External Mail in Gmail

For anyone who wants to use Gmail as their central email program, there are some limitations when checking other email accounts.

As of now, Gmail has no functionality to check external email accounts easily. For example, in Outlook you can setup POP3 retrieval of email from other accounts. The only way for you to received email in gmail from other accounts is to forward them. (The only functionality Gmail provides is to send email out from multiple email addresses, and you can check your Gmail account from other email programs). Contact your email hosting company and ask them to forward all incoming email to your Gmail account. Sometimes you may have access to your MX records online, and you can setup the forwarding directly from there.

Also checkout my post regarding Google Apps for Your Domain to learn about additional options to check external email through Gmail.