If you have a business, you shouldn't use a @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com or even something like @austin.rr.com as the email address you conduct business from. It's just not as professional as using your own domain, e.g. person@wildwoodinteractive.com. You can, however, use an email address with your domain after the @, and use Gmail to retrieve it via the web. Here's how.
1. Login to your Gmail account. If you don't have a Gmail account, you can set one up here. They're quick and free to get.
2. Click on the "Settings" link.
3. Click on the "Account" tab.
4. Click on "Add a mail account you own."
5. In the popup window, type in your email address then click "Next Step."
6. Fill in your Username, Password, and POP Server.
7. Your decision on whether to leave a copy of retrieved message on the server will primarily depend on where you want to receive your mail. If you're going to use Gmail as your exclusive source for email, uncheck the leave on server box. That will remove the email from the Wildwood Interactive email server as soon as Gmail retrieves it. If you also want to retrieve your email on a mobile device and/or a desktop program like Outlook or Apple mail, leave a copy of emails on the server after Gmail retrieves them. Have your other email program remove emails from the server after retrieving them, and have that program delay the removal for a couple of days to give Gmail plenty of time to retrieve them also. Your email program should have an option to remove emails from the server X days after retrieving them.
Couple of additional notes.
Google gives you 7296MB of free space. It's pretty cheap to increase your server space if you need more.
Gmail doesn't retreive and post mail as frequently as you can configure desktop programs to do. You can manually force updates though by selecting Settings, going to the Accounts tab, and clicking on Check mail now.
