Anyone who has made the mistake of getting email for a domain at GoDaddy knows how absolutely useless the service is. Basically, in my experience (which I know from mailing lists and forums is typical), it’s read only email, because you cannot send or reply to most of the email you receive. This relates to spam and GoDaddy’s use of a whitelist that domains must register with. Of course, how many domains are out there and what percentage of those would be bothered whitelisting with them? So in reality it’s one way email – hey, maybe there’s a patent opportunity there? 
So I’ve been considering moving my domain somewhere else, and then I thought of Google. I’d been meaning to check out Google Apps for ages. Sure enough, in the space of 20 minutes (most of which was not me having to do anything, but waiting for the switchover to be verified), I was able to move my (domain) email to Google Apps, without having to go to the pain of moving the domain and/or email to a different hosting provider. They even had detailed instructions on making the changes to my MX records using GoDaddy’s tools. In fairness to GoDaddy, at least they expose and allow the DNS records to be managed directly by users (it would have been the last straw had this not been the case). So I guess Bob P. is going to get to take a few more euros from me for now. At least until I redo my site using Grails. And as for Google? I’m a fan. Now that is what I call Software-as-a-Service.
Hey David,
I’m interested in what the problem with GoDaddy email was.
It catches me off guard that you mention “it’s read only email, because you cannot send or reply to most of the email you receive”.
I haven’t had any problems using GoDaddy for my email.
Well, all I ever got when I tried to reply to an email was an error returned from the smtp server along the lines of “domain is not in my list of allowed receipt hosts” … when I investigated this I found GoDaddy has a whitelist that domains must register with, and I found a lot of other people complaining about this too.
codecurl – I’m with you – after 8 months of trying to fix email bounces from my client – a prominant financial institution – I’ve given up and am moving to goog for my domain. Can you send me the link for the detailed instructions for how to change the MX records? – m
Here is that link with the detailed steps of changing the GoDaddy MX records: https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=33353
Godaddy has the worst antispam policy ever. It blocks my clients legitimate emails and doesn’t even give an intelligible reason in the bounceback message.
lucky gmail is to the rescue.
How can I move my webbased email account to google?
Wow, I’m so glad I found this post. My neighborhood association just set up blog and email hosting through Godaddy. The blog is great, except that funny things are happening to the fonts recently… But I just tried to send our first newsletter to our 150 members and got an error message that I had exceeded the maximum allowable number of recipients. Argh! What was I paying for? I figured I’d be able to send a single email to 150 recipients, especially those who have given me their email addresses (no spam here). I think Google allows 500. I also got several bounces that sound a lot like the ones you mention. Will have to check out this switching business.
Thanks again!
Hey! Thanks for the article. Be interested to know if anyone else has had any problems changing their email over to google apps from godaddy. About two weeks ago i followed all of Google’s instructions (changing MX servers etc) to set up google aps on my website which at first seemed to be working without fault. Since then i’ve come to realise a large number of people are having trouble getting emails through to my address and even mail i’ve been sending out has been bouncing. Most commonly the error is along the lines of SMTP error or domain or email does not exist. Does any one have advice where I, google or godaddy are going wrong? Please help!
Grant.
Hey! Can you please explain how to subscribe to the godaddy white list? Thx
I have the same issue as Grant. Anyone have any tips about the following:
Domain at GoDaddy.com
Email transfered to Google Apps
SMTP setup on dedicated web server – message sit in queue
Shawn
If you’re looking to change your web host, our web hosting provider, Server Intellect, is always much more responsive to our needs, with the best customer support we’ve ever encountered.
I have shifted our emails on google apps one for our business website hosted on godaddy, but I am having problems receiving emails, some of the emails arrive at the mail box after hours and sometime days.
I have made several requests to google apps group but there has been no reply.
So, Please take my advice as much as tempting it may sound don’t shift unless you can bare the risk.
Pls note: I have seen google apps work perfect for others but for some mail server problem its not working fine for me.
hey i ran across this article trying to setup a email account and web hosting for a friend.
i am wondering if you host your website with godaddy or if you’re using a separate server for web hosting or if you’re using godaddy’s web hosting. if you have a website for that domain at all.