When I bought my first domain all those years ago I was so excited, I finally had a cool email address, not a hotmail one which was all I really knew about back then. I went around signing up to exciting things with my snazzy new email address until one day, the server went down – I didn’t get a single email for days, I felt so isolated! The server came back up but as it had been several days the backup mail servers had returned the emails to senders.
Since then everytime I sign up to something or someone asks for my email I give them my gmail one, why? Put simply, its more reliable. (I’ve always commented on blogs with my domain email though – for consistancy)
There are arguments for and agaist domain email, heres just a few important points.
- It looks more professional
- Its personalised
- Can’t be accessed world wide (well it can but see next point!)
- Face it – webmail is ugly
- You can use it with thunderbird but theres always the risk of losing all your emails
- You’re relying on your server to stay up and running
- Spam protection is limited
I use gmail for all my emails. Their dedicated to emails – although you get the odd bit of downtime for maintenance etc, they constantly backup their service and its their job to provide email to people so their going to be good at it and they are good at it!
I currently have 7 email accounts and its not at all confusing. Their all on different domains but I manage them though one interface, gmail. I can access it world wide, it always looks the same, each account is seperate and I can send emails as each of those 7 addresses without having to login to another site.
First you need a gmail account – I think virtually everyone does any way – comment with your email address if you want an invite although I think you can sign up on your own now…there have been rumours.
If your using domain email set up a forwarder to your gmail address! edit I’d forgotten about this bit! /edit
Go to settings > accounts and click ‘add another email account’ it’ll send an email to that account and give you a verification code. Type that code into the pop up box and you now control that email account through google! Be sure to select "Reply from the same address the message was sent to." Otherwise it’ll get confusing!
Next thing you need to do is create a label for your email account. Click on labels and call it whatever you want and the click on filters. Create a new filter with the following properties leaving other boxes blank. To: youremailaddress or @yourdomain.com to catch them all, then click next, tick ‘Archive it’ and ‘apply the label’, selecting which label you want applied.
All you need to do now is spam yourself silly to test! Speaking of spam – you’ll never get any again thanks to gmails excellent spam filters! The Gmail Manager plugin is the perfect accessory to this setup, make sure you tell it to check the labels though!
[poll=2]
[tags]domain, email, server, gmail, spam, tutorial[/tags]
domain email or not , places that have the “RELIABLE” servers provide hosting for customized domains. so i guess i’d go for the snazzy domain emails
Why not have a reliable server with your domain?
Down for days? Move a away from that hosting company (If you haven’t already). “You
oooh this is quailty – thanks han :D
just set up my emails so im spam free! no more viagra/cialis offers for me!!
Hey that’s just what I did to my Gmail yesterday and merged my e-mails so that I don’t have to open them one by one. :)
Domain e-mails kinda suck. You don’t know til when you’ll be able to have it. Gmail for the win!
Woahh very interesting! Hmm~ I have always used hotmail and now use my live account :) But well yeahh – I don’t like to use my webmail that goes with my account – its really limited *sigh* Thank you for the tutorial, maybe I should switch over to Gmail sometime – if you have any invites left, please send me one :D Take care ~ xoxo
I don’t have a domain.
But If I have one, I think I will continue to use my e-mail now because it will be too much trouble to make another e-mail. I also do not like to check so many e-mails.
Um, I have both gmail and webmail. I use roundcube and I don’t think it is ugly. Squirrelmail, however, is not very attractive.
I use Gmail for my personal / family / friends stuff, and I like it because I can rely on it. I use hotmail for chatting on MSN, the university email for academic stuff and my domain’s webmail for my website and online friends / contacts :D
yeah – POP email works the same way – I dunno why I don’t use it though!
Han is me :P
yeah – if the server goes down your screwed but thats why I dont use it! You can get domain tools from gmail which does something I’m confused by it though tbh.
I’ve just put all my email accounts onto Gmail.
Thanks Han. :) But I encountered one little ‘mishap.’ How would I delete the mail off the server? Of course, if you have too many email accounts, it’d be hard to log into your webmail account on each, so I figured this out (sorry if this was in your post 
)
I found that Gmail has an option where you can also connect to your POP accounts, so go to settings and then to accounts. Then, go down the part where it says ‘get mail from other accounts,’ and input your POP data, and you should get a verification email. After you put the verification code, you should be all set.
Like Han stated, you should also add an email forwarder to point to your Gmail account ‘if’ your account goes down.
Just one question though, if your server goes down, does the email forwarder go down with it?
Whops – I forgot to add that you need to set up a forwarder in cpanel to your gmail address! I’ve added that now!
When you apply the filters, is the mail sent to your email address supposed to end up in your Gmail inbox? If I send a test message to alex@thundered.net, it shows up in the Squirrel Mail (heh), but it doesn’t show up in Gmail. I’m pretty sure I made the filter right as well, but anyways.
I never knew that you could do something like that, and I must say, it’s pretty cool. Gmail indeed has a very professional look and it looks way better then Squirrel Mail or Horde combined.
I completely agree with you about domain email! I thought the same thing when I first got my domain and what did I find? The spam filters my webmail had were complete crap! Even after I adjusted the default settings it still went through!!
Gmail is my saviour. : )
Ah, this post is amazing. I never would’ve figured that out for myself.
Gmail is the best! I had exactly the same problem with servers in the past, it was saddening..then gmail came along and all was good in the world! haha
Thanks for a good read, Han! I didn’t know gmail could do that, and because I’ve been a bit unhappy with thunderbird for a while, I made the switch. It’s extremely easy and simple too!
Omg, I so agree!!! I’d commit suicide if gmail died!!!!!!!!
*DOS’s Rhys’s Server and laughs when he doesn’t get any emails*
You’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong .
Damn it must suck to be you ;)
SERVER MAIL FOR TEH WIN!
Yeah Gmail is great, I’ve always done that; except I never ticked that “Reply From Same Address Mail Was Sent To” – so you’re right; it did get pretty confusing, but I’m guessing more-so for the people emailing me! I’ll have to try adding some filters too from the different addresses.
How is this in-text advertising going? Pretty cool idea!