OS X: How to Access Email While Using a VPN

If you're unable to send email while using a VPN, it's likely that your provider is blocking SMTP services. That seems fair, they're doing it to prevent spam abuse. But you don't want to stop your connection every time you need to send email, right?

Here's a temporary workaround. Use the route command to create a static route that redirects outgoing email traffic, bypassing the VPN. Packets destined for the SMTP server will now instead use the local gateway.

SMTP server: 62.24.157.35
Local gateway: 192.168.1.254

$ sudo route add 62.24.157.35 192.168.1.254

Remember to replace the addresses with those of your own. This also works on Linux (CentOS).