How to Migrate Your Custom Domain’s Email to Google (And Maintain Your Addresses)

After six (6) years of handling my domain’s email through self-administered Linux boxes, I just migrated all my email functionality over to Google. This has never been a solid option for me for one primary reason — the mixing of gmail.com with my own domain (dmiessler.com). Forwarding and changing “reply to” settings has never been that attractive to me.

That problem has been solved. You can now let Google handle your domain’s email while keeping your existing addresses. Enter Google’s best-kept secret — Google Apps.

Google Apps allows those with their own domain to move their entire mail infrastructure to Google. That means keeping your email addresses exactly as they are today (e.g. daniel@dmiessler.com) while gaining the benefit of being hosted by Google. Here are a few advantages to consider:

• Silly Google uptime
• Silly Google speed
• Long-term stability (they aren’t going anywhere)
• You can use GMail as your domain’s webmail (Gmail > Squirrelmail or IMP)
• You can use a CNAME to point mail.yourdomain.com to your new GMail interface
• You get to keep all of your addresses (nobody will see gmail.com in from or reply to fields)
• Google’s spam filtering built in
• Full IMAP support (with IDLE)
• Full SMTP support (no need for a separate outgoing server)
• SSL support on both incoming and outgoing mail
• No more worrying about keeping your mail server up

All of Google’s mail power, but for your domain. Notice the account that I’m signed in as in the screenshot below; that’s the personal email address that I’ve had for eight years.

And it’s simple to setup; I did the domain and two accounts in like 10 minutes (including DNS changes) Here are the basic steps:

1. Create an account at Google Apps
2. Verify your domain ownership with Google (I did the file upload)
3. Change your MX records to point to Google’s mail servers
4. Wait for everything to update (for me, 10 minutes)
5. [optional] Pay the upgrade fee and import everything from a GMail account

That’s pretty much it. And keep in mind that Google Apps isn’t just for mail; you can also have Chat, Calendar, Docs, and even your main web page hosted by Google. If you haven’t looked into Google Apps yet, it might be time to check it out.: