To get all the amazing features of Gmail for your own domain name email addresses, you’ll want to sign up for Google Apps. The standard edition of Google Apps is free and offers up to 50 custom email addresses. I only use one per domain name so 50 is more than sufficient.
To set up Google Apps, head over here and sign up as an administrator for your domain name.
After you enter some basic contact information, Google will walk you through verifying that you control the domain by uploading a file. Once you’ve uploaded that file, you’re account is ready to go.
On you Google Apps dashboard, press the “Activate Email” link.
This next step is the most complicated of the entire process. You now need to change the MX records with your domain registrar and/or host to direct your incoming emails to Google Apps.
- Google provides step by step instructions for many hosting companies but not for either the registrar or host I use so instead it involves a lot of poking around their websites looking for the options. At mydomain.com (my registrar) I found the MX records under DNS Management and at Hostgator (my current host) I found them under MX entry. I set them at both so that the mydomain.com MX records act as a backup at any time I change or cancel my hosting in the future.
Just copy and paste the information that Google Apps provides into the MX fields at your registrar or host (if you’re having trouble, take off the period at the end of the MX Server address).
Here’s what it looks like after I enter the information at Hostgator:
Then click completed at the bottom of the Google instructions page and wait. It can take up to 2 days for Google to verify the records you just entered, but the account I just set up was ready in about 25 minutes.
Once they are verified, you can log in at google.com/a and use it just like you would a Gmail account.
If you have several email accounts, you may want to set up one of your Gmail accounts to check them all so that you don’t have to repeatedly log in and out of different accounts.
Disclosure: Some links in this post are affiliate links.
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I use this for my sites, it’s so much more user-friendly than most other options. Also, I setup a subdomain & redirect to it (i.e. docs.beingruth.com) so that I can get there quickly. Wrote a short post about that a few months ago.
I am confused. How is this different then just having all e-mail forwarded to a gmail account I already own and setting it up to be able to reply/email from my domain email addy in gmail?
hmm, great question! up until pretty recently, a regular gmail account would say “sent on behalf of” and reveal your regular gmail address as well instead of just looking like it came straight from your domain name email. because of that i’m used to setting up my email accounts the google apps way. but maybe there isn’t an advantage anymore.
I do route all my email to one Gmail address, so I can answer this. There’s still an advantage if you don’t want the person to show up in your gChat section. People I’ve e-mailed from any number of aliases show up together in my gChat. And in my gChat, I seem (based on asking) to show up as the name I e-mailed from but with the catchall gmail address I use.
This doesn’t bother me because it’s kind of generic and it means I can chat with everyone from one account, but it could be a privacy issue, depending on who you’re e-mailing and how much contact you want them to have with that e-mail address.
Just to check (I just tried doing this) will the mail.yourwebsitename.com not work until the MX code has finished going through? I use dreamhost and they said that it would take a few hours, which is fine, I just am seeing if I got everything set up otherwise.
whatever happened to your mail before is what will continue to happen until google is done checking the mx records.
Carrie – thanks for the reminder – I have been dying to do this and get always stop at the MX part – mainly because kids are hanging on me – BUT I WILL DO IT TONIGHT!! Thanks