Gmail, Yahoo etc. for business?
 

One of my customers wants to move their entire email system to Google or Yahoo or the likes.

I can see the advantages, but wondered if anyone here had experience of this?

They have 16 mailboxes on 1 domain and want to retain those 16 boxes when they move to Gmail or whatever service they choose.

We control the mail forwarding so can forward the mail for each address/mailbox to a separate Google account for each mailbox or will they need a business account with that number of mailboxes?

I know how to setup IMAP and that they can send via Gmail or another SMTP server, but from a personal Google account the mail always goes out with a Gmail address in the mail header (as well as the domain address) if sent via Gmail... again is this different with a business account?

Is Yahoo similar?

Any recommendations?

yep, business account shows the address as whatever domain you choose. Not sure on the number of users/mailboxes available as default but it works. One problem is if people have the gmail synced to their phone and it's polling the imap servers too often, it locks up outlook as too many IMAP connections but this can be easily sorted by resetting the connections in gmail via web.

Not sure if any of that helps but there you are :)

Office 365. Get Exchange-only plans (the E1 will be fine), job done.

I use free "Google Apps" accounts to manage email from my domains.

It's transparent and all mail gets handled with the domain email address, not Gmail or the likes.

Me too, but it's not free for new accounts anymore.

Paying for it is fine.

Having set it up on a free Google personal account (let's call it me666@gmail.com) as a test the only issue we have is that even when we have set up a second address (let's call it me@mydomain.com) and send using this as the default address via the Gmail server then in some mail clients (outlook) the delivered email has a to field showing up as

My Name (me666@gmail.com) on behalf of My Name (me@mydomain.com)

rather than

My Name (me@mydomain.com)

I could do to know if this problem still exisits on the business version before heading straight in.

This does not happen with the business version. You point your domains MX records at Googles servers.

It will appear purely as "me@mydomain.com" - the only way you can tell is to look at the MIME header.

Cool, thanks.

Office 365 nuff said

Who makes Office365?

Microsoft - it's a direct service from them.

These are all the packages:

http://goo.gl/51WqwB

I use the "Hosted email (Exchange Online Plan 1)" for my personal email and it works so well I gave my wife and parents their own accounts.

We all have different domain names, and with it being 'proper' Exchange, everything is compatible with it - tablets, phones, desktops, etc. The number of calls from parents going 'my email isn't working' has dropped to virtually zero.

I know mate, sorry was being a bit tongue in cheek. Microsoft and I have fallen out after a long love affair so I am steering clear of them these days.

That said I have just read your link and some other articles about it and I am getting swayed.

Definitely works with all things Apple.... Macs/iPads etc.?

Yes

Ah, missed that.

iPads; definitely. Missus has an iPad 2 and a Nexus 4, and everything syncs flawlessly in either direction. For Macs, you can use the superb webmail, Outlook 2011, and it also looks like Mac Mail also supports Exchange natively - I don't have experience with Mac Mail, but this article is encouraging:

http://goo.gl/28F5a

Cheers, sounds worth a look although it had better not bite me on the ass the way Microsoft has a habit of doing these days ;)

Do you point the MX records at it a la Google. I have 16 mailboxes many with multiple aliases so need to control those relatively simply if possible. Currently all done via Postfix on Cent OS.

Yes.

I don't know what the deal is with aliases as it's not something I've had to worry about. I would suggest getting the trial and seeing how it works out for you; you manage it as you would a real Exchange server, and pretty much anything you can do with Exchange you can do with O365.

Aliases shouldn't be a problem then. Used to manage Exchange about 10 years ago and it could manage an alias or two then :thumb:

Google apps are the future! :D

Over the past 12 months we have moved over to Google Business Apps. 1000's of users and the first Local Authority to go down this road.

I'd never used these before....... don't know what we have done without it now. Total business changer imo.

365 handles aliases fine, the one thing it doesn't have is a catch all which is one reason I still use Google Apps.

Yes noticed that when reading about it.

Anyway made a decision today and went with Google. Seems slightly easier to set up and as the client will be managing it themselves somewhat easy is good :thumb: