1. It is a cool thing to show off — myname@compusutra.com sounds much cooler than myname@gmail.com to me.
2. It is good publicity for your website. People who receive your email will know that you own a domain, and may own a website too. They may check it out.
3. If you are a small business then giving out a yahoo.com or hotmail.com web address definitely makes your business look smaller, so you better have a domain email of your own.

Now, I have seen more than a few people *paying* to have a domain email — as much as $30, $40 or more a year. In fact, if you buy a domain for your website, the domain registrar is definitely going to try and sell you an email package. They will also offer you a free email forwarding package, which is not as good as having your own domain email. In fact, now you can have it all free from Google Apps — at least at the time of writing this. All you need to pay for is domain registration. This post is going to explain all you need to know about setting up your domain email on Google Apps.

Step 1: Register a domain. I use GoDaddy.com – World’s No.1 Domain Registrar for domain registrations. Although their .com registration charge is usually $9.99, you can usually get it as cheap as $6.99 or $7.49 if you hunt for a discount code online. They generally run deals on .info domains. These days they sell as less as 89 cents for the first year. If you already own a domain, skip this step.

Step 2: Visit the Google Apps Standard Edition page at http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html. (Google Apps Standard Edition is different from Google Apps Business Edition, which costs $50.00 per user per year after trial.) Click the Get Started button.

Step 3: Choose Administrator radio-button, enter the domain name you want to use, and click “Get Started”.

Step 4: On the next screen you will be asked to enter your name, email address, phone number, country, and some optional information about your company. On the next screen you can choose your admin username and password. Choose a generic name like admin here. You will get a chance to set up more email addresses (generally up to 50 accounts) later.

Step 5: Now comes the hardest part of this process. On the next screen, click “Verify Domain Ownership”. It gives you two options for verifying that you own the domain – 1. Upload an HTML file, 2. Change your CNAME record. If you have not bought hosting at this stage, the first choice is not for you, so use the second choice. You will be given a string most likely starting with “google…..”, and will be asked to create a new CNAME record with that name. Keep this browser window open and open a new browser window or tab where you will complete step 6.

Step 6: For this you have to go to your domain registrar’s website (e.g., godaddy.com) and then click on “Total DNS Control” for your domain. Once there, click “Add CNAME Record” and follow instructions. When done, leave the window open and go back to the Google Apps site.

Step 7: On the Google Apps Verification Screen, click “Verify”. The next screen will tell you “We are checking domain ownership. This may take 48 hours to complete.” Actually, if you have done it right it generally takes only an hour or two. In the meantime, click on “Activate Email” under the Service Settings. The next screen will give you instructions on changing your MX (mail server) records for which you have to go back to your domain registrar’s website. You will be asked to create five different MX records.

Step 8: On the domain registrar’s website, click on MX records, and create the five different MX records. If there are any existing records, edit them to make them the Google Apps MX records, or delete them and create afresh. Remember to enter PriorityValue, HostName, Mail Server, and TTL Value, properly for each MX record. Once your domain registrar indicates that all MX records have been properly set up, return to the Google Apps email Delivery screen and click on “I have completed these steps”.

Step 9: On the next screen, you will get the message “We are checking MX records for your domain. This may take 48 hours to complete.” Don’t wait for the verification, proceed to step 10.

Step 10: Click on “Users and Groups” and then “Create a New User”. Now you can create up to 50 users by entering them one by one, or choose “multiple users” and upload data in the form of an excel file (csv format).

Now you have as many as 50 accounts available, each 7 GB, with all mail hosting provided free by Google, and the efficiency and interface of Gmail. What I generally do is I visit the new domain email account and forward the emails to my regular gmail account, so that I can check all my email at one point.

You can visit your new email account at http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com, for example the email users for my domain can check their email by going to http://mail.google.com/a/compusutra.com. Google Apps standard edition also lets you use Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, for free.

Until now, there hasn’t been a good way to send email to friends and family in Hindi, my native language and their language of choice.

Thousands of other email users, including me, have been writing emails in Indian languages for years. I must have written my first Hindi Gmail soon after I started Gmail in 2004 (screenshot below). And the method has been pretty easy – as easy as enabling the Hindi keyboard in my Windows, which is the right way to compute multilingually. There have been a number of other ways of writing in Indian languages directly into your email box too, even if you don’t count the copy-paste online editors, like the one on this site.

So, thanks Google once again. But please don’t claim this couldn’t be done before. It’s just that you have made it a little bit easier for newbies. People used to IMEs (Input Method Editors) will continue doing it the “proper” way. Google made exactly the same claim when they added Hindi typing to Blogger two years ago, when Hindi blogs had already been in existence for a few years. Come on, don’t lie, Google!