Google Apps (google.com/apps) is a new service from Google that allows you to Googlify your own domains’ email for free! Yep, Google anti-spam, that famous Gmail web interface, and 2GB storage all working with myname@mydomain.com. Switching over from my hosting company’s shitty email server was a no-brainer and took just about 30 minutes.
To use Google Apps, you must own your domain and have access to your domains’ hosting control panel and/or in some cases your domain registry account. I registered my domain through Godaddy and my web hosting company (midPhase.com) does offer a control panel, so I was all set.
- Sign up for Google Apps Standard (or Free).
- Verify that you own your domain. This consists of either uploading a tiny html file to your domain website or creating a custom CNAME record for your domain. I uploaded the html file googlehostedservice.html to my website and verified it my domain that way.
- Add accounts & customize. Adding accounts individually is easy, but Google also allows you to create multiple accounts by uploading an account list (up to 50 for free). Each user account, once setup, will have its own Start Page (similar to iGoogle) which can be customized. Finally add the following Google Services to each account if you want:
- Docs and Spreadsheets
- Calendar
- Chat
- Web Pages
- Start Page
- Send some test emails. For this you’ll need access the email account on your domain (e.g., david@geneomatic.com), an external email account (e.g., david.vielmetter[at]gmail.com). Log into Google Apps and go to your account’s email. Send a message from it to your external account to make sure you can send and receive email. Until you activate Google Apps email, you’ll be using a temporary email address that look like (david.vielmetter[at]geneomatic.com.test-google-a.com).
- Change my domains MX record. Now that my domain has been verified and some test messages have been sent, I’m ready switch. I simply delete my existing domains MX record (mail.geneomatic.com. priority 10) and replace it with (ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. priority 1). If your hosting service allows you to add additional MX records, Google recommends that you add these entries as well.
- Wait a bit and verify your MX record change. MX record changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate through the internet, but my I was able to verify my change in 2 minutes later at http://www.mxtoolbox.com.
- Activate Email in Google Apps. I did this by clicking the Activate link and then the “I’ve completed these steps” button. So easy!
- Send some more test messages. Now that my gmail was activated, I sent some additional test messages to my outside account and now replies came back to my new Gmail account at david@geneomatic.com. Awesome.
- Enjoy the ease and reliability of Gmail with my own email! No instructions needed.
I continued to check my old server email (mail.geneomatic.com) for 48 hours (to make sure I didn’t miss any emails) using Outlook, and then removed the account after it was clear no more messages were going to that server.
After configuring Gmail to allow me to download messages via POP3, I added a new account in Outlook and created a rule to automatically move my sent messages to the Sent Items folder and mark them as read. Now I have world class email servers that work with Outlook and Biz Contact Manager, web mail that doesn’t suck, free anti-spam service, and much more.
Thanks Google,
Sincerely
David Vielmetter
Excellent. Thanks for explaining all that. I’m now up and running thanks to you!
Mark.
I have a simple question, can I browse my google apps with my own domain name? ie, gmail.jeffrash.com?
Jeff,
When you sign up for google apps you can access your domain email in the gmail interface, but it is not at gmail.jeffrash.com. To access your gmail you’ll have to go to a url like http://mail.google.com/a/jeffrash.com/. It’s not quite as nice, but it’ll let you remember your password for 2 weeks (like gmail) and you can use https for your gmail sessions.
hope that helps,
David Vielmetter
gratz for this post! I remember when I had no webhosting! it was so awfull but because i had no bank account I wasn’t able buy my own hosting package So I used a site were I could get one for free.
It works amazingly well! I didn’t have to wait 48 hours either, it seems it was immediately set up. At my current host, most of my e-mails got lost, I tried to send myself an e-mail every month and none of them ever arrived. Thanks a lot Google Apps!
Awesome!! Totally pointed me in the right direction. Love it. Got both my domains set up with gmail in a couple hours!
To help everyone, I also discovered, you can CHANGE the url to be mail.mydomain.com, which is sweet! Go to your dashboard in google and click on the green link “Change my URL”, then you have to configure the entry “mail” with CNAME = ghs.google.com in your DNS advanced settings, and presto change-o you can now login to your gmail at myname@mydomain.com by going to mail.mydomain.com and seeing a gmail style login, with the contextual “please login to mydomain.com”. Yes!!!!!!
Thanks for your write ups, your blog isn’t like all the other spammy and poorly written sites. you got a bookmark from me!
Thanks!