Make clients see my own domain address instead of my personal Gmail

You want the email your clients receive to come from your own domain address, something like info@mydomain.com, and not from the personal Gmail you happened to sign up with. One performer asked it exactly this way: "I would like to use this email info@mydomain.com to send email to my clients instead google account. How is it possible please?" Then, within the hour, came the follow-up almost everyone sends: "It is already setup but not working". This article covers both halves - getting the address connected, and making sure it is the one your clients actually see.

Do not disconnect your Gmail. That is not the fix

Almost everyone tries this first, and it is a dead end. The logic feels right: if the wrong address keeps going out, remove the wrong address. "Should I disconnect my gmail account to work?" No. Skip that step.

Booked Solid OS is not tied to one account. It holds several mailboxes at once, each with its own job, so your Gmail and info@mydomain.com can sit side by side quite happily. Removing your Gmail does not promote your domain address to client-facing, because that is not what decides it. Deleting the account only costs you an inbox and gains you nothing.

Which email address do my clients see

Here is the mechanic that nobody guesses. The client-facing address is decided by the purpose tag on each account. Not by which account you connected first. Not by which one feels like the main one. Not by which was added most recently.

Every mail account you add carries one of four purpose tags: bookings, personal, support, or business. Otto works from the account whose purpose matches the message, so booking mail goes out from your booking address and your own mail stays on your own address.

1. Open the Connections tab and scroll to Mail & calendars.
2. Find your domain account in the list and click Edit.
3. Set its purpose to For bookings (or For business if your booking pipeline genuinely lives elsewhere), then Save.
4. Now open your Gmail account. If it is also tagged bookings, change it to For personal. This step is the one people skip. You want exactly one bookings address, because with two of them the app has no way to know which one you meant.

Each account row shows its purpose as a small badge, so once you have done this you can read your whole setup at a glance without opening anything. Purpose tags do a second job as well, catching date clashes between your gig calendar and your personal one - that side of it is covered in Purpose tags on mail and calendars: bookings vs personal, and the clash check.

Where to add the address

Adding the address happens in one place: the Connections tab > Mail & calendars > Add an email account. Give the account a name you will recognize, like "Bookings inbox", pick its purpose, then pick the method.

The method is where most "set up but not working" cases go wrong, so read the next section before you choose one.

Pick the method by where the mailbox actually lives

Your domain address is only a name. What matters is which company actually hosts the mailbox behind it - the place you sign in to when you want to read that mail. There are three cases, and picking the wrong one is one of the two most common reasons a domain address is connected but not working.

The mailbox runs on Google Workspace

This is a domain of your own that Google hosts, so you read the mail by signing in at Google. Choose Any email (IMAP), which is the method the form already starts on.

1. Make sure 2-Step Verification is on for that Google account, then create an app password at myaccount.google.com/apppasswords while signed in as that address, not as your personal Gmail. Google issues app passwords per account, so the one you made for your personal Gmail will not work here.
2. Back in Booked Solid, enter the domain address, use imap.gmail.com as the mail server, and paste the 16-letter app password. Spaces are stripped for you, so do not fight the way Google displays it.
3. For the outgoing side, use smtp.gmail.com with port 465.

Do not pick Gmail (linked account) for this. It sits right there in the same dropdown and it looks like the obvious choice for anything Google hosts, which is exactly why it catches people. That option is the older path that rides your claude.ai account: it only reaches Otto in a live chat, it quietly drops out in background and Autopilot runs, and reconnecting brings it back for a little while before it drops again. If you are already stuck in that loop, Gmail shows Linked but drafts stopped working: switch to an app password is the way out.

The mailbox is hosted anywhere else

Your website host, Fastmail, Zoho, Hostinger, and so on. Choose Any email (IMAP) and fill in four things:

• Email address - the full domain address your clients should see.
• Mail server - your incoming server, usually something like imap.yourhost.com.
• Password - many hosts accept your normal mailbox password here. Gmail and iCloud are the exceptions and require an app password.
• Outgoing server and Outgoing port - usually smtp.yourhost.com with port 465 or 587.

Your provider publishes the exact IMAP and SMTP values on their own help pages, and a single character out of place in the server name will fail the connection. The outgoing pair is marked optional, but fill it in anyway: it is what lets the connection test check the outgoing side as well as the incoming one, and then you know both halves are good in one click instead of finding out later.

The mailbox is on Microsoft 365

Do not use IMAP for this one, and do not go hunting for Microsoft 365 in the Add an email account dropdown: it is not there. Microsoft 365 has its own card, Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams), further down the same Connections tab under Tool access. Tap Sign in to Microsoft and type the short code it gives you on Microsoft's own page, so no password is ever pasted into or stored by the app. The details, including what Otto is and is not allowed to do in your Outlook, are in Microsoft 365 by device code: what Otto can and cannot do in Outlook and Connect Outlook and desktop mail (Microsoft 365).

"It is already setup but not working": use Check it

Every account row has a Check it button, and it is the self-diagnosis tool for exactly this situation. It is not a guess or a saved status. It opens a real connection to your mail server and performs a real sign-in with the details you saved, right then. The button reads Checking… while it works, then tells you in plain words what happened.

What the common answers mean:

• Connected - the address and password work. The mailbox itself is fine. If clients are still seeing the wrong address, your problem is the purpose tags above, not the connection.
• The mail server refused that sign-in. For Gmail/iCloud use an app-specific password. The server answered and rejected your credentials. On a Google-hosted address this almost always means a normal password was pasted instead of an app password, or the app password was revoked.
• That mail server name could not be found - check the spelling. A typo in the incoming server. Compare it character by character with what your provider publishes.
• The mail server did not answer in time, or could not be reached at all. The name resolves but nothing answered. A firewall or the network you are on may be blocking mail connections; trying once from a phone hotspot tells you which it is.
• The secure connection to the mail server was broken mid-setup. This one is usually an antivirus mail shield inspecting your email connections. Email will not connect: antivirus mail shields (AVG, Avast, Norton) covers it.
• No saved password for this account - add it again. Click Edit on the account, re-enter the password, and check again. You never have to remove and re-add an account to fix one field.

If you filled in the outgoing server and port, the answer comes back as two halves, Incoming: and then Outgoing:, so you can see which side is unhappy. Every possible message is decoded in Add any inbox by IMAP: app passwords and every "Check it" error explained. If you cannot decode yours, send us the exact wording - it names the fix.

A green check is not quite the last step

There is one more switch, and it strands people because everything looks finished without it. A saved inbox with a green check is proven to work, but Otto cannot read or draft in it until the Gmail (app password) connection is switched on under Tool access, further down the same Connections tab. That switch is what actually hands the inbox to Otto.

Saving a new inbox turns it on for you automatically, so most people never meet this. If yours is off, the account row says so directly and puts a Turn on for Otto button right there next to the warning. One tap and it is done. Despite the name, this same connection is what drives a domain mailbox that has nothing to do with Google.

Can I repeat this with several gmail accounts for different brands?

Yes. If you run more than one brand, say a magic address and a Santa address, add both inboxes the same way and Otto works all of them in the same session. This needs version 1.11.5 or newer, so update first if you have been on the app a while.

Two things to know before you set it up:

• Each inbox needs its own app password. App passwords are tied to the single account that created them, so you cannot reuse the first brand's code for the second.
• Give each one a clear name and purpose tag. Otto picks the drafting account by the brand the message belongs to, and he names which inbox he is working in as he goes, so you can always see which address is doing the work.

The safety net is worth knowing about. Once more than one inbox is connected, the drafting tools refuse to act without being told which account to use. Rather than guessing and putting a draft under the wrong brand, Otto names the connected addresses and asks. If a new piece of outreach does not make the brand obvious, he asks you before writing rather than after.

Otto is drafting from the wrong address

Check the purpose tags before you remove anything. In order:

1. Confirm there is exactly one account tagged bookings. Two bookings addresses is the usual cause.
2. Confirm the account is not switched off. An account that has been turned off shows an Off badge on its row and Otto will not use it.
3. Run Check it on the account you expect him to use. If the saved password cannot be unlocked on this computer, Otto will say plainly that the inbox is unavailable rather than drafting from it; the fix is to click Edit and enter the app password again.
4. If you switched the Gmail (app password) connection on after a conversation was already open, that conversation does not have it. Start a new chat, or quit and reopen the app, and it is picked up.

How the sending actually works

Worth being straight about this, because it changes what you should expect to see. Mail stays draft-only by design, on every connection path. Otto prepares the reply and places it as a draft in that inbox's own Drafts folder, and there is deliberately no send tool at all. You review it and press Send yourself. Your clients see your domain address as the sender, and nothing reaches them without you.

One small touch that comes free once your domain address is the only inbox connected: when none of your accounts is an @gmail.com address, Otto stops calling it Gmail altogether and refers to your actual address instead. He also will not tell you to reconnect Gmail, because there is no Gmail of yours to reconnect.

If it still does not work

Run Check it on the account and copy the message it gives you word for word, then email bookedsolid@kivimedia.freshdesk.com. Include one more thing and it will save a round trip: the name of the company where your domain email actually lives, meaning the place you log in to read it, whether that is Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, GoDaddy, Zoho, or your website host. With that one fact we can send you the exact server values to type in, field by field, instead of guessing along with you.