We’ve had our
Textuality.com domain since dinosaurs
stalked the earth, and I’d like tbray@ to be my personal email
handle right into the grave. But our current ISP/host is kind of lame and
slow and has fourth-rate spam filters that get in the way. So Lauren
suggested
Google Apps for Email, and the buzz around it seems good. We’re
about to pull the trigger, but it seems to be harder than it should be.
I currently route the Textuality email over to my Gmail account, where there’s an inventory of ninety thousand or so messages, a couple of gigs’ worth. I find a fluidized Gmail client quite usable, and the Android client is superb.
But there are two problems. Apparently, the way you transfer your Gmail inventory over to Google Apps is via some batch POP3 grind which can take days. Second, it’s not obvious how, or even if, the Android client works with Google Apps.
So if we transfer textuality.com email over to Google Apps, I guess I just keep routing the email through to my Gmail account? Which seems sort of stupid. Or am I missing something obvious?
Contributions
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Mark Armendariz (Jan 26 2010, at 15:36)
I've been using Android with my Google Apps account for Email, Contacts and Calendar since the G1 first hit the public and it works perfectly. As for porting emails, I'm not so sure. I recall uploading my entire email history from an outlook file via some application at some point, but I have no idea what app it was and it took a couple days to upload about 3Gb.
[link]
From: Bruce (Jan 26 2010, at 15:38)
I read my google apps email on my android device (1.5). Works great. I do contacts and calendar syncing too.
[link]
From: Cade Roux (Jan 26 2010, at 15:39)
That's what I do - I forward all roux.org mail to my gmail by filter rule (so there is actually a large body of email building up in apps) - I expect one day to copy all my rules and email and then use the apps mail instead, and at that point switch the gmail to forward all (not filter rule)
[link]
From: Michael Davidson (Jan 26 2010, at 15:45)
1) With your G1, you have to choose an account to log in with. It can either be your Gmail account, or your Apps account, but not both.
2) In Android 2.0 the Gmail app supports multiple accounts. Time to upgrade to a Nexus One!
[link]
From: Anonymous (Jan 26 2010, at 15:52)
I route my domain's email through Google Apps For Your Domain to my @gmail.com account using forwarding.
I do this for a couple of reasons. First, I did not want to move my mail from one account to another as you have noted.
The second reason is that many Google servers do not work with a Google Apps for Your Domain account. By forwarding everything to a @gmail.com account, I can login once to Google for mail, reader and other services.
[link]
From: Lee (Jan 26 2010, at 15:54)
Your Google Apps account will work under Android. Just add another account.
It does take a long time to move the mail, though.
[link]
From: Michael Weisman (Jan 26 2010, at 15:58)
You can log in to any google service with an apps for domains account. Just use tbray@textuality.com as your username.
[link]
From: unclespeedo (Jan 26 2010, at 15:58)
I may not understand your question but it sounds like you need to change your MX records.
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=140034
[link]
From: John Hart (Jan 26 2010, at 16:00)
If the Android client is IMAP-based, you just need to provide your full Google Apps username *including domain*. That's the primary differentiaor between Google Apps & normal GMail-type logins - your Google Apps login includes your domain, whereas your gmail login does not include "@gmail.com".
Works fine on the iPhone's mail app.
[link]
From: Daniel Miller (Jan 26 2010, at 16:03)
I have an Nexus One that works fine with my Google Apps gmail account. There are some quirks to the Gmail for apps, which make it the hardest of the bunch to move things over to, but it seems to work just fine.
[link]
From: Christopher Ak. (Jan 26 2010, at 16:12)
Not sure about the Android and all that, but:
- If you really need all those old emails, then you need to somehow transfer them, don't you? If it has to take days, then so be it. It will only happen once.
- The point is to transfer your entire domain to gmail. All user@textuality.com emails would be routed directly to Google. So you would definitely need to make a change to your DNS zone.
Dunno exactly how it works, but there's probably tons of documentation on it.
[link]
From: Justin Driscoll (Jan 26 2010, at 16:15)
I use Google Apps to receive email for my domains but it's configured to forward all messages to my standard Gmail account and that account is set up to send from any of the domains. Works perfectly.
[link]
From: Colin Sampaleanu (Jan 26 2010, at 19:00)
Google Apps mail _is_ GMail. You point the MX record for your domain to Google's servers, such that all mail flows to Google's servers. Via the Google Apps UI, you can then set up multiple email accounts for the domain, each mapped to a xxxx@mydomain.com address. Everything about using these accounts is the same as using normal GMail, except that when you connect via the likes of IMAP or SMTP to read or send mail, you use the whole xxxx@mydomain.com address as your username. I don't use (or like) POP3, but it works the same way. Typically to log into the web UI to Google Apps, you go to http://www.google.com/a/XXXXX where XXXXX is your domain.
Prior to handling mail for my domain via Google Apps, I ran my own IMAP server. When I moved over, I set up the Google Apps account, created the three email accounts inside that to match my original three email accounts, and then connected via Thunderbird to both my old IMAP server and Google's IMAP server (imap.gmail.com). I then simply dragged my mail over from the old server to the new one.
Instead of doing this move (or copy) manually via something like Thunderbird, you could also use imapsync (http://freshmeat.net/projects/imapsync/)
Regards,
Colin
[link]
From: Oscar (Jan 26 2010, at 19:40)
If you're old account supports it, You can also use imap to migrate mail. I found the following perl script invaluable: http://freshmeat.net/projects/imapsync/
[link]
From: Patrick Gibson (Jan 26 2010, at 22:06)
You should just ask someone at Google. Oh, wait...
[link]
From: pwb (Jan 26 2010, at 23:47)
You definitely want to move the mail via POP. Don't forward. A couple gigs between two free services taking a day or 2 doesn't seem so bad.
Yes, it will work fine in Android.
[link]
From: Thomas (Jan 27 2010, at 00:33)
Hi,
Some while ago I also considered moving my domain name to google apps and refrained from doing so for the same reason that you describe. Now with GMail sending through its smtp server, I don't see any reason to change this anymore.
[link]
From: Kiran Jonnalagadda (Jan 27 2010, at 02:48)
Please don't use imapsync. I used it to migrate from Google Apps Mail to Gmail* and it ended up shredding my mail. Individual messages got truncated at a random byte, with a console error about the destination server refusing to take any more. By the time I noticed the damage, I had already started directing all new mail to the Gmail account and could no longer just delete and resync.
I finished my sync with Larch, which worked like a charm. http://wonko.com/post/larch-syncs-messages-from-one-imap-server-to-another
On One Of These Weekends, I'm going to figure out IMAP and write a script which copies over just the damaged mail.
Kiran
* Because I didn't want to sign in to Android using an Apps account and miss out on services linked to my main Google account.
[link]
From: gareth (Jan 27 2010, at 03:04)
easy way to migrate is to get the 30 day trial of the google apps premier edition. then use the migration tool on the advanced menu. after that's done cancel the trial :)
[link]
From: Sam McCall (Jan 27 2010, at 07:14)
I did this a while back. imapsync is what you want - enable IMAP access on both accounts and you're good to go. (I think I deleted a couple of messages with a completely blank subject line to get it to sync, might be fixed now).
Once you're set up on google apps, you can use your full address (user@domain.com) wherever you'd previously use your gmail username. I don't have an android, but if it uses POP or IMAP it'll work, if it uses something else it probably will.
[link]
From: Mark Mascolino (Jan 27 2010, at 08:43)
Another voice for Google Apps for Domains works great for Android including the new Nexus One. I've been very happy.
[link]
From: Fanis (Jan 28 2010, at 05:55)
As "Anonymous" mentioned above, you can get the Gmail for the Domain address forward everything to your existing regular Gmail address.
So, you'll move textuality.com to Google Apps for the Domain by changing its MX records.
Then, in the Gmail for the Domain administrative interface you will create a "tbray" user account.
Finally, in the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" settings page within the "tbray" Gmail for the Domain account, you'll get it to forward a copy of everything it receives to your current Gmail account.
Actually after double checking with my domain, I have NOT done this in the Forwarding settings. Instead I have created a filter that doesn't match "dfjewwieyhd" (so it matches everything) and I've told it to forward that to my Gmail account, as well as Never Send to Spam. I did it that way because Gmail for the Domain wouldn't forward suspected spam to my regular Gmail account so I couldn't catch false positives.
It's a bit complicated but it works.
[link]
From: Gaute Strokkenes (Jan 28 2010, at 08:11)
I've been using Google Apps to handle email for my vanity domain for some time now.
In my setup, I store all my mail on my private server and access it with Dovecot. I run fetchmail on the server to move new mail from the Google server to my own.
This works fine and gives me the benefit of controlling my own mail while still doing next to no admin. Basically, I'm using Google to do the hard work of talking SMTP to the internet in general--and nothing else.
[link]
From: zimbatm (Jan 28 2010, at 11:59)
a) Google Apps on HTC Hero works fine, except the Market, which requires a Gmail account.
b) I would really recommand Gandi.net for all your domain hosting. They provide free DNS and mail redirects.
[link]
From: gvb (Jan 29 2010, at 08:35)
This just showed up on Google, it may be useful. Or not. From the writeup, you would need to round-trip your old email to your local machine and then back up to google apps.
"Upload Your Email to Google Apps"
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 11:23 AM
By Greg Robbins, Software Engineer
http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-your-email-to-google-apps.html
For a different approach, I've used Thunderbird to drag and drop emails between IMAP-enabled machines.
[link]