Review of GMail for Your Domain 192
DevanJedi writes "Google recently started offering GMail hosted email service, with 25 free 2 GB email accounts, for universities and beta-testing private domains. Science Addiction has a review of the GMail for Your Domain service and its features including screenshots and speculation on future Google free and paid hosting efforts."
Old news but welcome (Score:3, Informative)
One of the main problems with GMail is the "on behalf of" thing when trying to masquerade under a valid alternative email address.
It's to do with GMail including your gmail address in the headers of the email (the Sender: header?).
Outlook, not Gmail (Score:5, Informative)
That's really more of an Outlook issue. GMail is adhering to the standards. "From" identifies the nominal author(s) of a message. "Sender" identifies the specific, single agent which originated a message. See RFC-2822, Section 3.6.2.
It's hardly GMail's fault that Outlook presents that information in such a funny looking way.
Re:Outlook, not Gmail (Score:2)
I wasn't aware of this section of RFC 2822. But I'd still prefer to inhibit the sending of the header.
Not my problem (Score:4, Interesting)
And I'd prefer they didn't. It's useful to know who actually sent a message. (Sure, it can be forged anyway, but I'm talking about for administrative purposes, not security.) All my mail programs don't puke all over the screen when they get the header. If yours does, I suggest you contact the vendor of said program for support.
Best Feature. Re:Old news but welcome (Score:2, Informative)
However it's listed right there on the Gmail for your Domain home page.
"Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain."
Having maintained Email servers before I can tell you that even the most elegant server software and the most robust Hardware will still give you the occasional headache.
Not as bad as Exchange on a "SCSI cluster". That's when you use a cluster capab
Re:Best Feature. Re:Old news but welcome (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Best Feature. Re:Old news but welcome (Score:2)
Re:Old news but welcome (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say one of the mail problems with GMail is the fact that their outbound SMTP relayers are off-and-on listed in the dnsbl.sorbs.net blackhole. This means mail you send out may get blocked by receiving servers that check this blackhole.
I'm regularly getting these kinds of messages when I send out mail and that really sucks:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 554 Service unavailable; Client host [64.233.166.180] blocked using dnsbl.sorbs.net; Spam Received See: http://www.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml?64.233.166.180 [sorbs.net]
Re:Old news but welcome (Score:2)
Wow (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Just another dingus in the line of GoogleDingus®.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting. I also have a Hotmail account that dates back to the internet's Copper Wire Age. However, several months ago it went from being a spam magnet to one of the cleanest free web-mail accounts I have.
Even better, as one of the ancient and original Hotmail accounts, it has [free] POP3 access -- a Hotmail option now only available by paying fo
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Google allows retention of domain control, you just point your mx record at them.
Microsoft is going for Joe Sixpack who wants to have branded email. Google is going for the bigger guys that really know what there doing and what they want.
Slashdot accepted my review, just hasn't published it yet. Here it is: http://utlemming.blogstream.com/ [blogstream.com]
To sum it up, two different services, one sucks hard and the other is pretty good.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft is going for Joe Sixpack who wants to have branded email. Google is going for the bigger guys that really know what there doing and what they want.
No, I'm talking about live.com custom domains, not live office. Live office is for joe sixpack; live.com custom domains do exactly what gmail does.
If slashdot publishes your review, slashdot sucks. =P
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
I gave it a try (Score:5, Informative)
Although, I must say I swapped back out because they don't seem to have a catch-all email feature, like *@anthropology.net
Re:I gave it a try (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I gave it a try (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this a bad thing? A few friends and I have found that there are uses [ofdoom.com] for having a set of addresses which only get spam...
Re:I gave it a try (Score:2)
You sir, have obviously never had several thousand emails arrive on your inbox at once, not ceasing for days... causing your spamassassin daemons to go nuts causing cascading failures all over your system as your computer runs out of memory.
It's fun!
Re:I gave it a try (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I gave it a try (Score:2)
My catch-all goes to /dev/null
Re:I gave it a try (Score:2)
Re:I gave it a try (Score:2)
Re:I gave it a try (Score:3, Informative)
That may not seem like much to some of you, but:
1) my domain has no website at it and gives no indication of being in use (other than resolving to a valid IP)
2) previous to that, I got maybe a couple of dozen crap mails a week
The pattern was actually reasonably interesting.
Re:I gave it a try (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, nothing is more professional than handing over your business email to google with their unlimited data retention policy. All my 'business' email with your organization will end up on googles server forever to be part of my demographic profile and who knows what else is done with it. All this and I didn't even sign up for gmail.
Next thing you know this will be solution for those FBI
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I gave it a try (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people are confusing the issues here. If I send an email to a company online, I expect that company to protect my email according to their privacy policy. By 'contracting out' your email hosting to a third-party, in this case google, any privacy policy you adopt with me is meaningless.
This isn't about the government reading my mail with a subpeona. This is about my communications being disclosed to a third party whose sole business model is extracting the maximum advertising dollar out of that information without my permission.
As far as Sarbanes-Oxley, that law only applies to public companies registered with the SEC in the US. And even then since you have absolutely no control over what google does with the data, how could you have any assurances about data detention?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I gave it a try (Score:3, Insightful)
Google at least has a track record of fighting the government when it feels they have no business to ask for the information. Most of the telcos simply rolled over when the government started tapping phone calls without warrants.
I'm sure Google wasn't the only search provider approached by the government to provide search data. Why didn't we hear about t
Re:I gave it a try (Score:2)
Yeah, they were hardcore with the Chinese government, weren't they?
Re:I gave it a try (Score:2)
My Domain got REJECTED (Score:2)
Mirror if slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mirror if slashdotted (Score:2)
not limited to 25 accounts. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:not limited to 25 accounts. (Score:2)
Unfortunately for me, I was going to need at least 22,000 accounts to move a domain over there. I tried. No answer. Oh well.
Re:not limited to 25 accounts. (Score:2)
I asked them to provide me with a hosted account with 10 addresses so I could test it, explaining if I was happy with it I expected to move about 500 accounts there (I assist a charter high school with their computer needs). It took a couple of weeks but I did get the small account invite. So far, the administration is useable as-is, though there are a couple of minor things I don'
Re:not limited to 25 accounts. (Score:2)
Re:not limited to 25 accounts. (Score:2)
I call foolishness, not bravery, on GP.
Cache / Mirror (Score:2)
Re:Cache / Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
That link doesn't work for me but the Mirrordot [mirrordot.org] link is quite snappy.
Re:Cache / Mirror (Score:2)
Maybe they should offer "Google Server for your domain".
ok (Score:2)
hehe, nearly slashdotted already with 1 comment showing
Actually kinda curious as our web host kinda sucks for email, probably for site too but i got the domain for the mail
Re:ok (Score:2)
Amusing when I think of the tin foil hat crowd. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, now they might be sending mail directly to Google's servers without even knowing it! I find it highly amusing that these privacy advocates assume there's any privacy at all regarding the plaintext email they might send.
(I also find it amusing that among their privacy concerns, they also complain that gmail doesn't include the originating IP in the email headers. I guess consistency doesn't matter as long as they're railing against the great beast Google.)
Re:Amusing when I think of the tin foil hat crowd. (Score:2, Insightful)
Many people forward emails to their gmail account so this was the case even before this new service was offered
But... you never did (Score:2)
There are different levels (Score:2)
my experience gmail hosting my email (Score:4, Informative)
a) I'm sorry, but I'd like some better means of archiving and backing up my email than accessing it via pop3 client. especially as admin- I'd need some means of doing this in bulk.
b) ads. while I know it could be worse.. I've been running my own webmail (iloha/squirrel) via imap. no ads. I just like not seeing them, and don't know how much I'd be willing to pay to not see them against my previous setup.
c) visuals. I previously had much more flexibility and better integration with other site/app/branding. sorry a little 149x58-ish pic doesn't really work as "branding" an entire web presence.
d) bulk import. I don't want to leave my mass of imap folders/clutter/organization behind!
e) hosted domains don't get the same "ever growing" storage as normal gmail accounts. small thing, but it seems kinda silly to go with a domain via gmail, but not to get all the gmail "features".
f) change scares me. there are several "features" hinted at, that aren't in play now... like multiple levels/account types, additional services, etc... am I going to get dragged into additional "features I don't want?" are some of my current features going to be moved to "non-free" account levels? I wish I could let it handle all my domain's accounts but my three main... keep those safe during the testing period until things stabalize... assuming that this beta period doesn't last the next 5 years.
in the end, I know- these are paltry things, and for someone who owns nothing but a domain name.. gmail hosting their mail may not be a bad thing.
Re:my experience gmail hosting my email (Score:2, Informative)
as long as I'm dreaming...
This is cool... (Score:2, Funny)
I just applied, and asked them to reconsider my adsense application. I have no idea why my adsense was rejected. I think I'm too nutty. We'll see what they say.
Awesome, if they sort out multi sessions (Score:2)
I just hope their session managment system allows you to have multiple accounts open for those of us with multiple domains.
Re:Awesome, if they sort out multi sessions (Score:2)
Re:Awesome, if they sort out multi sessions (Score:2)
What's the advantage? (Score:2)
Actually, for my various aliases, even with multiple gmail accounts, I have them all go to one final account. And when sending back emails, it's easy to switch "identities". So what advantage would the service have for me?
I can understand the advantages for universities and some compani
Re:What's the advantage? (Score:2)
Old news (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Old news (Score:3)
Re:Old news (Score:2)
POP3 is useless. For a hosted email solution like GMail IMAP is the only way to go.
I wish Google would let me pay to have IMAP access. That combined with a custom domain might actually cause me to use GMail, finally. I'd only use the web interface when I'm away from my primary PC.
Re:Old news (Score:2, Funny)
GMail with Encryption? (Score:2)
Privacy, of course, is the main concern of using this, however. But if they could be the first major interface to incorporate PGP or somesuch, then the messages would be encrypted, I wouldn't worry as much, and they'd be in better legal standing because they'd have nothing to turn over but encrypte
Re:GMail with Encryption? (Score:2)
If it's a pay service, they can forgoe the ads. If they established a policy of only decrypting the email when and while you looked at it and had provided the server the decryption password, which would not be stored once the session was closed, then they could provide relevant ads based on the contents of that single message - the message would still be protected via the https security.
.forward (Score:2)
Re:.forward (Score:2)
screenshots (Score:2, Informative)
No catch-all accounts (Score:3, Informative)
Catch-alls are how a lot of people who own their own domains provide unique email addresses to every site they visit so they know if someone sold their address and can block it with ease.
Re:No catch-all accounts (Score:2)
Re:No catch-all accounts (Score:2, Insightful)
1) most address validators don't recognize this as a valid address
2) spammers can extract your real address after you've blocked the catchall alias you provided them.
Re:No catch-all accounts (Score:2)
On the other hand, bellsouth recently started blocking incoming port 25 traffic so I can't run my own family mail server anymore as I also have for many years on my adsl. I suspect that is one reason why services like
Can we please do this without accusations... (Score:2)
Why is there a front page slashdot story reviewing a mail service that looks like countless others and has some marginal improvements over services going back years? Sometimes I can't help wondering if one (or all?) of the /. editors is using these largely contentless stories to manipulate stock prices by raising the profile of google, yet again, at opportune moments.
Re:Can we please do this without accusations... (Score:2)
Re:Can we please do this without accusations... (Score:2)
Does it search any better than regular gmail? (Score:2)
Can I search and have it find 'close' words? Google is all about "search", and pretty much forces you in to this as the primary way of finding things, but can't find something you've misspelled.
Slightly OT, need help getting beta set up.. (Score:2)
Does anyone know a cheap registrar that will host DNS and let users set their own MX rec
Re:Slightly OT, need help getting beta set up.. (Score:2)
Re:Slightly OT, need help getting beta set up.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Will google still read my email? (Score:2)
So far it sucks, sort of.. (Score:2)
1) If you create a mailing list, it won't let you include an external email, only your domain emails
2) Mailing lists cannot have aliases
3) There is no way to provide feedback or get help, or make suggestions
4) There seems to be a problem with gmail, and it is not clear whether it's being handled or not. A number of providers are not receiving emails sent from gmail, they are lost in cyberspace and there is no trace on the providers' server logs. See thi [google.com]
Re:So far it sucks, sort of.. (Score:2)
Re:So far it sucks, sort of.. (Score:2)
No migration for existing Gmail accounts (Score:2)
Re:Is there anyway to consolidate gmail accounts? (Score:2)
I generally like it a lot. Features it lacks that I'd like to see:
- Import existing Gmail accounts
- Import existing IMAP trees (converting folder names to labels)
- Filtering functions in the contact list ("label all messages from this group ")
- Calendaring (google-hosted iCal? *drool*)
- Nicknames and lists to addresses outside the domain
- RSS aggregation
- Domain aliasing - so I can go to mail.domain.com and have it go nati
i'm in... (Score:2)
I only got 15 accounts, but that's more than enough for my small pool of users (family and friends), especially since aliases (Nickname's in gmail parlance) don't count against your total.
I haven't tried out the mailing list feature. The site customization doesn't quite work yet (attempting to change the login box color gives a blank results page when saving).
Not a good POP server (Score:2)
Well, I need
Re:Not a good POP server (Score:2)
and for the small orgs that i service, we have enough with these issues as it is - most people STILL don't get the concept of 'you downloaded your mail from here, so it isn't visible there' with plain old POP3.
and the other growth point is definitely retention. while i don't have to do retention for anyone at the moment, if i do, i'd want IMAP. and for myriad practical reasons, i don't see that happening on gmail.
Thoughts and images (Score:2, Informative)
1) There is currently no option to change the colors of the UI. Yes, you can change the colors of the little login box, but nothing else. Our site has a black background with dark orange and burgundy, so the switch is like night and day. (litteraly)
2) I was not able to find a good way to add a header on top of the GMail hosted site. It would be nice to include some navigational
Re:Thoughts and images (Score:2)
I use it - love the spam control (Score:2)
I have very few false positives or negatives, and I think the overall spam level has dropped, in that fewer even get accepted by the server. I was getting over 300 a day on my vanity domain, and it's under 100 now, with only one or two false negatives. This is after less than a week of testing. Of course, some of it may be that there's no catch-all. I actually want the catch-all, ho
got one (Score:2, Informative)
took a few minutes to point the mx records, the admin control panel is cool enough, you can add your companies logo instead of gmails, batch create acounts by uploading a list
so far im fairly impressed (fairplay to google) pity its only 25emails i have 40000members on one site alone who will be interested
Re:Govt spooks (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No authenication links, no api, no import accou (Score:2)
Re:No authenication links, no api, no import accou (Score:2)
There's now an ability to import a CSV file with account info.
Re:Security (Score:2)
And gmail gives you pop3, so you could always set up enigmail in thunderbird or such.
Re:The demise of email as we know it (Score:2)
Yep. This is the end of email as we know it. No more mail from AC. The End.