Email Hosting with Google Apps – Fantastic and Free!
Maybe I've been living under a rock. I've heard a lot about Google Apps for Business but it wasn't until recently that I learned about the free alternative - Google Apps Standard. It's pretty amazing what you get.
- Up to
5010 users (Google reduced the number of accounts in May of 2011) - Each mailbox has the standard Gmail capacity (about 7.5GB and growing)
- Shared Calendars
- Fully functional mobile e-mail for smart phones (depending on what you have)
- Google Docs, Site, Video, and Groups
This has to be the cheapest way to establish a business class Internet presence out there - just pay for your domain and you're pretty much set. On top of that you get a great set of collaboration tools. But, first things first - let's get email up and running for a domain.
Before you begin
For this to work, you need a domain (or you can buy one from Google) and the ability to alter your domain's DNS records. That's it.
Let's get started
First, go to the sign up page (opens in a new window) and click on the Get Started button.
Enter your domain name and click the Get Started button (another one).
On the next page, you'll be asked to fill out some personal information.
Next, select a username, enter a password, decipher the captcha, and accept the legal stuff. If you get Google's notoriously difficult to read captcha right on your first try - congratulations, you're my hero!
Sign in, Please
You'll be redirected to a login screen. Use the username and password you just entered. Accept the privacy agreement. Now we need to prove that we own the domain we're signing up for. There are two ways to do this. You can either post a web page or set a CNAME record in DNS.
If you already have a web server up and running, the web page is probably the easiest option. On your web server, create a file named googlehostedservice.html. Or, create the file on your local machine and upload it to your server. Make sure you have it in the root of your web directory. The file should contain the code Google provides you. It will be something like googlefffffffff0a1b23c. You don't need any HTML tags or anything else in the file. Once you've got your file in place, test it. Google provides you a link on the page to do so. (Thanks, Google!) Click the button indicating that you have your file ready for Google to check.
Google says it can take up to 48 hours to verify your domain. In my experience (three domains so far), it's taken a couple of hours. Your mileage may vary.
Activate Email
You'll be taken to a page and offered to launch the Setup Guide. If you don't feel like reading up on it, you can skip it for now. You'll start off in the Dashboard. Since the whole goal of this write up is to get email up and running, we'll go ahead and click on the Activate email link.
This is where you'll need to make sure you can edit your DNS records so that you can point your domain's MX records at Google's servers. This will probably be the most tedious part of the process - depending on the pain your DNS tool inflicts upon you. Google is kind enough to supply instructions on how to edit your DNS for several providers.
Once that's done, Google will need to verify your MX records. They say it can take up to 48 hours, but again, my experience so far has been about two hours. Take into consideration that it might take time for DNS to fully propagate.
Once Google verifies everything, you're good to go!