http://www.google.com/hosted/ Anyone else get an invite from Google for their new service? I just received mine and set up my domains. It looks awesome. I had been using Microsoft's Custom Live Domains ... but I got fed up with it after my accounts only had 2mb even after following their directions to raise it to 20mb. So far Google Hosted offers much more than Microsoft Custom Live Domains. I like the way the administration area looks. I like how you can customize the interface for your users. Being able to replace the Gmail logo with one of your own is a nice little feature. Two thumbs up from me. Anyone else have a review of Google Hosted?
I got it up and running about a week ago. Everything is straightforward for administration. Not very many options, so not much of a learning curve. To the end-users, it's pretty much the same as Gmail. I've run across some minor issues (it's beta, you know). There is a link to install Gmail notifier, but it doesn't work with hosted domains. The login address they give you for end-users only works for admins. The end-user login has a URL half a mile long. Not very pretty. When I submit support requests, it usually takes 24-48 hours for a response. Some have gone unanswered. In the end, it's better than any other free hosted mail service I've used. I've lost a couple of customers because they hate it, but I've gained more because they want a Gmail account.
Couple of questions: Does it work with POP3/SMTP? Who do you give accounts to? Are they okay with giving your customers email addresses?
I'm pretty sure you can use POP/SMTP with Gmail. I just looked at the settings page of one of my hosted accounts and it is exactly the same as my Gmail account. It has the Forwarding and POP tab. I don't see why that wouldn't work. But I can't say for sure because I haven't tested it. I give email accounts out to the users on my forums. I figured they might like an email address from my site, but also because they know some people who don't have email addresses themselves and this could help those people out. So far I have handed out a couple since I just got this yesterday, but they like it. With Microsoft Custom Live Domains I am pretty sure there is no POP for it. It's just like a normal Hotmail account. You might be able to access it if you pay for the upgraded account which gives you the POP. But not sure since I never tried it.
Each mail box is like a GMail account, you get the 2GB that slowly increases. You will get all the features of a GMail account.