How to get more space in Gmail

Although one of the reasons for setting up a Gmail account with your own domain is the fact that you get 15GB of free cloud storage, depending on the project, that may not be enough.

Especially because the space is not exclusive to Gmail; instead, it is shared with other linked services on the Google account, such as Google Drive.

And if, like me, you store each project's files in its corresponding Drive account to keep everything nice and tidy, you may hit this limit sooner rather than later.

So what are we supposed to do then?

Delete files?

Pay up?

Hang on, because I'm about to show you a great trick.

One that works for regular Gmail accounts as well as those you have set up with your own domain.

And it's free.

Steps to get more free space in Gmail

What we're going to do is create a new Gmail account, with its 15GB of storage, and configure both accounts so they work as if they were one.

You can do it, and it isn't complicated.

So let's get on with the process.

#1. Create a new Gmail account

First, go here https://www.google.com/intl/es/gmail/about/ and click “Create an account”:

If your old account was, for example, hola.yagogonzalez@gmail.com, the new one could be hola2.yagogonzalez@gmail.com (the one I'll use in the tutorial).

I say this just to keep things somewhat organized. In reality, you can create whichever one you want, because it has no effect on the process and nobody will see it.

It's a ghost account that we use only to store emails.

#2. Set up forwarding from your original account

Now go to your original Gmail account.

Click Settings > See all settings:

Go to Forwarding and POP/IMAP and click “Add a forwarding address”:

In the popup, add the email address you created in step 1 –in my case hola2.yagogonzalez@gmail.com – and click “Continue”.

This will make Gmail send a code or link to the new account to link it to the old one.

#3. Confirm forwarding

In the new account, as I said, we'll have received an email like this:

From the moment we click the link and confirm forwarding, we'll start receiving in the new account the emails sent to the old one.

Check anyway that your old account's settings look like this:

We've already done half the work.

Now we just need to be able to send from the new account as if it were the old one.

#4. Configure the sending address

Go to the settings of the new email account, click Settings > See all settings and go to “Accounts and Import”.

Click “Add another email address”:

Enter our details -keeping the same ones as in the old account- in the popup that appears:

This way, when we send an email, the person who receives it has no idea that we're sending it from a new account. For them, everything remains exactly as before.

That said, when you click “Next Step”, two things can happen depending on your old account:

1. If our old account is a Gmail address: it will simply ask us to send a verification similar to the previous one so the two Gmail accounts –old and new- can work together. You won't need to do anything else to send and receive mail from your old email account while using the new account's space.
2. If our old account is an account on our own domain linked to Gmail: it will ask us for the domain server details. As I explained in this article, our hosting provider will give us these details:

Add them as you can see here:

And verify using a link or code:

#5. Final settings

These optional steps are identical to the ones you followed when you configured your own-domain account.

• Choose the sending account.
• Add the signature.
• Also replicate the rules, folders and labels you had set up in your old Gmail account in the new one so you can keep working the way you normally do:

#6. Test everything

The last step, as usual, is to test everything:

1. Send yourself an email from any account to your old address.
2. It should arrive in the new account's inbox.
3. Reply to that email.
4. You should receive it from the old account with its configured signature.

If that's what happens, congratulations. Everything is ready.

From now on, you'll have another 15GB extra in your email account.

And if you run out of space again, all you have to do is repeat the process to add a third account with another 15GB.

All completely free.

I certainly think it's a fantastic trick for the following reasons.

Advantages

The main advantage of this system is that you'll have twice the space while keeping your main email account.

No one except you will be able to tell that you actually have two (or more) accounts behind the scenes.

For everyone else, this setup will be completely transparent, as if you only had a single email account.

And, of course, completely free of charge.

Disadvantages

Your messages will be split across two (or more) accounts.

This means that when you search for an old message and don't know its date, you'll have to search across several accounts.

It's not a huge problem, because there's little difference between searching one account and several, but still, it's a disadvantage.

The other disadvantage is that you'll have to spend some time to:

• Configure the new account as I've explained here.
• Replicate the folder / label structure you had in the main account (optional).
• Replicate the old account's rules in the new one (optional).
• Configure the signature (optional, but recommended).

Depending on how you use email, this could take ten minutes or an hour.

Fortunately, you only have to do it once.

Alternative process

One more thing.

Actually, I've followed this system to explain how to get this extra storage because it works both for an “official” Gmail account and for an own-domain account linked to Gmail.

However, if you already have an own-domain account linked to Gmail and it's running out of space, instead of following this tutorial, you could repeat the initial process of linking the domain to a Gmail account, by replacing the full account with the new one you've created.

It's another way to achieve the same thing: more extra space for your email account.

You choose which route you prefer.

Final conclusions

Frankly, I think it's incredible that this can be done.

Being able to link several Gmail accounts to create a mega-account with loads of gigabytes of free cloud storage is surprising.

And very useful.

Although, of course, some people will be less geeky and prefer to pay and avoid the setup. That's a completely valid option.

As of today, it's only 24€ a year in exchange for saving yourself about 20 minutes of setup.

That's for each project you have, of course; an important detail.

So choose whichever option suits you best.

Whichever you choose, it's clear that your email tool is a fundamental part of your setup, so knowing it inside out is not a bad idea at all.