Alternative to Less Secure Apps Gmail (2022)

I explored free, stable, and sustainable services from different third-party providers like

• ZOHO
• Proton Mail
• Microsoft Outlook
• Mail dot com

You can find lots of varieties on the internet, but the best is always admired!

Another Giant in SMTP, ERP, and CRM Solutions is ZOHO. They provided lots of services like Finance, Sales and marketing, Email, IT & Helpdesk services, and many more to their 400M+ Customers (Including many businesses and individuals) for a long back and it is a trustworthy, clean interface, neatly organized stream features, and is easy to integrate with effective and immediate response capabilities, Zoho is providing better services to their clients/consumers/customers.

Key benefits of using Zoho Mail:

• End-to-end and S/MIME encryption
• 24x7 Support via email, chat and call
• Mobile App for your easy access
• Free access to Zoho products (Notebook, Zoho Docs, and Work drive)
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• 5 GB space per user you create on ZOHO
• Automatic mail forwarding to your users or customers.
• Filter, search, and manage Emails using Zoho Streams
• Group Account creation with user roles & access permissions
• For your website email, use ZOHO for free forever (It will also avoid scam scores for your website, saying that you are not using free email — for Gmail, it was counting it as free mail, which means scam website)

You will love their “Free Forever” plan for sure!

First, you need an email to sign up for ZOHO mail and after that, you can follow the steps given below:

Step 1: Sign up & Verify your email

Go to the Zoho Signup page and fill up all mandatory details. Check your registered email to get a verification email, click the link to verify that you are a real user.

Once you created your account, you will be logged in and navigated to the Zoho dashboard. The left highlighted menu is really important and we need to proceed further with it.

Zoho dashboard — admin console | Image by AuthorStep 2: Fill up your organization information (Or individual information)

Organization Zoho mail — Image by Author

It is not mandatory, but if you fill-up the mandatory details, it will help you grow when you expand your business. Go through all pages given in the middle section of the page, highlighted in the above section.

Step 3: Add domain and verify ownership

Click on add button and enter your domain name information.

You can read readymade steps to verify domain ownership using this link.

Basically, you need to go through and read the following details and update TXT, MX, and DMARC records in your domain registrar. Feel free to contact me for any work or any help at an affordable & cheap price.

You can create new users (with your verified domain name) by reading and following these steps.

Probably your registrar services make some time to reflect the entry you added for MX, TXT, SPF, or DMARC records, so please be patient!

Once you are done following all the steps to configure your email address on Zoho, you are ready to proceed with Java integration in a few steps.

Prerequisites: Javax.mail library must be imported into your config path.

You can integrate send mail feature integrated with Zoho, in a few minutes.

 import java.util.Properties;

import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.PasswordAuthentication;
import javax.mail.Session;
import javax.mail.Transport;
import javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;

public class ZohoMailTest 
{   public static void main(String[] args) 
    {   Properties properties = new Properties();
        properties.setProperty("mail.smtp.host", "smtp.zoho.in");
//        properties.setProperty("mail.smtp.socketFactory.class", "javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory"); // If ssl is your concern, uncomment this line
        properties.setProperty("mail.smtp.socketFactory.fallback", "true");
        properties.setProperty("mail.smtp.port", "465");//HTTP - 587 , HTTPS - 465
        properties.setProperty("mail.smtp.socketFactory.port", "465");
        properties.setProperty("mail.smtp.ssl.trust", "smtp.zoho.in");
        properties.put("mail.smtp.starttls.enable", "true");
        properties.put("mail.smtp.auth", "true");
        properties.put("mail.debug", "true");
        properties.put("mail.store.protocol", "pop3");
        properties.put("mail.transport.protocol", "smtp");
        properties.put("mail.debug.auth", "true");
        properties.setProperty( "mail.pop3.socketFactory.fallback", "false");
        Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(properties,new javax.mail.Authenticator() 
        {   @Override
            protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() 
            {   
              //TODO - update your zoho credentials first
                return new PasswordAuthentication("","");
            }
        });
        try 
        {   MimeMessage message = new MimeMessage(session);
            message.setFrom(new InternetAddress("microworkerbees@digitalworkerbees.com")); //From address
            message.setRecipients(MimeMessage.RecipientType.TO,InternetAddress.parse("rakshitshah1994@gmail.com")); //To address
            message.setSubject("Testing wonderful application integrated with Zoho mail!");
            message.setText("Received an email successfully! ZOHO + Java Integration works successfully.");
            Transport.send(message);
            System.out.println("----------MAIL SENT-----------");
        } 
        catch (MessagingException e) 
        {   e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Don’t forget to update <YOUR ZOHO EMAIL ADDREESS> with your Zoho email address, and <YOUR ZOHO EMAIL PASSWORD> with your Zoho email password.

Compile your java class and run it and observe your email address provided in the “TO” recipient.

“Trust me, it will never show email in your spam directory!”

Bingo! You did it!

References:

[1]. Google Less Secure Apps Update

[2]. Maven Javax Mail jar

[3]. Zoho — Add & verify Domain steps

[4]. Zoho- Add & manage users

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© Originally published on Medium - less secure app alternative by Author Rakshit Shah.