Setting Up Google Mail for Your Own Domain
After some recent restructuring of my business (I'm now 100% owner of Pragmapool) and ongoing problems with the server that this and my other sites sit on, I'm migrating all of my sites over to Mosso. I'll probably go into why I chose them and why I'm willing to recommend them even before I've moved all of my sites over at a later date. What's relevant for today is that one more than one of those domains, the email is actually more important than the site on that domain.
With several accounts that average 2000-3000+ spam messages a day, dealing with the email on the new server didn't exactly appeal to me. Having heard about how some plenty smart people enjoyed the switch over to outsourcing their email to Google, I figured I'd give it a shot.
The thing about Gmail (and Yahoo mail and Hotmail) is that lots of large companies actually block them. When you do the contract development gig like I do, that can get in the way of actually doing your job. None of those companies block any of my domain names.
So, I followed all of the instructions for changing the MX DNS entries to point things over, set up the email accounts and was able to send and receive email. However, even when setting up webmail.example.com, the browser still gets forwarded to Google's domain.
Fortunately, Google recently added IMAP access. When you combine that IMAP access with a copy of Squirrelmail installed directly on the domain, you can use any of:
- The GMail interface that many know and love
- IMAP access using Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.
- Squirrelmail access
- You need to enable IMAP access to each account from the "Settings" link in your custom GMail.
- When you set up your IMAP access, instead of your user@gmail.com email address as the login, you need to use your user@yourdomain.com address.
- After that, it works like a charm.
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Hi,
I just signed up for Mosso, and I've been using Google for my mail servers for a while successfully, but when I go to add the Google MX records into Mosso, it doesn't allow me to enter them with the last period at the end. Did you have this problem setting them up, if so what did you do to correct it?
Thanks for all your help.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:24 am
Hi
I had a terrible experience with gmail. I had been using gmail for some time with no problems. Then, one day Google decided there was 'suspicious activity' on my account and closed it down.
In reality I was using my mail in the way it's supposed to be used. i.e. accessing it from google's web app, windows live mail on my desktop and from a pda.
Whatever I did I was never able to convince Google that I was the owner of my account. I could not contact Google other than via forums or their pathetic 'resolution' forms. It was a nightmare. I lost documents and many many important messages. Google just ignore me and told me to read the terms and conditions! Or try filling in the resolution forms again! I tried about 15 times with no success. I even had the original mail that someone sent me to recommend me to gmail!
I cannot understand how anyone would ever use an unsupported system like google mail in beta for professional email accounts. I made that mistake once and once enough.
Don't do it! email accounts cost $30 a year. And you can call up on the phone when something goes wrong.
Gus
May 19th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
I've used google mail for my domain for over a year and I've been very satisfied with it. I've had no issues or problems with it in any way. I hate paying for email since I let all my family members have free mail through my domain (I own my last name domain) and it gets pricey. When I did my own email, it would go down if my ISP went down, or when I moved and was without internet. This service has been so nice because it's free, plus it gives me greater reliability than I had previously. It's fantastic.