i found phpmailer at sourceforge.net.

At least in theory, it will allow me to send mails from my free account using my gmail account as outgoing server.

Has anyone tried this?

Could anyone tell me if i will just waste my time?

Do you know of any alternate way that works on free accounts?

Not sure if that would work.. why not just use the Smtp that most all php software gives the option to use...
I'm sure you can get a free SMTP email account from somewhere.

But yeah if you get that Gmail thing to work let us know, it is very interesting!

Okay I did a bit of googling and found this..
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/tonyhughes/599

Looks like Gmail can be set up as an SMTP server...

You can't use the SMTP from gmail in your script, because gmail recuires account verification.

Honestly, i tried, but it doesn't work on free accounts

I managed to patch phpmailer in order to include certification, and it works with gmail accounts that way, but not if you have smtp disabled, unfortunately.

Freehostia should supply a way of sending mails through private email accounts, as it doesn't affect freehostia at all, and if used for spamming the the user's mail account would be punished, hot freehostia.

If anyone wants that patch, please let me know.