Learn how to turn off your local AltaGrade-based mail server and switch to G Suite Mail previously know as Google Apps for Your Domain.
AltaGrade already provides mail services included to all shared, cloud and dedicated hosting plans. However, depending on your needs or policies and requirements of your corporations you might want to host your mail server with G Suite.
G Suite is a brand of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed by Google, first launched as "Google Apps for Your Domain". You can find the detailed information on G Suite mail on https://gsuite.google.com/solutions/new-business.
Disable AltaGrade mail
If your decision was to host your mail server with G Suite, then you need to disable your local AltaGrade-based mail service as otherwise it will be running just in vain unnecessarily eating up the server resources allocated to your hosting account.
To do so, please login to your AltaGrade server's control panel, select your domain name whose mail you'd like to switch over to G Suite, click on "Edit Domain", expand "Enabled features" and make sure to have "Virus filtering enabled?", "Mail for domain enabled?", "Spam filtering enabled?" unchecked and then click on Save Domain button as shown below:
Edit MX records
If you have previously delegated your domain name's DNS to AltaGrade (in other words, if you have updated the nameservers for your domain at your registrar's control panel with the ones provided by AltaGrade), then you need to perform the following steps. Otherwise, you need to take similar steps on your domain name's registrar or wherever you manage DNS for your domain name.
- Expand "Domain Configuration", click on "DNS Records" and then on "Manually Edit Records"
- Replace the following records previously created automatically:
mail.yourdomain.tld IN A xx.xx.xx.xxx webmail.yourdomain.tld. IN A xx.xx.xx.xxx yourdomain.tld. IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx a:yourdomain.tld ip4:xx.xx.xxx.xxx -all"with:
@ IN TXT "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all" mail IN CNAME ghs.googlehosted.com. @ MX 1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. @ MX 5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. @ MX 5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. @ MX 10 ALT3.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. @ MX 10 ALT4.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
You can find the updated MX record recommendations on https://support.google.com/a/answer/174125.
Register with G Suite
In order to start using G Suite based mail, you need to register your domain with G Suite at https://gsuite.google.com. Note that G Suite is a paid service with three different subscription plans each listed with short description and respective prices below:
- Basic - Professional office suite with 30GB storage - $6 USD / user / month
- Business - Enhanced office suite with unlimited storage and archiving - $12 USD / user / month
- Enterprise - Premium office suite with advanced controls and capabilities - $25 USD / user / month
Verify your domain
When you sign up for one of the G Suite plans listed above, you get a verification record that you need to copy and paste into your domain settings which are managed either with (1) your AltaGrade
server's control panel, in case if you delegated your domain name's DNS to us (by updating your nameservers), or (2) your domain name's registrar if you never delegated it's DNS to AltaGrade (by using an A-record to point your domain name to your AltaGrade IP).
Please find the detailed steps on how to complete verification of your domain name on https://support.google.com/a/answer/6248925.
Customize a G Suite service URL
You can make it easy for the mail users of your domain name to easily find the user interface for your G Suite based mail service by creating custom web address as mail.yourdomain.com. With that kind of custom address users of your domain name can sign in to their Gmail account at mail.yourdomain.com instead of at the longer default address mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com.
To set up short custom URL to your G Suite based mail service, please follow the instructions on https://support.google.com/a/answer/53340.
If you need further support on this, then please create a support ticket on https://my.altagrade.com