How to setup Google Apps for Your Domain

This is a Tutorial of how to enable Google apps to work on your domain name. What I will be covering is how to ONLY setup EMAIL and NOT WEBHOSTING. Why NOT hosting? Because almost all of you have a descent site now and will not benefit from moving your website.

Why would you benefit from moving your email to Google?
Because most of you are using a free email service for AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, RoadRunner, etc… and this does not portray a professional image. See the post Are You Judged By Your Skills?

Step 1:
GoTo www.google.com/a and sign up for an account
If you already have a Gmail email you can use this account as the primary account to setup all the settings, or you can sign up for a new Gmail account
Step 2:
Setup Domain Details.
Your Name, Your Organization, how many users, etc…

Step 3:
Setup the Primary Master account

Step 4:
Setup What applications you want
For most of you your just going to want to setup Email and Calendar

Step 5:
The most difficult part is the Changes to DNS you will have to make.
These next steps below are copied directly from Google. They maybe a little different depending on what domain host you use.

1. Sign in to your domain hosting company’s website using the username and password associated with your domain.
2. Navigate to an MX record maintenance page. MX records are special DNS (Domain Name Service) records, and are often located under sections titled “DNS Management,” “Mail Server Configuration,” or “Name Server Management.” You may need to turn on advanced settings to allow editing of these MX records.
3. Delete any existing MX records before entering new MX records.
4. For each MX record, enter information according to the entries in the following table.You may not be allowed to enter the priority values exactly as they appear in the table below; in that case, simply ensure that the server addresses are prioritized in the same order as they appear in the table. (i.e. The priority ranking [1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5] should work just as well as [1, 5, 5, 10, 10, 10, 10] so long as you keep the addresses in the right order.)If you’re asked to specify the type of each record you’re adding, enter “MX”.

MX records often require the specific format of DNS records, including a trailing dot (“.”) at the end of any full-qualified domain names (e.g. “server.example.com.”)

Set any TTL values to the maximum allowed.

MX Server address Priority
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 1
ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 5
ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 10
ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 10

If you need any more help with this Contact Us and we will help you set it up.

Loren Nason
Your Local Tech

20 Comments

  1. Mike on February 23, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    Well, this is certainly useful information… but it would be REALLY useful to include something else about this… such as:

    How do you connect to the mail servers with Outlook (or other 3rd party mail client)?

    Certainly you have full web-based access to your email. But how to configure Outlook???

    I’ve searched all over the place… getting mixed information about which incoming/outgoing servers to use… POP or IMAP?… which port# to use… and whether or not to use SSL.

    Ugh!

    I’m certain that it’s possible to get Outlook connected… but no luck as of yet.

    Any suggestions?

    Thanks!

    Mike

  2. Andrew on March 4, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    go to your gmail settings page- everything will be self explanatory from there. Make sure you check the box to even allow pop3 access. Good luck.

  3. Mike on March 4, 2008 at 8:31 pm

    Got it working. I love it!

    Thank you very much! 😀

    Mike

  4. Bhairo on May 6, 2008 at 3:11 am

    Very useful information. Thanks

    Bhairo

  5. Sid on May 6, 2008 at 3:12 am

    Yours is one of the posting from which I learned setting up google apps and recommend it to anyone starting on google apps

  6. ????? ????? on June 13, 2008 at 4:41 am

    google apps is the great application of google that microsoft really start to afraid from google

  7. Abhijit on July 27, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    I see at many offices ppl using Gmail with their own logos instead of the regular gmail logo on the mail pages. I also spotted a customised title instead of google on the google home page search window. How are these done? I am using a free gmail account for my personal use.

  8. Bohol Province on August 26, 2008 at 6:07 am

    One advantage of having a Google-powered email is that your email is better protected from SPAM and Malware attacks. Google has a more advanced technology on handling this issue.

  9. Imran on April 20, 2009 at 11:52 pm

    Hi All,
    Can anybody tell me where i get the quote for Google apps for my domain??
    Also i heard that google is providing free email hosting for 100 email ID’s is it??
    How is the service??

  10. Sheila Beck on July 8, 2009 at 4:41 am

    Is there anyway to set up Gmail on a domain where all the outgoing messages have a Confidentiality Statement at the End of each Email automatically?

  11. babu on December 10, 2009 at 11:54 pm

    i want to configure my google app like mail.mydomain.com and not like mail.google.com/a/mydomain.com.
    i think i have to configure in cPanel of my domain but don’t know how to do that.
    experts, please help me.

  12. JakeVall on December 11, 2009 at 7:05 am

    Hey Babu,

    In order to configure your google apps access to mail.mydomain.com you will need to modify cname. Here is link to show you how: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47283

    But in plain english.

    Go to your CNAME mods in DNS:
    create a cname mail.domain.com and point it to ghs.google.com.

    you can ask independent google apps setup vendors for help, just googled “google apps vendor” and here is one http://www.smartgoogleapps.com that comes up.

    Hope this helps.

    JV

  13. Jason Chen on December 16, 2009 at 1:35 am

    Hello ,

    I have created Google apps as my personal domain (My domain ex :xxx.idv.tw. ) e-mail service. but My e-mail is aaa@mail.xxx.idv.tw.
    How can I setup to recevie my e-mail as aaa@mail.xxx.idv.tw ?
    I have setup cname and MX record in my DNS by instruction of Google.

    Thank you very much for your answers.

    Jason Chen

  14. Jason Chen on December 16, 2009 at 5:33 am

    By the way, My domain name server is hosted on GoDaddy.
    My Domain has been verified and I added domain alias called mail.xxx.idv.tw but how can I get verify mail.xxx.idv.tw ?
    How can I add MX record for mail.xxx.idv.tw ?

    Thank you for your help.
    Jason Chen

  15. Mukesh on April 8, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    hi,

    i want to know how can i change the cname record for verfiying..?
    please let me know ASAP

  16. naaz on May 29, 2010 at 12:20 am

    Nice article, Google Apps setup explained lucidly! thanks!! i wish i had got it earlier..
    I had got stuck in the process.. however, got help from this company Searce to setup google apps and they also migrated my old mails to my new Google Apps account. their site ishttp://www.searceapps.com
    Setup was not very heavy on my pocket, so i think it was a good decision to let them do it for me.

    Still, If I had seen this article earlier, it would have saved me $25. 🙂
    I’ll recommend your article to my friends, its really very helpful to new users!regards

  17. Anowarul Islam on December 17, 2011 at 5:16 am

    Hi,

    I have set up master gmail account but i would like to set email using my domain (rNasourcingbd.com) in a google apps. Can you please help me how to proceed that will be great for me.

    Thanks in advance for your kind help.

  18. polly on February 3, 2012 at 8:27 am

    I have successfully managed to set up google apps for my domain…..however all the messages sent by visitors/clients in my website contact list or suggestion box can’t be found, where do i configure to have them drop at my default amail address.

    Thanks for this great support

  19. Ahmsta on February 12, 2012 at 7:37 am

    Nice post. nicely written

  20. DHost on May 16, 2012 at 4:35 am

    Very good article and really help me out for set up Google Apps for domain. This article clear numerous doubts running in my mind related this. Appreciate your work!

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