I want a reliable email! Help!

[Chris]

I want email to arrive to my inbox without problems, not too ambitious I think?

What I have:
* several free emails, among them only gmail works perfect
* separate server (Cpanel) with my own domain, I have an email set there
* plenty of domains and servers, enough capabilities to cover email needs of a small city

What works:
* free gmail works perfectly
* other free emails do not work too good
* my separate own email server works rather poor for some reason

First, I would like my own mail server to work, this should be the easiest since I have almost full contol of it, correct? It is Cpanel shared host, the domain is setup as full A record (no separate www/MX, both on the same machine). Probably, I would need to change some settings?

Next, I would like more gmail accounts (one won't do ), do you know if they allow more accounts? Or some affordable commercial ones? Any solution to have more of them (but do not be in danger of being banned due to some ToS violation, this would be reallllly bad).

Do you know of other good free/commercial email provides other than gmail?

After I have these I would prefer to get at least one of the free emails to be used as my own domain, I mean I heard something about a gmail offer, you can use the gmail but it is shown as your own domain (like everything send to admin@lordsgame.com would end in gmail account, and everything sent from the gmail would be shown as my email).


Bear in mind that my email knowledge is rather poor, so posting also theory, lenghty explanation of basics and such are highly welcome

[Harkins]

You probably need to set up domainkey and SPF for your mail server, the free hosts like to see that. There are a few guides and wizards online (I don't know them well enough to walk you through the process) that'll show you what DNS records to add. When I added them for NearbyGamers my complaints about things showing up in spam folders stopped.

[e-fish]

Take a look at Google apps standard edition, its free and limited to 50 users. Given that they look after your email for you it is definitely easier than running your own mail server. You get everything you get with gmail except email addresses like user@domain.com. If you want more features or more users you could upgrade but then its $50 per year per user.

[Chris]

I don't get Google apps, I registered and got this:

In order to verify that the email address associated with your account is correct, we have sent an email message to chris@lordsgame.com. To activate your account at lordsgame.com, please access your email and click on the link provided.

I mean, I wanted the account because I don't have an email on that domain, if I had the email I would not need this service

[e-fish]

https://www.google.com/a/lordsgame.com/ works so you should be able to login there ?

[Chris]

https://www.google.com/a/lordsgame.com/ works so you should be able to login there ?

When I try to login I get

Account Verification Needed

The account you attempted to sign in to is not yet activated. The associated email address needs verification. In order to verify that the email address associated with your account is correct, we have sent an email message to that address. To activate your lordsgame.com account, please access your email and visit the verification URL provided.

To have the verification email resent to chris@lordsgame.com, click here.

[e-fish]

I whoised you. Maybe you create an email with godaddy such as chris@... Then get google to resend the email?

[bbgames]

It sounds like you may have botched the signup - you needed to sign up with an already working e-mail address to verify your account.

Once you get Google Apps set up, you can have e-mail addresses like you@yourdomain.com - all you have to do is set them up.

This is typically how I set up the server, forgot-password, and support e-mails on my projects - I just sign up for google apps and create all the addresses there.

[Chris]

Oh, I see, I must have created it in the past. When I entered a brand new domain everything looks like a normal signup process with custom email field and everything.

Is there a way to delete the old one? I also verified the domain in another google service (it was analytic-something I think).

[bbgames]

Unfortunately, not that I'm aware of - you may want to try getting in touch with Google's support team to see if they can take care of the issue for you.