Gmail is an advanced email management applications freely provided by Google and obviously needs no introduction. You must have used it and would have an email address like yourname@gmail.com.

Did you know that Gmail can also be used to create and set up email addresses like yourname@YourCompany.com?
For example: I can use Gmail to access my custom domain's email too like anil.gupta@am22tech.com.

There are two ways of achieving this purpose:

1. Email Forwarding: This allows you to have your custom domain email address (like yourname@YourCompany.com) to be added to your existing yourname@gmail.com account and receive and send mails using the custom email address.
2. Google Applications For Your Custom Domain: This allows you to set up the Google Applications like Gmail, Google Docs etc. for your company and use the Gmail application for creating multiple email accounts for your employees with your custom domain.
   
   We re going to talk about this method today since it does not require you to have a prior gmail account and is most suitable if you have a small company and want to give them custom email addresses.

Steps to set up custom domain email with Gmail and Google Apps

1. Register a domain and Sign Up for Google Apps: Purchase a domain or start with already owned domain. Go to Google Applications. Enter your website's name here. For example, I have entered am22tech.com. Click 'get started' button.
   
   
   
   
2. Enter Administrator's profile details in Google Apps:

   Enter the administrator account details along with other details that have been asked for. Click next.
   

   
   
   
3. Add an administrator user name: The last step in the registration of Google Apps is to add a 'user name' and password for managing the account. Eneter the details and click 'Finish'. If everything goes fine, you will be automatically logged in to Google Apps account.
   
   You have now registred for Google Applications account. The next step is to set up domain, gmail and other applications to effectively start using Google Apps.
   
   
   
   
4. Verify Domain: The first step is to verify the ownership of your domain that you entered in step 1 above. If you don't verify, you won't be able to do anything. There are many ways of verifying the ownership and easiest of them is to add a META tag in any HTML page of your website. Google will verify the text code that you would have added in meta tag.
   Once done, you can follow the next steps to set up applications.
   
   
   
   
5. Enable Gmail application: By default, Gmail application is enabled in your Google Apps.
   
   
   
   
6. Set Up MX records in your hosting account: These records are meant to connect your email addresses with Google email servers. They need to be modified on your web hosting servers.
   For e.g. if you use GoDaddy.com as your web hosting provider, you should do the following settings in your Domain's DNS manager (On Godaddy.com):
   
   
   
   Save the changes. The changes may take some time to reflect. Once done, your Google Apps will try to fetch these new settings from Godaddy.
7. Customize Mail access URL (Optional) : The default URL to acces mail on gmail is http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomainname, but if you would like to make it more professional, Google gives you the option to have it customized to http://mail.YOURDOMAIN.com. For example: mail.am22tech.com
   
   If you want to customize the URL, follow these steps else you can directly move to creating users step.
   
   1. Click on "Email" on Google Apps dashboard.
      
      
      
      You would find an option of changing the URL here. Click this link.
   2. You will reach this screen. Select the custom URl option and click Continue.
      
      
      
      The next screen will guide you with the steps of changing the 'CNAME' records. This is required to be done at your hosting company server to allow the custom URL i.e. mail.YOURDOMAIN.com to function.
   3. Go to your hosting company provider's domain manager and open the DNS record. I will take the example of Godaddy again.
      
      Old CNAME entry with alias 'mail' on Godaddy DNS control:
      
      
      
      Change the above entry to reflect the Godaddy server's name as shown:
      
      
      
      
   4. Click Save.
8. Email Set Up Done, Add users and email addresses: The set up is complete. You now need to start adding the users and set up their email addresses. Go to "Organization and Users" tab and click 'Create USer'. Enter the details and click Save. You can either save with default password (generated by system) or provide your own password to start with.
   
   

That's it. Enjoy and let me know if you face any issues!!