook.com address, and @hotmail.com address and a @yahoo.com address. You could Gmailify all three of those accounts and get all your email via your Gmail address.”
I have linked my @hotmail account with gmailify, and when I try to link my @yahoo to gmailify, it says that my gamilify has already link to another account, and need to unlink it first before linking to another account.
Any idea how to solve this?
I have clarified this in the article. You can only have one linked account using Gmailify. But you can add up to five (it may be more than that by now) other accounts to Gmail without using Gmailify. For instance I have 2 ISP accounts, 1 domain (thundercloud.net) account, 1 Outlook.com(Hotmail) account added to Gmail and one account Yahoo that is Gmailified.
This creates a unified inbox. So when I check mail with by logging in to Gmail (or check my Gmail account with Thunderbird or any other mail program) I only have to set up one gmail account in my mail program and I get mail from 6 different accounts (including my Gmail account).
When you add other accounts to Gmail (not Gmailify) you can check mail from those accounts or actually send mail as if you were using the other account. See this page to learn how to add accounts to Gmail without Gmailifying them.