Using Gmail as your mail server

Few weeks back, I face a problem when I am trying to setup a mail server for my website, SeleraKita.com. I found out that exim, the default mail server from my VPS is not working properly!! After looking the problem with a support technician from a web company, Pondok Media, it is actually broken because our previous sysadmin upgrade the Apache and PHP module manually through UNIX command, while he supposed to do it through WHM..... The moral of the story here is to always use your built in management control panel for your VPS. If you can't do it yourself, always contact the administrator of the VPS first, instead going on your own saga to do something that you will regret later :( :(

The solution of using Gmail as mail server was actually proposed by the web company I am working with. Kudos to the owner, William Sutanto who proposed this. So, instead of re-installing a new mail server, I can just outsource my mail server entirely to GMail. This is considered better solution than reinstalling the mail server, because a new mail server means that you must administrate it yourself. Using Gmail, it is administrated by google. Using Gmail as mail server falls under the feature of Google apps. There are already worldwide companies using this approach, such as Genentech, Salesforce.com, and Motorola. In this case, we are using only the gmail feature, but we can use many of the Google features such as Google calendar, groups, Docs, sites, and Video. all can be configured specific for your own company, and zero maintenance cost of course ;)


To use gmail as your mail server is actually very simple. You have a selection to use either Premier edition or standard edition. For cheap asses, use standard edition, its free!! You can see the comparison between standard and premier edition in the picture below



















SeleraKita only using standard edition because only gmail is used, and other enterprise functionalities are not yet needed. The steps to configure your VPS will be explained once you register to Google Apps. The nice about this is that you can use a mail address under your domain name, while the mail will be routed to Gmail server. For example, If I send an email to support@selerakita.com, then this mail will be sent to a gmail account that I made using Google Apps Control Panel. If you are enterprise company, you might be interested to use more advanced feature such as push mail, and this is also available. Even Single Sign On is supported by Google Apps.



















To cut the long story short, what you need to do is only modifying your DNS record. To verify that a certain domain is indeed yours, you have to add a CNAME record. In the configuration process of Google apps, you will be presented with a unique apps code. This code will have to be added as CNAME. Actually this step can be skipped entirely, and go straight to MX ( Mail Exchange ) record configuration. This is the entry that indicates that an email should be routed to Gmail server. You can see the example here below: