Google Apps for your domain - Use Gmail in mail.yourdomain.com!

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This is for all bloggers and webmasters…

Google Apps Logo Google Apps is a service from Google for using custom domain names with several Google products like Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs, Page Creator, and Sites.

If you have used these products, then just by registering a domain-name you can start a complete website. You can use Gmail for your mails. Also Google Docs for office documents like word files, presentation & spreadsheets.

If you are a big company or educational institute, you can use Google Talk for chatting. As an evil admin, you can configure chat to be only available between people under your domain only. ;-)

If you just want some help to convenience yourself, check these official links.

Now moving on to the next point, which I am practically using! :-)

Gmail in mail.yourdomain.com!

Many bloggers and webmaster already use or like to use email address ending in their domain ex: rahul@devilsworkshop.org, tips@devilsworkshop.org.

When we set-up an email address like above, we normally get free & open-source email program like SquirrelMail. Those who don’t like it, just configure all mails to be forwarded to someaccount@gmail.com. In either case there is something we don’t like.

But what if you get Gmail under your domain? Like mail.devilsworkshop.org! Yes, my email account rahul@devilsworkshop.org is hosted on Gmail.

How-To…

  • You must have a Google Apps account. You can get one for free. Available sign-up options are here!
  • Next you need a domain-name. You can register a new one, if you don’t have!
  • After completing signing up procedure, go through Google Apps help pages to configure things.

More about configuration…

It can be simple like a click if you host your blog/website with webhost like Dreamhost. They offer full integration with Google Apps. With just a single click you can switch between Gmail and SquirrelMail.

If you just want to register a domain, register it via Google Apps or GoDaddy. In fact, Google Apps uses GoDaddy as their official registrar.

Rest, Google Apps like other Google services is well documented service. So I hope you will enjoy using it! :-)

A word about security…

Although SquirrelMail is an open-source project, security-wise its much better than Gmail and other commercial free mail programs. As a matter of fact, you can check unfortunate incident happened with David Airey, where a XSS-bug in Gmail left his business sabotaged.

Despite knowing this, I am using Gmail with Google Apps for my mails, but its my duty to alert you! :-)

Links: Google Apps | Compare Editions | FAQ | Dreamhost

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13 Comments (including Pingbacks/Trackbacks) so far »

  1. #
    Pavan Kumar on April 25, 2008

    Rahul, I too use the same google apps, but you might have noticed mails from such ids being delivered into spam folder of recipient. Do you have any solution? Someone told me that configuring on outlook will solve the problem… Even your mails used to stay in my spam folder until I add you onto my address book…

  2. #
    David Airey on April 27, 2008

    Hello Rahul,

    Thanks for mentioning my GMail security hijack. I’m still a fan of GMail, oddly, but regularly check my filters and forwards for any malicious addresses.

    All the very best.

  3. #
    Rahul Bansal on May 3, 2008

    @Pavan
    First sorry for late reply as I was offline on a long vacation.

    Now I never encountered any such problem. In fact, I use my rahul@devilsworkshop.org email address for all commercial communication and I always get reply. That means I can safely assume my emails are not going into spam folders.

    Still few things you can take care of…
    Don’t use your domain ids for mass emails/forwards/etc
    Check history of your domain name. If bad guys used your domain in past then it may create problems

    Rest if you have any particular case to talk about, please let me know! :-)

  4. #
    Rahul Bansal on May 3, 2008

    @David
    First sorry for late reply David as I was offline on a long vacation…

    Now thanks for commenting.
    I will also keep a watch on my gmail filters. Its really nice habit you have… :-) I personally take extra care while clicking on links I receive in mails. But your way is foolproof, though little tedious. ;-)
    I guess a filter monitor plugin/script for gmail can do better job!

  5. #
    Pavan Kumar on May 17, 2008

    The problem does not occur much with Gmail or with Google Apps, but the problem occurs when you mail to yahoo mails. For commercial communication you always address someone@theirdomain.com like ids and I don’t think they filter off. But Yahoo! definitely does it. If you use any mail clients and set your message of high priority, it goes to inbox. Even I have observed your mails moving to my yahoo spam box… And of course, these days, the mails moving to my spam box are important than the spams occupying space of inbox…

    If you know about domain keys / DKIM, please post…

  6. #
    Rahul Bansal on May 18, 2008

    @Pavan
    I tested sending a mail from devilsworkshop.org to yahoo.com and it is delivered to inbox. :-)
    Maybe there is some problem with your shared hosts IP address. If a spammer is in your neighborhood then you may be getting penalized because of him.

    About DKIM… I know about it little and all I can say that it is not our cup of tea. It is for large organization and I think you need to have (buy) digital signature in order to use it.
    Also Google Apps uses DKIM so the problem must not be with Google Apps.

    Also FYI, I know many small-to-mid size companies using Google App for all communications.
    I don’t think Google will not make a mistake like this.
    Still I will check in-depth if Google Apps mails delivered differently than normal Gmail mails.

  7. #
    Pavan Kumar on May 18, 2008

    @ Rahul,

    I have subscribed for comments of this post on both google apps mail id and also yahoo’s, I will tell you the result soon….

  8. #
    Pavan Kumar on May 18, 2008

    Yeps, this delivered mail to inbox. But, I have seen your mails generating from rahul[at]devilsworkshop.org moves to spam, even my pavan[at]techpavan.com also shows the same behavior when mailed through gmail interface of google apps.

  9. #
    Rahul Bansal on May 19, 2008

    @Pavan
    This SPAM problem is getting too complex and I failed to find a good answer as of now.
    In June, I will have more time and at that time I will look into this more detail.

    I still feel that problem is not at all with Google Apps but shared webhosting as thilak in past reported that pingback from my blog to his blog was marked spam by akismet.

  10. #
    Pavan Kumar on May 19, 2008

    @ Rahul

    I too will be having much time starting from last part of June… But, I have got a solution for mailing without letting it to move to spam, I am going to post on it in the next week. But, that process is not as comfortable as gmail approach, anyway its a good solution.

  11. #
    Sidharth on August 24, 2008

    Hello!

    I too am having the same problem:

    1. When I log into mail.mydomainxyz.com via google apps and send an email it does not get flagged as spam in yahoo
    2. When I send a mail from my webserver via smtp.gmail.com it gets flagged as spam in yahoo…

    I’ve tried spf records, looking at mail headers…but cant seem to figure out anything…

  12. #
    Pavan Kumar on August 24, 2008

    @ Sidharth

    It is not the same case every time. May be it also depends on the software which you use for that purpose.

  13. #
    Rahul Bansal on August 25, 2008

    @Sidharth
    There are programs which uses insecure login to smtp.gmail.com to send mails. I guess problem comes because applications do not use SSL/TLS based authentication.
    Please let me know which script you are using to connect to smtp.gmail.com on your webserver.

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