Best way to setup multiple sites' emails in my Gmail

Question

I've a dozen sites and I want all of their emails come to my one gmail id and I want to reply centrally from Gmail only. I've also added all of those emails in "send email as:" list in Gmail.

I could add email forwarders in my Cpanel but in that case I'll not be able to send email whose inboxes haven't been created( for example [email protected]). If I create email account then I'd receive emails in my inbox as well as forwared by the forwarder( to my gmail id).

Otherwise I can setup Gmail for my domain. But for a dozen emails I'm not sure if that'd be fine. I see in http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html that for up to 10 emails it is free. But then to send email from webhosting the php code will need SMTP login details and leaving my important gmail account details in my webhosting account is very risky given my sites have been compromised twice.

What is the best way to centralize all my emails so that I can read/reply/search from single place?

Answer 1

If Google Apps is too expensive for you have you looked into Zoho email? Or RackSpace which is also affordable. If your websites have been compromised twice I would first secure your websites as best as possible then figure out a more efficient way to manage emails. One option is to purchase Outlook 2010 add all your pop accounts there which makes it very easy to manage multiple domains. Unless you pay for Google Apps there's no real easy way to manage them in gmail other than forwarding all to one account but that's quite a bit of email accounts to manage / edit settings for.

Answer 2

Actually Google Apps already lets you do this for free. The 10 email limit is a limit for the number of users. If you are only one user you can sign up using the free Apps account from here: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html

Go into your Google Apps dashboard > Domain Settings > Domain Names.

From there you can add as many domain aliases as you want.

So for example you have an email on Google apps setup as [email protected], by adding your domain aliases you will automatically receive [email protected] etc. into your inbox. (You still have to setup the DNS with those domains.)

Once you have setup your inbox to receive from multiple domains, you can setup the 'send mail as'. For other you do this my Mail Settings > Accounts > Send Mail As. This means you will be able to automatically reply from the email address an email was sent to.

For bonus points, what I would suggest you do is to setup filters to automatically label emails based on which domain they were sent to. Makes it easier in the long-run to maintain.