We’re often asked about email hosting here at Anchor. It doesn’t really make sense for us to provide email hosting anymore, given the immense capabilities of hosted services such as gmail.
“But wait! I don’t want a gmail address!”
You don’t need one. It’s simple to set up gmail to use your own domain name and no-one ever need know that Google is providing the service.
Why would I want to use gmail instead of Anchor for my email?
Mainly because gmail is a modern, sync-capable, reliable, flexible, low cost and easy to use service with huge amounts of storage that stomps all over the traditional POP3/IMAP “store and forward” email systems provided by most hosting providers.
In today’s world where we use multiple devices, a modern cloud-based “sync” capable email account is the way to go. You can use your own domain name and keep your email, calendar and contact information synchronised across all of your devices; desktop, laptop, phone and tablet.
I’m going to walk you through the process of setting up a “business grade” gmail account that uses your own domain name, is ad free, uses incredibly reliable hosting infrastructure and works with almost any mobile device, web browser or email client. The best bit? It should only take 15 minutes or so to set up.
Step 1. Create a Google Apps account.
You get a free 30 day trial, it then costs around $4 per user, per month for a 30GB mailbox. Enter your contact details, domain name and sign up here -
http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.html#gmail
Step 2. Verify that you own the domain name you wish to use.
In the Google Apps dashboard, click on “Start Setup”; first thing you’ll need to do is to verify that you own your domain name. To do this you’ll first need to work out who you registered your domain name with, open a new browser window (or tab) and login to your providers domain management dashboard (if you registered your domain with Anchor just give us a call and we’ll do it for you) and add a txt record that incorporates the unique “Google Site Verification” code displayed on your Google Apps dashboard.
Once saved, go back to your Google Apps dashboard and click the “Verify” button. Typically this change only takes a few minutes before taking effect, despite warnings that it could take up to 24 hours.
Step 3. Set up Gmail – configure your MX records.
You’ll now need to direct any email to flow through Google Apps. This won’t affect your domain name’s website or other services. In the Google Apps dashboard, specify that you’d like to use Google’s servers and note the provided MX Record entries. Switch back to your domain management dashboard again and configure the MX records as instructed.
Returning once more to the Google Apps dashboard, click next and it will do a lookup to confirm that you entered things correctly. Again, it should take effect within minutes, not hours or days.
Congrats, you’re done! Google will now provide you with the settings you need to configure your email account on your phone, tablet, and computer. Using a gmail custom domain couldn’t be simpler.
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