With Google Apps you manage your own DNS (google doesn’t do it) and create MX records that point to google’s servers. Basically you sign up for the service and then they make you validate that you own the domain either by creating a dummy cname DNS record for it or by putting a special file on a www.yourdomain.com/ URL. Then they walk you through setting up the mx records needed to make them your mail server. As long as you can freely edit the DNS records for your domain you can use it as a google apps domain and doing that doesn’t get in the way of hosting web servers with other providers. Once you’ve got this set up, you can then connect to mail.yourdomain.com (or whatever, you don’t HAVE to name it mail) and viola, it looks kind of like gmail but it is branded with your domain name. You can create something like 50 accounts with the free service. Since you have two separate domains, you’ll have to set both up individually with google apps, but once you do each can have many different email accounts link to them that the domain administrator (person who signed up to google apps for domains in the first place) can manage. Each account gets their own email access which is basically the same as gmail in terms of UI and space you can use. (You can also POP into these accounts, you don’t have to use the web interface if you don’t want).
Anyway, I’ve been using google apps for domains for my email for about a year now and it is just fantastic, IMO. highly recommended.
I have poopmods.com hosted by Dreamhost, and the bang for the buck as well as the services and ease of use are second to none. Another thumbs-up for 'em here.
That sounds pretty nifty CCZ. I am going to have to sign up for Google for apps and take it for a test run. I am using gmail to collect all my email accounts in one place anyhow, so it won’t be much of a switch. Thanks for walking me through it. This may work out pretty good for me.
I’ve been leaning towards moving my mail hosting off Dreamhost onto Google Apps for a few days. I’m really hoping Google introduces some sort of push tech to the iPhone.
The big issue I’m working around now is because of how chatty a lot of the staff mailing list I’m one are, I’ve had to set up a lot of server-side filtering to keep them out of my inbox, and to stop my iPhone from getting them – 99% of them are either things I’m not actionable on, or don’t pertain to me.
My understanding is the iPhone mail.app ignores all the Gmail labeling, etc. so I’m going to get stuck with them. I’m leaning towards setting up a separate mailbox just for those mailing lists.
You just use IMAP on the iPhone. It synchs every fifteen minutes, or you can do a manual check. Not quite push, but usually good enough.
My understanding is the iPhone mail.app ignores all the Gmail labeling, etc
It uses labels, but by creating folders for each of your labels, automatically making copies of e-mails, and handling the behind the scenes stuff to mark them all as read after you see them once. It’s less complicated to use than explain. Everything also appears in your inbox unless you’ve created a rule telling it to skip it.
Unlimited domains means… um… unlimited domains. You have to pay the yearly registration fee on each domain, but any and all are hosted under the same account.
You can (and I do) have unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts on each and every domain.
All these up-votes for Dreamhost…I guess I just got on a bad server or something. I canceled last week after another round of MySQL problems and moved to another host (HawkHost, who has been great so far).
Reviving this thread because I want to move to a less expensive host and am hoping for some recommendations. I’ve used Lunarpages in the past, which is so-so, and currently use Siteground, which has been great, but I’m seeing a lot of players out there now that claim to deliver more than Siteground does at a much lower price.
This is for a small homeowners association Web site that gets very little traffic, so I don’t need a dedicated server or anything. Right now I’m looking at WebHostingPad ($4.00 per month), Bluehost ($5), or maybe going back to Lunarpages ($5). Any thoughts, or is anyone using someone else that offers a lot for a little and does a decent job?
I just signed up with Dreamhost, and it has been as awesome as others have described. The thing I probably like the most is their openness. The official blog is humorous and gives you good insight on the company. They also have a status site that tells you each day if servers are giving trouble and what they are doing to fix them. I can’t recommend them enough, for advanced admins or beginners.
I know it is not cool to admit this and they sure do have unfortunate advertising, but I’ve used godaddy for many years both with shared hosting and as a dedicated server host and I’ve always been extremely happy with their prices, service, support, etc.
I only want to sign up for a year of service at a time since the quality and value of hosts tend to shift around. Both GoDaddy and Dreamhost are too expensive relative to the other options.
I left TCH because they accused me of spamming. I used to run Amy Sedaris’ official site (well, as official as it ever got), and they claimed the e-mails that went out letting people know that the site was updated were violations of the CAN SPAM act. I told them to shove it and found a different host. Beware the self-righteous assholes at TCH.
I’ve never had any problems with 1and1, and in fact love their customer support. However, I haven’t run any sites with enough traffic to really show how good a webhost really is, nor have I used the host for email purposes, so I don’t know how well they scale.
