I've had my own domain since 1994 and always ran my own personal web and e-mail services on a personal server. Running a public server on the Internet requires some technical expertise and a whole lot of patience. You will be bombarded with spam, you will face script kiddies scanning your services trying to 'hack' your passwords, you will see the underbelly of the Internet that most ISPs effectively hide from their users. I particularly enjoyed running my own e-mail server and quickly implemented RBLs, spamassassin, pyzor and razor to keep the good mail flowing and the spam headed to /dev/null.
All has gone well for several years until my ISP decided suddenly to block incoming traffic on port 25 (SMTP) to my connection. Everything froze, all my personal e-mail was blocked from my server, all my friend's e-mail traffic to their domains I was hosting stopped. I don't run a high-volume e-mail server, but nonetheless the messages traversing it are very important to me. I never was given a good explanation for why my ISP suddenly decided to do this, but their fix was that I'd have to upgrade to a commercial account ($70+/month instead of ~$35/month) in order to run my e-mail server on my Internet connection. I capitulated to their extortion while looking for an alternative e-mail hosting solution. This is strictly personal e-mail, not commercial/business related in any way, so the $20/month to $50+/month solutions I was finding really didn't fit my needs. Recently, I caught wind of a hosted e-mail service that Google has been developing and would be beta testing. Bingo! Sign me up!
I've been beta testing Gmail for your domain (Google's hosted e-mail offering) for a little over a month now on my personal domain, and am very pleased to say it works great. It's based on their Gmail infrastructure and interface, so Gmail users have almost no learning curve. It offers the same great feature set (excellent spam blocking (it has caught 1,000 spams in the last two weeks, with no false positives), easy e-mail content searching, rich text composing, AJAX interface, the Web Clip bar (which can be disabled)) as Gmail with some capabilities to customize the GUI for your users (by inserting your logo instead of the Gmail logo.)
Setup was very easy, some changes are required to your DNS MX records (remember your password for your account with your registrar?) for your domain to point e-mail to Google's servers. Once this has been completed (and propagated) you can log into the management interface, setup e-mail accounts, e-mail lists (think aliases) and make some minor changes to the interface (choose a background color, include your logo.) Once you've created the accounts everything is ready to go, it works just like Gmail. If you have a larger domain, you can use the account import feature so you can batch create your user accounts by uploading a CSV spreadsheet of your usernames and passwords.
The Gmail model has been to offer free e-mail service by displaying relevant(?) ads on the right hand side of your screen according to the contents of the e-mail you are currently reading. They still do this, I still find it minimally intrusive personally. I'd like to know what kind of revenue Google gets for clicked-through Gmail ads in a year (click fraud notwithstanding.) When you open your Spam mailbox, the Web Clip bar displays Spam Recipie links. French Fry Spam Casserole, Spam Breakfast Burritos, Spicy Spam Kabobs, Spam Quiche. I don't touch the stuff, but I like it when a corporate giant like Google doesn't take themselves too seriously and can still have a little fun. When in the Trash, the Web Clip bar displays recycling tips...
Wish List for "Gmail for your domain":
- For the beta test, each mailbox is frozen at 2GB, that's a lot of space, but why not let the mailbox size grow like other gmail accounts? That is one of your strongest features.
- Allow for pattern definitions in e-mail addresses. (I prefer to use "speed-[sitename]@example.com" when registering an e-mail with a third-party website. Right now I'd have to define each and every e-mail address I create instead of saying deliver "speed-*@example.com" mail to my Inbox.) This is one of the benefits of having your own domain name. Google has mentioned they are looking at doing this.
- Allow for a "catch all" bucket for all those "other" e-mail addresses that I have used over the years.
Mail coming to my domain, unless it is determined to be spam, should be delivered to me. As it stands now, if I don't specify an e-mail address in my Google configuration, mail sent to the unspecified address (@mydomain) bounces."Gmail for your domain" now offers a "catch all" e-mail address for your domain, an excellent example of the responsiveness of Google to their users' needs. It can be configured under "Domain Settings" once logged in to your administrative account. - Especially during the beta test: put a link to the support e-mail on every page! (I had to go back and re-read my beta testing agreement to figure out what address to post feedback to. Isn't this the point of beta testing?)
- Announce your pricing structure for the future. It's a wonderful offering at it's current free price level (while beta testing.) How much will you charge afterwards? Keep in mind some of us are hobbyists, not commercial entities with big budgets, please.
- Put back the "invite a friend" links on your hosted e-mail offering
- Settle the issue of whether or not you will give user account information out to third parties and on what terms.
Right now Google's offering is in beta testing. They do have an "I'm interested" link at the bottom of their Google Hosted E-mail FAQ page. I've had the pleasure of telling my ISP where to stick their pricing and I've dropped back down into the reasonable price bracket (as opposed to their $70+/month commercial-account-because-your-host-your-own-email pricing.)
Overall, the offering looks excellent to me. It's been easy to use, as reliable a Gmail, and Google has been responsive to improvement suggestions. There are still some privacy concerns as to how and who Google shares their users' information with. If you run your own domain and are looking for e-mail hosting specifically, check out Gmail for your domain. Consider setting it up as a subdomain if you just want to test the service, so you can just direct mail from users@subdomain.example.com to "Google for your domain" while testing. This may necessitate signing up for the service twice if you decide to use it for your entire domain later, but gives you flexibility.
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