[stocktrader]

I was wondering what is the benefit of using Google Apps. From what I can read there seem to be a few frequently-cited benefits: (1) increased reliability (2) lower cost (3) collaboration benefits (with other applications like Calendar). Assuming that you are just a plain-vanilla email user (i.e. single account, only sending and receiving without forwarding, etc), is there any difference between to have your email handled in-house or outsourced?

Are script-based email (sent by PHP for example) handled by Google Apps?

[fshagan]

You get two advantages, that I can see:

1. You get the benefit of Google's spam filtering service
2. If the server or your website is down, the email still flows through to Google's servers.

Number 2 doesn't always work, IIRC; if you have a problem with your DNS record gone missing nothing goes anywhere. But having the mail delivered even if your website is down is a benefit to a small business.

[MikeDVB]

fshagan, on 21 December 2011 - 09:18 AM, said:

Number 2 doesn't always work, IIRC; if you have a problem with your DNS record gone missing nothing goes anywhere. But having the mail delivered even if your website is down is a benefit to a small business.

If using our shared or reseller DNS then it should continue to work as we run a DNS cluster. If you're using misconfigured private name servers (i.e. both IPs on the same server) or something like a VPS or Dedicated with us then you likely wouldn't have clustered DNS.

[fshagan]

Right; I actually have two inexpensive VPS I am using for my DNS cluster (I am on a VPS here). If both of them went down, email would fail. But otherwise, even if my site goes offline the email still flows through to Google's email servers.

[MikeDVB]

fshagan, on 23 December 2011 - 07:57 AM, said:

Right; I actually have two inexpensive VPS I am using for my DNS cluster (I am on a VPS here). If both of them went down, email would fail. But otherwise, even if my site goes offline the email still flows through to Google's email servers.

Indeed - many don't realize that their DNS can be a single point of failure for their email. This is one of the reasons we cluster all of our servers .