Solo Technology

Got my beta invitation earlier this week. Set stuff up this evening. My domain’s email is now handled by Gmail (Gmail for Your domain last mentioned here). I had signed up for the beta early February and just been patiently waiting.

Switching over to GfYD (boy, now there’s an awkward looking acronym) is really quite simple — especially if you have some control over your DNS MX records. And I do, courtesy of the awesome zoneedit.com folks. Essentially, I just had to switch over the MX records to point at a bounc of possible/potential/definitive Gmail servers. Took about 5 minutes.

User accounts are pretty simple to setup. Looks like I get 50 to start with. Each account can also have nicknames associated with it. Nicknames are just another address associated with that particular mailbox. I think nicknames count against the 50, but not positive. Regardless, for my little business, 50 will be plenty. Once a user is setup, it looks just like regular ol’ Gmail from the web. 2GB, natch.

I configured the Pop3 support to continue using my huge Outlook file. Setting up the pop3 support was pretty straightforward. The help file shows the typical setup instructions. I had to modify those a wee bit to get it to actually work with the hosted flavor. Nothing too tricky, just have to remember to use your domain name in the email address and not “you@gmail.com”.

What haven’t I figured out yet? Don’t see to see an option for a “catch all” address. Haven’t determined if everything that doesn’t match goes to the “admin” account or it it is rejected. (A quick informal test would appear to indicate that unmatched addresses are rejected.) I would love to see options to import saved email from other mail clients. Hell, I’d pay for that service. The FAQ hints that maybe someday… That would be huge.

What am I excited about? Letting this be someone else’s headache — especially the anti-spam aspects! Seriously, that’s golden. Searching is a big plus too. Universal access to my email is a minor plus as well.

Privacy concerns?� I probably should have some, but ya know… email isn’t that hard to pull off the wire. If anyone is after my email and has government type access to the ‘net, they got my email. Regardless of where it is hosted, I’ll use encryption if necessary so… meh. Doesn’t much matter to me.

12 Responses to “Gmail for *my* Domain”

1. Peter on March 24th, 2006 5:54 am
   

   I’d be sold if Googled offered IMAP access to Gmail…

2. chris on March 24th, 2006 6:40 pm
   

   I’ll concede that IMAP would be sweet. For now, I’ve set up so that mail I pull with POP3 goes to archive. That way, I can find it again via the web interface if necessary.

   But after just one day, I’m pretty enthused about the spam-blocking capabilities. Made a huge difference in the amount of junk I got the last 24 hours.

3. Brandon on April 25th, 2006 7:01 am
   

   i am trying to setup as you did.

   what did your mx records look like in zoneedit?

4. chris on April 25th, 2006 7:24 am
   

   Something like:

   mydomain.com ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM 0
   mydomain.com ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM 5
   mydomain.com ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM 10
   mydomain.com ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM 20
   mydomain.com ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM 20
   mydomain.com ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM 20
   mydomain.com ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM 20

5. Simon on August 7th, 2006 3:17 pm
   

   Hi - great blog and sound advice/fino. I’ve tried configuring my MX records on zoneEdit so that I can also utilise GfyD. I currently have http://www.hecktor.com signed up for the beta of GfyD but when I try to enter the MX records Google have given me (below), zoneEdit says they “are not valid”

   Any ideas please?

   THanks

   MX Server address Priority
   ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 1
   ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 5
   ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 5
   ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 10
   ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 10
   ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 10
   ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 10

6. googlelet on September 10th, 2006 12:47 pm
   

   Try taking the trailing . off each address, so:

   ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM - priority 1
   ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM - priority 5
   ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM - priority 5
   ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM - priority 10
   ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM - priority 10
   ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM - priority 10
   ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM - priority 10

7. Max on September 15th, 2006 11:08 am
   

   Just an update
   There is a catchall setting.

   It;s under that advance setting in the domain settings in ur admin dashboard.

8. Chris on September 15th, 2006 2:18 pm
   

   Hey Max, thanks for that.

9. » pingback » Google Apps for My Domain - Seven Months Later » Solo Technology on November 3rd, 2006 6:40 pm
   
   
10. daniel on July 17th, 2007 8:04 pm
    

    Hi, I`ve a problem and please may be u can help me… I`ve an accont in mydoman.com, and I`ve http://www.example.com and I don`t know the values to put in MX to use email account with gmail. Please, could u help me?

11. Chris on July 17th, 2007 9:02 pm
    

    Daniel - have a look at http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33352

12. » pingback » Hosted Google Spam! » Solo Technology on July 19th, 2007 10:13 pm
    
    

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