Google Apps: full-featured email and more solution

Posted by Daniel Stout on Sat 31 Mar 2007 at 9:50 PM

I had a problem I wanted to solve. The problem was this: I love Gmail. This in itself isn’t a problem, but I have a domain that I use mostly for email. I like my email address for that particular domain. So the problem was using this domain with Gmail.

Okay, I’ve already looked into the easy route, which is setting Gmail to open up a POP account on another server and bringing that email into Gmail. The way this is implemented isn’t so bad, but it’s not great either. You can select to send email from your other address, but the way Gmail sends the From: field is a little strange. It says something like:

From: thisguy @ gmail.com on behalf of someaddress @ danielstout.com

Messy, and the point of doing this in the first place is so that people don’t have to know your Gmail address. With two addresses in there it just looks confusing.

So the desired solution is this: the simplicity and speed of Gmail, with the transparency of an email address of my choosing.

I did a little digging around Gmail and came across an excellent solution called Google Apps. Google Apps is basically services for your domain. It can handle email, calendar, chat, and a variety of other features. All you need to use Google Apps is a registered domain and a domain register that allows you to do custom DNS.

There are several levels of services available, including a totally free service that allows you to have up to 100 email users with 2 GB of email space each. Some of the paid options include up to 10 GB of email space.

So I signed up for Google Apps. Part of the process is “claiming” your domain. That is, you add a CNAME record to your domain, which proves to Google that the domain is yours. That step can take a few minutes. Once that is done, then you configure your domain for Google-hosted email. This involves deleting out any MX records for your domain, and adding several MX records in order. It’s not complicated, and one doesn’t really need to know what CNAME and MX records are in order to add/change them. Google has instructions for a variety of domain registrars, but you may want to contact your registrar if you have questions. Once the domain was set to transfer email to Google’s servers, it took about 40 minutes for the Google folks to “throw the switch” on their end in order to receive email for this domain.

After this the email starts to arrive in your new inbox. And guess what? The email interface is the same as Gmail. It’s basically Gmail for your domain. Very slick. You can even put your own branding on the site, instead of Google’s logo.

I don’t think I’ll use the other features of Google Apps — I don’t need an online calendar and such, but it’s nice to know that they’re there. If you want you can have the web space of your domain have a custom Google-hosted start page. And again, you can customize this page extensively.

While this service works for individuals or families, it is probably more useful for organizations – they have programs for schools and education and small companies. The interesting thing to me is that I’ve seen similar functionality in the past at Yahoo, but Yahoo charges you a hefty monthly fee for the privilege. Google’s is entirely free, or at least low-cost if you choose the small business services.

So with Google Apps, you get the great Gmail interface that’s available anywhere there’s an internet connection, and you get to seamlessly use your personal domain for that email. And once you’ve set up one domain, you can add additional ones, if you’re so inclined.

While I didn’t know if there was a solution to the email dilemma I had, I am pleased to find that Google already thought of a solution, and it’s a very easy-to-use, full-featured one at that.

Tags: email · gmail · google apps · yahoo

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