Gmail with your domain

Google provides a service to host your company’s (or personal) mails at their servers via your own domain. They currently provide a limited (invitation only) beta test. You can sign up at Gmail for your domain and they’ll send you an invitation. I had to wait quite a time: signed up in February and received the invitation in July.

They’re going to charge for larger installations, but Google also offers a free plan for 25 users.

Each user gets exactly 2048MB of free storage, my other Gmail account currently stays at 2741MB of free storage.

The interface is practically the same as the original Gmail interface, but you’ve got the possibility to change the logos of Gmail and Google Calendar and to some extend the color of the Sign in box.

As you can see, you’ll get Gmail (with Chat) as well as the Google Calender for your domain.

The admin interface for “your Domain” has some nice features, so you can

• Set up a catch all address which receives all mails sent to an unknown recipient.
• Bulk-upload a list of users (CSV file).
• Administrate mailing lists (only) for your users.
• Enable/disable the chat-feature in these accounts.
• Configure aliases for the users (multiple e-mail addresses).
• Look at the quotas and check the last-login time of your users.

The mailing list administration is very simple, but you can only add your own users which is pretty restrictive.

The Bulk upload options:

The user configuration pane:

So, altogether a very nice service if you don’t want to play around with mail-servers, encryption (SSL) and IMAP or POP3 clients. Your employees can access their mail from everywhere with Google’s great Gmail interface.

Mailing-lists are also a good addition, the Calendar integration is also a very nice feature, especially for companies, together with the customizable logos¹.

¹ Some companies I know ditch products which can’t be customized to suit their corporate identity… even if they are free and very powerful compared to other solutions.

—
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. —Winston Smith (1984)