April 2nd, 2010 
KJS
I run a small IT Consultancy and we have been toying with the idea of using Google Apps for our Mail and our Calendaring using the Premium service Google offer. We will not be using Google for storing of our data or for Google Apps office replacements. Here is the pro’s and cons of Google Mail premium.
Pros
- Cheap, much cheaper than buying / running my own server and purchasing Exchange, even open source equivalents cost for the kind of services Google are offering for $50 a year (£30).
- Reliable
- Fast
- Works with Outlook
- Works with Mozilla Thunderbird & Mozilla Calendar
- Works with iCal
- Works on iPhone (Both mail & calendar)
- Supports Push mail for the iPhone
- SLA 9.99%
- Spam filtering (Awesome Spam filtering)
- Backup – Google backup my mail
- No maintenance, I don’t have to assign my time to maintaining our mail server, applying updates and fixes.
- No worrying about our server getting black listed.
- Web mail, Googles webmail interface is nice and easy to use, plus the search is awesome (as you would expect).
- Calendar sharing, works great
- Contact sharing works with with http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=142+17560572133792753109
- Gtalk / Video & Audio chat
Cons
There are not many con’s but they carry more weight
- Trust, trusting Google with my company email
- Control, losing control of features
- Downtime, IF Gmail goes down, my hands will be tied, as a network / linux admin I will find this frustrating.
- Backup, I will still need to backup my company mail offsite from google, it looks like there is an app for this so it’s no biggie.
Conclusion
I will move my mail account over to Google Mail, but leave my MX records pointing to our Postfix server and have postfix redirect mail over to Gmail for just my account. That way I can test the service out and if any problems occur I can revert back to our existing setup in a matter of minutes. Setting up iCal to use Google Calendar was easy on the iPhone as was configuring Push mail.
I will be looking forward to having everything synced up, iPhone, MacBook and my W7 desktop at the office. Plus knowing I can login into my work email from any where with a browser and internet access and be able to use my company mail in Google Mail.
I will put posts up on how to do the various work arounds and any limitations that I find on this blog as and when I come across them.
Posted in 
Tags: 
Well, how did it go? I’m doing a 30 day free trial of google apps for my company. I’ve set everything up but the email. I work for a small company that outsources all of our IT needs. I’m a little nervous to ask our email server manager to point the MX mail files to google. I’ve been burned before when switching email servers. Did you have any problems or down time with this?
I did not change my MX records to point at Google’s I simply configured my mail server to relay email for my address to Google’s, basically I forward my mail onto Google Apps for the time being.
No problems yet, not sure if I am so keen though… I think I miss the control, I am not sure I like this label system either.
Out of interest why are you thinking about swapping to Google Apps?
I have recently signed up for the Google Apps service and am very impressed with it. However, I am interested in how you are (currently) setup with not changing the MX server to point to Google. You said you have it forwarded to your Gmail account do you mean yourname@yourdomain.com that is hosted by Gmail now that you have signed up for their Google Apps? I signed up and changed over my MX right away without thinking through everything.
Thank you for any assistance.
Chris
I used Postfix to forward mail onto google apps. However in the end we went with Exchange I just don’t trust my email on other peoples servers.
I apologize for being a novice in this area. Is it possible for me to use a cPanel from a Host and have the emails save to their server (unlimited storage) and then have them directed to the the Google mail server? I didn’t know if I had to use their MX to make the product work and if I didn’t if I could still do what I want to do with going to my Host’s servers first.
Any help would be appreciated.
Chris
Can you please tell me the name of that app?
I also want to know the name of the app that backs up mail offsite from google.
hehehehe