Back when I wrote Spam Primer book (2012!), I recommended a powerful way to cut down on spam if you have your own domain: let Gmail retrieve your mail by POP, filter it, and then you pick up the cleaned messages from Gmail. It was elegant, reliable, and — importantly — free.
This is how I have handled my own email since before I wrote the book.
Yet after nearly 20 years, Google is ending that feature: Gmail will stop collecting email from external addresses via POP in January 2026. If you currently rely on Gmail to pick up mail from your own domain, this change affects you directly.
Google isn’t ending Gmail, nor preventing you from sending your own-domain mail through Gmail. The specific function going away is Gmail logging into your real mailbox, pulling messages out, and scrubbing them with Google’s excellent spam filtering before you see them in their interface.
So the guidance from the book will soon be out of date.
Why Forwarding Doesn’t Solve the Problem
Some people will look at this situation and think: “No problem — I’ll just forward all my mail to Gmail and let it filter there.”
That idea used to be common. Today it is a nearly guaranteed way to lose mail, as explained in my August post, Why You Don’t Want to Use Email Forwarding.
If forwarding is your only approach, you will eventually miss important messages, if that hasn’t happened already. That’s not hypothetical — it has already been increasing the past few years, as I explained in that post.
Better Solutions Moving Forward
I’ll divide these into two categories — not by technical skill, but by what level of reliability you require.
Option 1: Stay with your current hosting provider (no extra cost).
Your web hosting company already receives your mail. Nearly all providers now include decent spam filtering tools such as SpamAssassin. They allow you to:
- Set how aggressively incoming mail is scored
- Quarantine questionable mail for review
- Allow known senders through without delay.
Then, instead of Gmail fetching the messages, you fetch them from your hosting provider — either with POP (download and remove) or IMAP (keep mail in sync across devices).
This keeps things simple. The drawback is that server-based filtering is rarely as smart or as fast-adapting as Gmail’s. That and not being able to use Gmail’s app on your phone.
This approach is best for:
- Light- or moderate-volume personal email
- Users who don’t mind tuning filters occasionally.
Option 2: Move to a paid modern email platform.
If email is important to your professional identity — if customers, subscribers, or patients contact you — the safest path is one specifically designed to protect a domain’s reputation and keep mail flowing. These days, that means an option that requires payment.
Aside: Gmail really is not free! You “pay” by allowing them to farm your private data for sale to advertisers. If you don’t believe me, consider that Alphabet Inc. (Google’s parent company) had a net income of over $100 billion in 2024 on more than $350 billion in revenue. They make a lot of money providing mostly “free” services. They sell access to us all.
The Three Best-Supported Paid Choices Today
All three of these options require one simple update to your DNS settings: changing your domain’s MX record(s) so mail goes to the new provider directly, rather than the paid service picking it up from your server. It’s straightforward, and the provider will guide you through it. (Added bonus: if you use your domain only for email — no web site — this means you won’t need to pay for hosting!)
Also pay attention to necessary changes to your SPF and DKIM entries (you should have both!), and DMARC if you use it (you should). If you don’t know these terms, start here.
Proton Mail
Privacy-focused, excellent filtering, strong security model. Their encryption approach is admirable, but can complicate using traditional desktop email programs — the Proton Mail Bridge is required to use your own mail application such as Thunderbird; the Bridge does the encryption/decryption locally.
This is the approach I’m planning to use if their spam filtering proves adequate considering they do not look at the message body, since it’s always encrypted.
Google Workspace
The paid, business-grade version of Gmail. Very good filtering, outstanding reliability, seamless use on every device. You retain the familiar interface — with a monthly fee.
Fastmail
Independent, strong privacy stance, very good support for custom domains, and popular with people who still prefer a traditional mail client. A clean, sustainable solution without tying everything to Big Tech.
Pricing varies, but the peace of mind is part of what you’re buying: technical people who worry so you don’t have to. And, better, they keep the spam filters tuned so you don’t have to.
Bottom Line: If you currently rely on Gmail POP pickup for spam filtering, make a decision very soon: don’t wait until the day the old solution stops working.
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I use Zoho Mail. Its spam filtering is quite good. There are apps for your phone, powerful filters to route your mail where you want, AND it hosts your domain of course.
Multiple paid plans.
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Thanks: I appreciate knowing good alternatives, since I’m still “not convinced” on Proton’s spam filtering since they don’t trigger at all on message content, just headers. -rc
Here’s the Google page on the change.
Note that it’s says that you can have the Gmail app use IMAP to retrieve messages from other servers. That presumably doesn’t get you Gmail’s spam filtering, but it does get you the single UI on your phone.
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Since my advice was all about being a spam solution, IMAP (which most people don’t really understand) is unfortunately a poor alternative if Gmail doesn’t handle spam. -rc
I’ve used Proton since 2018. It wasn’t great at the beginning but it’s gradually become a viable alternative to Google’s entire suite of workplace services. The spam filtering has been consistently excellent, especially after I trained it/applied filters where necessary.
I use their password keeper and VPN as well. Haven’t migrated to their Drive for cloud storage but they do have one to solve for that too.