Slashdot Mirror
Review of GMail for Your Domain
DevanJedi writes "Google recently started offering GMail hosted email service, with 25 free 2 GB email accounts, for universities and beta-testing private domains. Science Addiction has a review of the GMail for Your Domain service and its features including screenshots and speculation on future Google free and paid hosting efforts."
This was published ages ago; anyone know though how big the beta is?
One of the main problems with GMail is the "on behalf of" thing when trying to masquerade under a valid alternative email address.
It's to do with GMail including your gmail address in the headers of the email (the Sender: header?).
http://blog.grcm.net/
This is actually something that microsoft came out with before google. Weird.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
I gave it a try for my domain, anthropology.net, and aside from somewhat of a hurdle getting my registrar to use Google's MX records, I have nothing but praise for the GMail hosting service. It really offers me and my site a professional web mail service.
Although, I must say I swapped back out because they don't seem to have a catch-all email feature, like *@anthropology.net
Anthropology.net - Beyond bones and stones.
Mirror if slashdotted, enjoy!
the # of accounts is said to be based off of what info you provided when you signed up. we were in the process of setting this up at work, and while i dunno how many accounts we were given, but i know it was more than 25.
I was fortunate enough to get in on the beta test of this service. Setup was as easy as could be expected. You need to know how to set up MX records for your domain but thats about it.
Runs almost as smoothly as a regular google mail account. There are some hiccups but I guess thats what you get when using an early beta. I like it enough that I've moved my regular mail to this service though.
Site's running a little slowly so here's the NYUD link, just in case ;)
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
I wonder how much of my email the government will subpoena Google for?
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
"One of the main problems with GMail is the "on behalf of" thing when trying to masquerade under a valid alternative email address."
That's really more of an Outlook issue. GMail is adhering to the standards. "From" identifies the nominal author(s) of a message. "Sender" identifies the specific, single agent which originated a message. See RFC-2822, Section 3.6.2.
It's hardly GMail's fault that Outlook presents that information in such a funny looking way.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
ok, i am done reading article someone else can go read it now.
:(
:) Don't know how MX works, does it go to the web host first to find address. That probably wouldn't help us much.
hehe, nearly slashdotted already with 1 comment showing
Actually kinda curious as our web host kinda sucks for email, probably for site too but i got the domain for the mail
So much for the folks at http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html. They suggest folks never send mail to gmail.com, and provide boilerplate text to reply with in case someone at gmail.com mails them.
Well, now they might be sending mail directly to Google's servers without even knowing it! I find it highly amusing that these privacy advocates assume there's any privacy at all regarding the plaintext email they might send.
(I also find it amusing that among their privacy concerns, they also complain that gmail doesn't include the originating IP in the email headers. I guess consistency doesn't matter as long as they're railing against the great beast Google.)
the hosted service is exactly the same as the standard gmail service, as far as i can tell... no integration with outlook or evolution or whatever else.. but i don't really care about that.
what i'm enjoying about gmail hosted is that i no longer have to manage my old postfix/ldap/cyrus/spamassassin set up... for small domains like mine, that's worth more than anything!
Not everyone is getting 25 accounts, I got mine about two weeks ago and it has 10 accounts. It works great, zero real complaints by far.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
(feel free to let me know if I'm missing something that mitigates or eliviates these issues)
a) I'm sorry, but I'd like some better means of archiving and backing up my email than accessing it via pop3 client. especially as admin- I'd need some means of doing this in bulk.
b) ads. while I know it could be worse.. I've been running my own webmail (iloha/squirrel) via imap. no ads. I just like not seeing them, and don't know how much I'd be willing to pay to not see them against my previous setup.
c) visuals. I previously had much more flexibility and better integration with other site/app/branding. sorry a little 149x58-ish pic doesn't really work as "branding" an entire web presence.
d) bulk import. I don't want to leave my mass of imap folders/clutter/organization behind!
e) hosted domains don't get the same "ever growing" storage as normal gmail accounts. small thing, but it seems kinda silly to go with a domain via gmail, but not to get all the gmail "features".
f) change scares me. there are several "features" hinted at, that aren't in play now... like multiple levels/account types, additional services, etc... am I going to get dragged into additional "features I don't want?" are some of my current features going to be moved to "non-free" account levels? I wish I could let it handle all my domain's accounts but my three main... keep those safe during the testing period until things stabalize... assuming that this beta period doesn't last the next 5 years.
in the end, I know- these are paltry things, and for someone who owns nothing but a domain name.. gmail hosting their mail may not be a bad thing.
I just applied, and asked them to reconsider my adsense application. I have no idea why my adsense was rejected. I think I'm too nutty. We'll see what they say.
However it's listed right there on the Gmail for your Domain home page.
"Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain."
Having maintained Email servers before I can tell you that even the most elegant server software and the most robust Hardware will still give you the occasional headache.
Not as bad as Exchange on a "SCSI cluster". That's when you use a cluster capable SCSI enclosure like the Dell PowerVault 220s and cluster capable RAID card like PERC3/DC controller, To provide failover, redundancy and high availability (You know. All the right buzzwords).
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I just hope their session managment system allows you to have multiple accounts open for those of us with multiple domains.
I think, therefore I doh.
Currently, I forward all my email from my domain to my gmail address. And for my family members, to their gmail (and other) respective addresses. When using gmail, I can use my own domain name email address as the sender.
Actually, for my various aliases, even with multiple gmail accounts, I have them all go to one final account. And when sending back emails, it's easy to switch "identities". So what advantage would the service have for me?
I can understand the advantages for universities and some companies, but then you're storing your data on their servers. For the small guys that have our own domain name, is it really useful?
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
I wrote a review more than a month ago and submitted it to slashdot. The problem I had with Gmail was that I was used to having my mail locally, so I could read it no matter what. Google didn't offer an imap or even pop3 option.
The Television Wiki
I've also changed to a Hosted acount, and really couldn't be happier right now. It's a great interface that even works with keyboard shortcuts, good spam protection, and one other thing I don't have to maintain.
Privacy, of course, is the main concern of using this, however. But if they could be the first major interface to incorporate PGP or somesuch, then the messages would be encrypted, I wouldn't worry as much, and they'd be in better legal standing because they'd have nothing to turn over but encrypted messages of the DOJ comes knocking again. What's to lose?
I've been surprised that no major email program (MS, Yahoo, or even Thunderbird) has made security mainstream. It's one thing to have key-signing parties by first adopters, it's another to tell Grandma that this is standard mainstream practice now. (Any replies that claim that some other package really has had encryption, and that I don't know what I'm talking about can just go away. It may be true, but you should still undersand my point.)
--Lance
I dont really see the benefit of this service. My .forward contains my gmail account and in gmail you can use different senders. This basicly is the same but keeps me in much creater control.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
i put up a few screenshots on this yesterday.
My biggest gripe is that they don't yet offer a catch-all account. If a mailbox doesn't exist, don't give you the option to catch it in a specific mailbox instead of bouncing it.
Catch-alls are how a lot of people who own their own domains provide unique email addresses to every site they visit so they know if someone sold their address and can block it with ease.
Why is there a front page slashdot story reviewing a mail service that looks like countless others and has some marginal improvements over services going back years? Sometimes I can't help wondering if one (or all?) of the /. editors is using these largely contentless stories to manipulate stock prices by raising the profile of google, yet again, at opportune moments.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I wrote a small piece about some gmail gripes - does the hosted version behave exactly like gmail.com, or is it slightly different?
Can I search and have it find 'close' words? Google is all about "search", and pretty much forces you in to this as the primary way of finding things, but can't find something you've misspelled.
creation science book
I got into the beta program but my registrar, Directnic, doesn't host DNS MX records for me. The MX records of course need to point to Google's servers, but right now they point to Directnic's servers, because I use a forwarding service they provide. This service allows filter based forwarding that is far more cumbersome for them than allowing users to set MX records themselves, so I don't see why the option isn't there.
Does anyone know a cheap registrar that will host DNS and let users set their own MX records? I'd rather not have to pay for and keep track of a separate DNS service.
So if I'm a paying customer what are the privacy implications of letting them handle my email? Do they keep things even if it's deleted, what about if I use them for say 1 year and then stop, do they still keep all my emails?
I use catch-all for one of my domains so that when ever I need to give out an email for a site or so, I make it thesite@mydomain.com and if I ever get one spam to that addy, I just add that to the bouncer list. Very, VERY handy IMHO. So, no problems. And about that dictionary attack.. so far never happened for me :)
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
If you have a hosted domain account you can do what I do. For each of the incoming email addresses I foward to it's own gmail account. That gmail account is configured to reply as that email address (instead of whoever@gmail.com). Unless someone looks at my headers on their client, they'd never know I was using Gmail all the time now for managing my hosted email accounts. So what's the big deal?
fastmail.fm ... They've treated me well for years and they have great tools to host my domain. It's not free but the feature set is well worth the price.
Sorry, but G-mail has been down pretty regularly the last couple weeks. I really liked the service before, but now I'm thinking it was a mistake to start relying on it. Who'd have thought it would've stayed in beta for so damn long. Once I hear they've got their act together I might give it a shot.
I was pulling my hair out from my previous e-mail provider (NetSol) -- we operate on POP3 client (All Thunderbird) and were having problems with receiving mail, the SMTP, and loads of email not getting received by end user due to corporate spam blockers (spam assassin was the biggest culprit). I'm moved our 10+ e-mail addresses to gmail, and with the sweet filters, I can set up our auto responders to do cool stuff without leaving an extra Thunderbird running on a server to do auto replys and all kinds of cool stuff. Most importantly, haven't had a single issue with spam blockers or sending or receiving email through Thunderbird. I could give 2 sh!ts if google indexes and reads my email. It is an awesome service for free, and I never have to worry about clearing the mailbox with 2gb. Plus, unlike my crappy webmail from NetSol, we can access email from our non-pda phones on mobile gmail.
Learn to spell, moron.
I have a few complaints, of course it's beta, but still
1) If you create a mailing list, it won't let you include an external email, only your domain emails
2) Mailing lists cannot have aliases
3) There is no way to provide feedback or get help, or make suggestions
4) There seems to be a problem with gmail, and it is not clear whether it's being handled or not. A number of providers are not receiving emails sent from gmail, they are lost in cyberspace and there is no trace on the providers' server logs. See this thread for reference It seems impossible to get in touch with a human at google.
It is a bit worrysoome that google is adopting monopolistic practices that all were hoping were the prerogative of other evil companies.
The service is as you would expect. The big drawback right now is that there is no way to migrate existing Gmail accounts. I would love to use Gmail for my domain, but not at the cost of starting over with a fresh account.
I'm in too. Actually got the invitation on the 23rd, although I didn't set it up until today.
I only got 15 accounts, but that's more than enough for my small pool of users (family and friends), especially since aliases (Nickname's in gmail parlance) don't count against your total.
I haven't tried out the mailing list feature. The site customization doesn't quite work yet (attempting to change the login box color gives a blank results page when saving).
I have the same issue. I have recieved my hosted gmail domain, but do not want to "start" over.
Can I have all the gmail accounts point to the same place?
It seems I can have hosted emails point to the same place?
I have a small consulting business and some of my clients require secure email. I use Hush Mail for this purpose. If Google has similar features as Hush Mail for encryption, decryption and signing, I would try it.
This is really about Google's conquest of email and ultimately, IMO, the demise of email. I already do not send mail to gmail accounts, nor do I accept email from gmail users. I do not consent to having my email stored on gmail servers for google to search/archive/do-research-on/etc. When google mail sticks to the gmail domain, then I as a consumer am able to easily decide whether or not I want my email on their servers -- I can choose not to send email, and to bounce any email I might receive. When google now is able to store email from _any_ domain that participates, it makes it impossible for me as a consumer to "opt out" of their scheme. Ultimately I believe this makes email worse, as I no longer can limit my email to those whom I trust...
I set up a Gmail account as a place to receive large attachments, because my regular mail forwarding service doesn't like them, and neither do my normal mail hosts. I use Eudora, which handles POP better than anything else. And -- this is critical -- I have two computers, "home" and "office", fetching the mail. On my other accounts, I use Eudora's "leave mail on server, delete after x days" feature, which gives both computers time to fetch all of the mail, so the inboxes are normally in sync.
Well, I needed to get this big pile of attachments forwarded to me, so I gave someone my Gmail account. I fetched them at home. Okay, all there. Then I went to the office and fetched them again. No new mail. Huh? I went in to Gmail and there they were, "read". But Eudora uses UIDL to keep track of the messages that it has read on each machine. That feature works perfectly on a FreeBSD server, where it also knows which messages have already been fetched elsewhere and which haven't. (Kmail, btw, is better than Eudora in that one regard -- it has different colors for "unread anywhere" and "unread on this machine". Eudora has a hidden option to use one or the other as the meaning of its "unread" tag.) On Comcast's big Sun server (inherited from ATTBI), it works badly -- it sync's the mail on both machines, but it's always seen as "unread", even if previously fetched.
But on Gmail, once it has been read by any POP, it's no longer visible to any other POP. It's like they don't even know what UIDL is. It's the kind of behavior I saw a decade ago on VAX/VMS using UCX, DEC's execrable old TCP/IP stack, to fetch messages that it stored in VAXmail. That was a shell-based DECnet-based text mail systesm where reading or fetching the mail moved it from the NEWMAIL folder to the MAIL folder. But on VMS, at least, you could log in and manually move messages back to NEWMAIL, where UXC POP would see them. On Gmail, marking the message "unread" changes the web-based display, but doesn't let POP get it again.
I ended up having to download each attachment, one by one, from all of the Gmail messages. About 20 separate download operations, done one at a time, typing in file names (because removed from the context of the original mail message, they needed new names that wouldn't get lost). What rot.
So be warned; if someone uses Gmail for a regular mail server, it will only work if there is only ONE client that POPs the account. Pathetic.
I signed up for 2500 accounts. They do not offer anything for importing users accounts. I can't see new students coming in each semester and having to manually create each account.
You can import user accounts from a CSV file; to to "Advanced tools" in the Dashboard.
There's now an ability to import a CSV file with account info.
"But I'd still prefer to inhibit the sending of the header."
And I'd prefer they didn't. It's useful to know who actually sent a message. (Sure, it can be forged anyway, but I'm talking about for administrative purposes, not security.) All my mail programs don't puke all over the screen when they get the header. If yours does, I suggest you contact the vendor of said program for support.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
1) There is currently no option to change the colors of the UI. Yes, you can change the colors of the little login box, but nothing else. Our site has a black background with dark orange and burgundy, so the switch is like night and day. (litteraly)
2) I was not able to find a good way to add a header on top of the GMail hosted site. It would be nice to include some navigational buttons to get you back into the site. Currently, we just created a subdomain and pointed that to a directory that meta refreshes the page to our Google hosted site. (If anyone has any advice, please let me know)
3) Login directly from domain. (again if anyone has any insight on this, please let me know)
4) Manually having to add each user is going to be a pain, but a small price to pay I guess.
Besides those things, I'm lovin` it!
Here are a couple images of the interface if you haven't seen them yet: main admin page, user listing, adding new email, domain settings, change login color, bult account update
- John
I also applied to Gmail beta for my domain, but NO RESPONSE FROM THEM YET. I'm assuming my domain was rejected for some reason. Does anybody know another company that offers free webmail for Domains? I heard the name Microsoft mentioned, but no details.
So far, it's been better than my paid email hosting server side spam controls+thunderbird's spam controls at sorting out spam.
I have very few false positives or negatives, and I think the overall spam level has dropped, in that fewer even get accepted by the server. I was getting over 300 a day on my vanity domain, and it's under 100 now, with only one or two false negatives. This is after less than a week of testing. Of course, some of it may be that there's no catch-all. I actually want the catch-all, however, as I went through a period where I signed up for accounts and mail lists using names like amazon.com@mydomain, and I'm sure I've forgotten a few. Still, overall, it's great. They even knew ahead of time I'd want to know the SPF entry for it.
Would I pay for it? If they can beat what I was paying my old email-only provider, and not show ads, sure. If not, we'll see.
Copyright nonsense aside, anyone you send email to effectively owns those bits. They can store, search, subpoena, or market them all they want to. What are you going to do to stop them? Google is just a bigger target.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Try this out if you're in need of some help with email servers at the office: http://vulgarisoip.wordpress.com/2006/03/27/send-e mail-with-php-and-gmail-hosted-for-your-domain/
THe summary says free accounts, but I have to buy more if 10 isn't enough. Multi-tiered beta testing sucks. :-(
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Right now if you want to use the hosted gmail you have to point your browser to:
.htaccess to forward to the above address goes straight to vanilla Gmail instead. No fun!
http://mail.google.com/hosted/domain.com
But what if I want to send my users to "mail.domain.com" instead? Doesn't work. Using
I got it for one of my biger domains yesterday, so far its almost the same as Gmail except the address is username@mydomain.com
;)
took a few minutes to point the mx records, the admin control panel is cool enough, you can add your companies logo instead of gmails, batch create acounts by uploading a list
so far im fairly impressed (fairplay to google) pity its only 25emails i have 40000members on one site alone who will be interested
Anyone else having a bug with a maximum number of nicknames? I've got 7 user accounts defined, with about a total of about 105 nicknames, and, the UI won't let me add any more nicknames. (No, this isn't a client-side issue, as I've tried it on WinXP (IE 6), Mac OS X (Safari), and FC3 (Firefox). )
:-/
When I try to add another nickname, the page goes blank, and there is no content of the returned page.
I emailed Google, but I haven't heard anything back yet.
This is already possible (sort of). You can forward email to your domain to your Gmail account then set up the 'from' addresses to match your domain. Doing this as far as I can see won't be much different from having Gmail host your email. Personally I'd rather stick to doing this and have a local copy of my emails on my HD as well rather than relying on Google.
There is no god but Google and GTalk is the messenger of Google.
If you really were serious about looking at the MS offering, it's at Windows Live Ideas. You should note it's web mail only, if you want to pull it down to a local machine you'll need to pay, and be using Outlook because it's not POP/SMTP. Also the interface only shines in IE right now, as they're using the new, in beta, ajax enabled interface.
I wanted to be able to setup a catchall and also the ability to disable certain email addresses. No such luck. :(
I also wanted to setup email on subdomains. @something.mydomain.com
Otherwise it seems like a nice service. Very fast.
This problem is basically what SPF was designed to fix.
I too had this problem for a while, and adding a correct SPF record to my DNS, specifying where I sent email from my domain from, actually worked quite well. I still get a few bounces, but not nearly as many as I got without it.
Google also provides the correct SPF record to use if you use this GMail for domains thing.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Actually, the first email they get back from that domain will let them know if they're talking to a hosted domain or not.
:)
Of course, they'll have to check the trace headers from each email they recieve from a domain, but it's possible
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
> I'd say one of the mail problems with GMail is the fact that their outbound SMTP relayers
> are off-and-on listed in the dnsbl.sorbs.net blackhole. This means mail you send out may
> get blocked by receiving servers that check this blackhole.
>
> I'm regularly getting these kinds of messages when I send out mail and that really sucks:
>
> PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 554 Service unavailable; Client host [64.233.166.180]
> blocked using dnsbl.sorbs.net; Spam Received See: http://www.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml?64.233.166.180
How is that a problem with GMail? Seems to me it's a problem with sorbs.
sorbs has suggested to GMail that GMail should expose the IP address from which the message originated; that way sorbs could block by real IP instead of GMail's mailing agent's IP. GMail has responded that to expose the IP of the sender would violate the privacy of the sender. sorbs responds, basically, "well, IP address is how we work. If you only give us one IP address to work with, that's the one we list as blackholed." And so they list the GMail outbound IP addresses as blocked.
More saliently, sorbs says:
sorbs does NOT block email, websites or the Internet.
sorbs is NOT CAPABLE of blocking email, websites or the Internet.
What you need to do is contact the mail server that (after communicating with sorbs) decided to block your mail. The only way sorbs will ever change their policy of "you must violate the privacy of your users or we will block your mail" is of enough of their users complain about it.
(sig) The last bug isn't fixed until the last user is dead. (/sig)
It is a problem with neither. The recipient (3rd party) that uses SORBS bounces the mail from GMail because their criteria are way too blunt (one blackhole and blocked). In practice however this becomes a problem for the GMail user. I see this happening too often for my liking. For more info check with the Google Group.
Below is a reaction from SORBS on the subject which I took from the newsgroups:
Apparently GMail and SORBS have a disagreement on the subject...
Here is *all* of the relevant text: "The 'From:' field specifies the author(s) of the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s) or system(s) responsible for the writing of the message. The 'Sender:' field specifies the mailbox of the agent responsible for the actual transmission of the message. For example, if a secretary were to send a message for another person, the mailbox of the secretary would appear in the 'Sender:' field and the mailbox of the actual author would appear in the 'From:' field. If the originator of the message can be indicated by a single mailbox and the author and transmitter are identical, the 'Sender:' field SHOULD NOT be used. Otherwise, both fields SHOULD appear."
Both others and I interpret that as I described previously. In particular, "agent responsible for the actual transmission of the message" would seem to imply that. I disagree with your interpretation of "author and transmitter are identical", given that the context is entirely about addresses and mailboxes. That said, I see your interpretation as *not* being indisputably wrong. Lacking more information, I'd have to call it ambiguous.
"Every other mail program I use lets me change the From address without this silliness."
Why is it silly? GMail is certainly not violating the standard; GMail is arguably interpreting it correctly; GMail is providing useful information. I don't even think Outlook is being "silly"; it's displaying information that was provided. I think Outlook's method of presenting said information is aesthetically displeasing, but I think that about a lot of Outlook. Ultimately, I see GMail as doing nothing wrong, and the original poster complaining about something Outlook is doing, but incorrectly blaming GMail for it. Why should GMail be blamed for how Outlook works?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Until they provide a way to upload your existing messages (without losing date information, which happens if you just mail your messages to them, like various import utilities do), I can't see this being very popular among people who actually have any mail worth keeping.