Google Apps for Business

I'm been trying out Google Apps for Business.

I've been on the web since early 1999 as www.jrpeet.com. I had anticipated that I might do some consulting business, but work at Wells Fargo is so good I never developed this.

Google invited me to try their business applications out and I worked on this over the past weekend. Google offers 100 (!!) free email accounts for small organizations. Each have 2 gigs of space, calendaring, web chat, shared documents, and web apps (spreadsheet (think Excel) and write (think Word). A web portal and administrative dashboard are provided as well. Each email account is personalized with the organizational domain name (eg: jrpeet@jrpeet.com, fred@jrpeet.com, ... (up to 100))

Here's my experience:

1. After signup, you have to validate the domain. This was not as easy as I thought it would be. I use www.mydomain.com as my domain registry and domain redirection service. The directions mentioned Yahoo, Network Solutions, GoDaddy, etc. but not my service.
   
2. There are two validation techniques: HTML and CNAME, MX records. The HTML technique is straightforward (create a page and upload it, Google interrogates for validation!). This technique was not recognized by Google (I think because of my domain redirection service!). Technique 2 is the CNAME / MX records method. I had never used these records before and this method hosed me up. I followed the instructions and was able to get my email (jrpeet@jrpeet.com) to work but then my website was down. I deleted the CNAME record and left the MX records (and waited overnight for the change to propagate) and this morning both the website worked and the email worked as well.
   

Comments:

1. This could work really well for a small to medium sized (under 100 in staff) church.
   
2. No need for a network administrator (how much would that salary be!).
   
3. Need more than 100 email accounts / calendars? You can upgrade to the professional service (unlimited email accounts @ $ 50 per person per year) with 10 gigs each and phone support.
   
4. Were I to create a new domain today: I would utilize GoDaddy for both the domain registration and hosting (for a mere $ 1.99 per month more you can have Cold Fusion and MYSQL) and Google Apps for Business. Compare Google Apps Editions
   
5. www.weboffice.com offers a similar service.