I had to pick the day that my ISPs DNS server crashed to move all my email accounts to Google Apps. Currently the only domain working is pwop.com. You can email me at carl@pwop.com, but the franklins.net email domain is temporarily down.

So, about the move... Since I started franklins.net in 1996 I've been using MDaemon as an email server. About two months ago I decided to install the latest update, after which I discovered that updates weren't free. In fact it will cost me about $2800 to purchase one year's worth of "upgrade protection" which gives me free updates for a year. After that it's another couple grand for another year, etc.  I definitely wanted the latest version with the latest features and security devices, but I'm not willing to spend that kind of money for a mail server that serves about 40 email addresses in total, all SMTP/POP3, no AD, etc.

I thought about Exchange, but that's really overkill, and it requires a Windows domain, which I don't have or need. Just then Scott Hanselman and I were talking about Google Apps and Windows Live Domains in this week's Hanselminutes episode. Since he had moved his whole family and circle of friends up to Google, I decided to try and do it with Live Domains.

Transferring the DNS records and setting up the account was a snap. It really was easy to do, and went really smoothly. The Hotmail web client is also extremely pleasant to use. However, there are several real features missing that are preventing me from using it. The dealbreaker is that you can't forward email outside of hotmail/msn. I got an email from the team at MS who said that this feature was coming soon, but my mail server's temporary license expires in 5 days.

So I've spent the last 16 hours or so moving all my domains to Google Apps. While I didn't find the setup process nearly as easy as the Live Domains process, it seems there is UI for every kind of tweak you can do to a mail account, and that makes me extremely happy.

HOWEVER... the fine folks at my ISP had a DNS server crash and had to rebuild their servers from scratch. You may have noticed several of our websites being up and down today. The sites are mostly fixed, but the MX records are still very much screwed up. I'm hoping it will be resolved tomorrow.

So, I don't really have much to report on using Google Apps becuase carl@pwop.com is the only email I have right now that works, and I haven't had time to use it. I'm too busy trying to fix everything else.