Website Hosting - Google Apps Support
Maine.Info is pleased to announce support for Google Apps, including gmail. For anyone familiar with gmail, what it means is this:
You can have your own "branded" (with logo) gmail account - run by Google - that uses your own existing email addresses. That is, if your current email address is info@yourdomain.com, you can still have that email address but it will be run by Google and have the same look and feel as any gmail account (except that it would be branded with your logo and use your domain name).
PROS
1. Up to 50 email addresses per domain.
2. Each email address is given over 7+ GB of space by Google. Free. (25 GB in the paid Enterprise version which we support too).
3. Each email address can either IMAP (recommended) or POP to your existing desktop client, e.g., Outlook. Or get rid of Outlook and just move your email to the "cloud." (This is just like Horde and @Mail which we offer, but with much more available space. In fact, for anyone using exclusively Horde, it is now fairly easy to "move" your email to your new gmail account, thereby replacing Horde).
4. You can combine multiple email accounts into one "gmail" account in the cloud. info@yourdomain.com can be combined with personal@yahoo.com, etc.
5. You can search for content in your email account using the great gmail search feature.
6. It is "brandable" with your logo.
7. Since you are now effectively using "gmail," you also get shared Calendars and shared Documents (both in the "cloud'). This is a very big deal too. Shared Calendars in particular are great for an organization.
8. If you are a non-profit, you can get all of this without the built-in Google advertisements. You just have to register with Google.
9. Using Google Apps allows you to pay for Plan 1 - our least expensive hosting plan since it doesn't include email - yet still have as many as 50 email accounts with 7+ GB of space each!
10. Google Apps is free.
11. We are not alone in doing this. The University of Maine system is already moving its students to Google Apps for email. See Others Doing This.
CONS
1. There are Google advertisements (but if you are a non-profit you can register with Google to remove these). If you already use gmail, you know that those ads are quite innocuous. Plus the ads don't show up in the body of emails that you send (as they do with Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.)
2. Using Google Apps will take your email processing entirely off of the maine.info web hosting servers, which is not a bad thing. The only limitation is that it can only be done domain by domain, not by individual email account.
3. Moving to Google involves MX changes. Propagation of MX changes can take as long as 7 days. So expect flaky mail for a few days. That is why such changes should always be made on, say, Friday afternoon. Your new MX records - installed on the maine.info servers - would be as follows:
yourdomain.com. MX (5) ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
yourdomain.com. MX (5) ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
yourdomain.com. MX (10) ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
yourdomain.com. MX (10) ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
yourdomain.com. MX (10) ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
yourdomain.com. MX (10) ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
4. Gmail doesn't use "folders," but instead uses "labels." Some folks like that, some don't. If you IMAP or POP to Outlook, it doesn't matter.
5. Google gmail spam filtering is excellent, but no guarantees. You would no longer be on our Google Postini system.
6. If you use email forwarding on our server, or any other email-related functions, these would all be unavailable. On the other hand, many of the same features (like forwarding) are available on gmail anyway.
7. Likewise, if you use Mailman on our server, you would lose that function and would have to pay for an alternative service, like Constant Contact. In the same vein, gmail has sending limits and will temporarily disable your account (for 24 hours) if you send a message to more than 100 recipients via a POP/IMAP email client (like Outlook), or if you send to more than 500 recipients direct from gmail. Another reason to use Constant Contact for mass emails.
8. You are on your own with this unless you pay for support, as with any other 3rd party product. If something goes wrong with Google, we cannot fix Google. But we can offer support. Our rate for support time is set forth on the our primary Hosting page, and it is the same rate that we charge for non-server related problems (e.g., Outlook integration).
If you are a gmail fanatic, or if shared calendaring and docs would be helpful to your organization - then this is definitely something to consider.
Email contact@maine.info to get started!