Web server wise, we currently have the essentials all setup. However, we’ve yet to do anything about email. Currently, your web server should be able to send email via a script or through the command line. But, we cannot create email accounts and send/receive email to them. Today we’ll be talking about our available options for email.

Running a mail server on our server can be very taxing. Sending, receiving and SPAM filtering email can be very resource intensive, eating up a lot of CPU time, making our server slower. Additionally, running a mail server requires a lot of maintenance on our end, such as keeping our SPAM filters up-to-date, etc. Also, the webmail programs available just aren’t very good.

Unless you’re a total control freak, running our own mail server just isn’t worth it. I recommend outsourcing our mail servers to Google Apps. This way Google does all the hard work, and we just sit back and enjoy the best webmail interface (in my opinion) and many other services Google offers. Google Apps offers you all the benefits of running your own mail server (email addresses at your domain, POP/IMAP access) plus you get 7GB+ of space and useful services integrated with your email account (like Google Calendar and Google Talk).

Luckily, Google offers a standard edition of Google Apps, so all this is available for free. Letting Google manage our mail server is looking mighty good, isn’t it? Google Apps does have a few downsides. You’ll only allowed to create 50 email accounts per domain, and Google Apps accounts are per-domain. So if you want to have email accounts for another domain, you’ll need another Google Apps account (unless you’re okay with sharing the same email accounts on multiple domains).

Setting up Google Apps is extremely simple, all you have to do is sign up and follow the instructions provided (verifying your domain ownership and setting up the DNS records to allow you to use Google Apps). To setup the DNS records, login to Webmin, navigate to Servers > BIND DNS Server, click on the appropriate zone for the domain you’re setting up, then click on Mail Server. For each MX record the Google Apps instructions give you, leave the Name field blank, but fill in the Mail Server and Priority fields with the provided records and press the Create button. After that, click Apply Zone then Apply Configuration in the top-right corner of the Webmin page.

There you have it, a fully managed mail server for free. Go forth and enjoy the benefits of using Google Apps as opposed to setting and managing up your own mail server.