If you used Gmail’s “Check mail from other accounts” feature to pull email from your POP3 servers into your inbox, you’ve probably noticed it’s gone. Google quietly removed POP3 fetching and Gmailify in early 2026, leaving millions of users without a way to consolidate their email.

We’ve been building email tools since 2011 with 33mail, serving over 500,000 users. When we saw Google dropping this feature, we built a replacement: PopRelay.

What Google Removed (and Why It Matters)

Gmail’s POP3 fetching let you pull messages from any POP3 mail server directly into your Gmail inbox. It was the simplest way to manage multiple email accounts in one place – your work domain, your ISP email, your hosting email – all in Gmail.

Google has offered no replacement. Their suggestion is to set up email forwarding at your provider, but forwarding introduces real problems:

• Sender reputation damage – forwarded emails can fail SPF and DKIM checks, making legitimate messages look like spam
• Volume caps – many providers limit how many emails you can forward per day
• No control – you’re dependent on your email provider supporting forwarding rules

What PopRelay Does

PopRelay does exactly what Gmail’s built-in feature used to do, but better.

It connects to your POP3 server, fetches new messages, and imports them into Gmail using the Gmail API. That last part is important – this isn’t email forwarding. PopRelay writes messages directly into your Gmail inbox via API, which means:

• No sender reputation issues – messages arrive as imports, not forwarded mail
• No spam filter problems – Gmail API imports bypass the forwarding spam traps
• Unlimited volume – no per-message or monthly caps
• Automatic deduplication – PopRelay tracks message IDs so you never get duplicates

How It Works

Setup takes about three minutes:

1. Sign in with Google – OAuth only, PopRelay never sees your Gmail password
2. Add your POP3 server – hostname, port, and credentials (encrypted with AES-256-GCM before storage)
3. Sync starts – new messages are imported to Gmail, with real-time progress tracking

You can schedule syncs as often as every 5 minutes, or trigger them manually whenever you want.

Privacy and Security

We know granting any third-party access to your email requires trust. PopRelay is designed to minimize its footprint:

• CASA Tier 2 security audit – Google requires apps that access Gmail to pass an independent Cloud Application Security Assessment. PopRelay has completed and passed this audit, which covers application security, data handling, and infrastructure controls.
• Write-only Gmail access – PopRelay can only import messages and manage labels. It cannot read, search, modify, or delete your existing email. You can verify this in your Google Account permissions at any time.
• AES-256-GCM encryption – your POP3 credentials are encrypted at rest with the encryption key stored separately. They’re only decrypted at sync time.
• No email storage – PopRelay fetches and imports. It does not store your email content.

Try It

If Gmail’s POP3 removal left a gap in your workflow, PopRelay was built specifically to fill it – by the same team that’s been running 33mail for over 15 years.

Head to poprelay.net to get started.