But, but, but....AOL.COM is better!

Hey everyone thanks for all the great feedback!  I will try to make a few more posts over the upcoming weeks to further show the utility and ease of integration of gmail and your own domain.

I will try to respond to a few of the comments, but don't know if I will be able to get to all of them! 

• Russell, moving contacts is definitely a concern, but I think there is a way to export contacts for your web based AOL mail in a .CSV file.  Gmail supports the importing of .CSV files since its a pretty universal database format (this works with Outlook too by the way).  I will look into what it takes to export contacts from AOL...it's likely very easy.  Ever since AOL became free the advancements in their technology and invovation has rapidly fell behind.  Change is never easy, but I can't help put think people who don't evolve with rapidly changing technology are going to be left at a major disadvantage.

By the way.....Gmail essentially has unlimited storage space...again free, and when you delete things they are actually Archived....so you can retreive them later.

• Wallace,  You don't have to have the same domain as your website, but regardless I don't see the disadvantage of having the email address Wallace@cvillecpm.com?  At least this way they can put a name with the person they are emailing AND feel like they are emailing an actual company.  While real estate and many other businesses are personal there should still be a major effort on branding.  Am I saying that having a custom domain is going to define you or your business?  Hell no....but is it going to convey a different message than having a generic average consumer email address?  Absolutely. 

• Larry in your situation it looks like you'd be a perfect candidate to merge your custom domain on gmail servers.  We used to be hosted by Smartermail and frankly it was awful.  The entire office would regularly receive viagra and prescription drug spam, the good messages would be blocked, and we had extremely limited storage space which resulted in us having to regularly delete EVERYTHING just so we could receive a message again.  How many times have you needed to pull up an email from either your phone or computer with important info and couldn't because you had to purge it?  This has changes the way we do things entirely.  Thanks for the comment!

• Chris, I absolutely agree.  AOL was state of the art......in 1990.

• Chuck, thanks for the compliment, but if it's free and simple and could brand you even better to the mass then the real question is, "Why wouldn't you want to do it."  We spend hundreds and thousands of dollars a year on marketing, advertising, and other stuff that a lot of times can yield absolute zero results.  This is only a win-win situation in my eyes.

Gabrielle, hahaha!!  That just made my morning.  If you have any specific questions just shoot me and email and I'll try to help you out if I can! 

Terry and Phil,

Thank you for adding an important element to any email setup in general.  IMAP is the way to go over POP3 for sure.  With a properly setup IMAP connection to your email server you can sync your phone, outlook (or other mail software), internet based mail/calendar all at the same time.  I love being able to punch an appointment in when I'm with a client on my regular calendar app on my iphone and have it filter down into my outlook and apple mail programs on my 3 computers and then also have it available to see at ANY computer with an internet connection via a web browser login.

POP3 is pretty sloppy since it doesn't sync anything.  You find yourself doing the same task multiple times.  Doing the same task multiple times with no beneficial result = inefficient.

Thanks for the comment and contribution!

Corinne, you make a good point and I think this is where a lot of people get confused.  Outlook is just a mail extracting program.  Quite literally any mail server who supports IMAP or POP3 data transfer can setup their email to come into Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, and a number of other software programs.  It is that easy, but I think the point that you may have missed is the gained flexibility, apps, and tools that the back end of gmail offers.  It will function as simple and easy as your current outlook setup.

It sounds like you may have your mail setup as a POP3 where it just dumps all the email on your system and that's about it.  Carbonite is a great program, but I use it to back up transactional information, not email.  With that said, using gmail server ALL of your email including your spam (if you want) is backed up offsite on google servers the instant it hits your mailbox.  Even when you delete items they are archived and backed up just in case you might need it later.  IF you want something permanently gone you can do that as well.  Setup correctly a custom domain paired with gmail servers can basically function very similar to a Microsoft Exchange Server.....which is normally very expensive and out of the average small business's budget.

To take it a step further, what do you do if you are out of town and can't be on your specific computer with Outlook?  What if you want to access it from your phone?  What if you need to see your electronic calendar on Outlook because you can't remember an appointment?  With gmail, it's all there, all synced, and all up to date......all the time.

Hope that helps clear things up!

Debbie,

Great question.  You are not transferring your entire domain over, just hosting email.  Our main company website domain and email is the same, but hosted by two different companies, email is hosted by gmail, the website it hosted by someone else (Not sure, our web designer dealt with that part).  If I can dig up some more info more specific to your question I'll add to this post just to make it more complete.  If you go through the step by step with gmail you should be just fine.  The directions they give are specifically for linking your domain with their mail client only.

On a side note, it would be very difficult to hurt your website.  Worst case scenario you change a nameserver or something on accident....the page will temporarily not display, but once you get the correct nameserver back in the site will function properly as it did before.....to lose everything you'd have to manually go into your webpage host and delete everything I believe.

Thanks for the good question!

Thanks to everyone for the great comments and feedback.  I'll definitely try to throw together another couple posts over the coming weeks to help shed some light on topics like this that could likely make everyones life easier!

Lisa/Robert,

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having multiple email accounts.  Can I ask why you prefer to have them setup at POP accounts though?  Outlook is capable of handling multiple email accounts from multiple providers all at the same time, but having each individual account setup through outlook as an IMAP would work even more seamless.  IMAP has two way communication with the online mail servers so all of your sent messages regardless of where they are sent from are actually saved online as well as through Outlook.  Most smart phones, droid and iPhone included also have the ability of handling multiple addresses at the same time.  The problem with POP is that if you do something on your phone or outlook....its not changed on the server and therfore not synced seamlessly.

As an example I have my custom domain setup through google server and have a personal @gmail.com email address for non-business related stuff.  I have each account setup separately on all of my outlook accounts on multiple computers and also separately on my iPhone.  This way I know which mailbox the message was meant for and I can also reply from that mailbox or any account that I desire for that matter.  Plus if I delete a message on my phone...that message is also deleted on all of my outlook programs AND the online login as well.  I never have to double handle email......ever.

Long story short there is opportunity for improvement over your current setup unless there is some element I am missing.  If you have any questions about that let me know!