How To: Setup Hosted Email on Android
06. Jul, 2010 
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I went through my own phase of iPhone love about a year ago, when the 3G made it’s first appearance. My wife and I figured we’d jump on the bandwagon and see how far it took us compared to our previous phone and, *ahem* awesome carrier.
After about three months of only completing maybe, <5% of the calls we made or received, we bit the bullet and canceled out because I simply couldn’t justify paying for a service that loved to hang up on family and clients during important calls. </endrant>
We went back to Verizon and bought the Android driven phone, specifically, the Droid ERIS, and we haven’t looked back since. To be honest, even if the rumors are true and the iPhone comes to Verizon, I’m not switching, sorry Steve.
Since I own and author several blogs, I have different email addresses tied to each one; including a main contact address and a Twitter address assigned for Twitter access. I’m not on the computer all the time, although my wife would beg to differ, but I do have my phone with me 99% of the time so it makes sense to configure my phone to let me know when I have new emails. I’ve missed contacts and delayed response time since I didn’t have this setup for some time, so I can attest how important it is to have continuous contact opportunities in order to run your business.
Configure Your Android for Email Access
First off, I use and recommend HostGator.com (aff) for hosting WordPress.com blogs; as such, I will cover setting up the phone’s mail connection using their email settings, however, the steps are very common among many hosting providers. You may need to track down your providers email settings such as POP3 and SMTP servers, but again, the overall process is a simple one.
In most cases, Droid owners already have a valid GMail account tied to the phone in order to use the Market and receive personal email. To use external (Exchange or IMAP/POP3) email providers, we can use the built-in Mail app. Once launched, as long as there are no pre-existing accounts set up, you will see the ‘Choose a mail provider’ screen:
For the sake of the tutorial, we’re going to use ‘Other (POP3/IMAP)’ for our desired provider so press on that particular option.
Moving on, we land on the ‘New account’ screen where we add our email address and password. In most cases, your password will either be the main password you use to login to your hosting account, or if you have created a separate password specifically for the email account, go ahead and use it here:
In order to establish a connection with our mail servers, we need to provide the server login and server paths to gain access to our email inbox. Again, using the information made available by your specific hosting provider, grab the required information, specifically the incoming POP server name:
Scroll down a bit to configure your security information (I prefer to use SSL for added Internet security):
Press ‘Next’ and the Droid will verify your incoming settings, and will let you know if there were any issues connecting:
Similar to our incoming email settings, we need to configure our Droid to where it knows what server to hit to pull messages from. Within the ‘Outgoing Server Settings’ screen is where we do just that. Your SMTP (or outgoing) server name might be different so double check that value before moving on:
Again, like the incoming settings, also ensure that your security settings are set:
Press ‘Next’ and your outgoing settings will be verified prior to moving on the final configuration screen. You can set your Account Name to an identifier that will let you know what account this is for if you manage multiple accounts. Press ‘Finish Setup’ and we’re done with the configuration.
Once the account has been verified, configured and saved, you can go into your Mail application (not GMail) and check to make sure your are receiving and sending mail through your Driod!
Look at this…I got an email from fellow blogger, Dragonblogger! Thanks dude!
Conclusion
That does it, if everything went well, you should now be able to send and receive email from your Droid while on the go. Now, unless you forget your phone when you run out, you can still remain in contact with your customers, clients or monitor any other email based notifications if you’re nowhere near your laptop.
Enjoy!
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