For clients requesting my web services, or anyone in general, I recommend Google Apps for email.
In the past, I used email systems built into the web hosting account (e.g. cPanel and RoundCube or any proprietary control panel and email variant). This works great for many people, but it leaves a lot to be desired. When using this type of email, you need to set hard limits on users’ email accounts, otherwise they will just fill up. Also, when managing hundreds of users, you end up requiring powerful servers and a huge amount of disk space to deal with the incredible load. Not a problem, if you’ve got plenty of money to spare.
About 4 years ago, Google rolled out a system for using email and other collaboration tools for domain names, called Google Apps. There are currently 5 flavors available: Standard, Business, Education, Goverment and Non-Profit. Each edition is tailored to their respective organization types. The main difference is user or resource limits.
The great thing about Apps is, if you’ve used Gmail, email is a breeze. You can use the Gmail-inspired web mail interface, or you can configure POP3 or IMAP access for email clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail for Mac, etc. There are a few other tools included in the Google Apps platform, but I’m going to focus on the email system.
It’s quite easy to set up once you have your own domain name. You don’t even need a web hosting account to use it. Google provides some information on setting it up on various domain registrars’ control panels here.
Once you’ve set it up, verified ownership of your domain name, and forwarded the correct MX entries, you’re done. All that’s left to do is add users to your system (which is Google-easy). Depending on the edition you’re using, you may or may not be able to set user quotas. No worries if you cannot, though, Google provides a generous 7 GB/user quota in Standard Edition. Google also provides spam-filtering services for certain editions.
One thing to note is that if you’re using Google Apps, you won’t be able to push emails to a script (like you can in certain web hosting control panels). There is a work around by using a sub-domain to handle certain emails directly within your web hosting account, then configure a “user” account to forward it to that sub-domain-email-address. This isn’t a problem if you develop or web applications that support POP3/IMAP message retrieval.
At the moment, Bestic.me is using Google Apps Standard for emails. I’ve also created aliases (webmaster, postmaster, etc) for myself. I’ve setup IMAP access for my Outlook client and I couldn’t be happier. If my website is ever down (which hasn’t happened yet), email will still function without a hiccup. I can also rely on Google’s incredible server farms to keep my email running through hell or high water.
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