: One Gmail INBOX: E-mail forwarding OR fetching via POP3 from other accounts? I maintain a few small web projects (2-3 people) where the scenario is usually the same: The project has its own

@Ann8826881

Posted in: #Email #Gmail

I maintain a few small web projects (2-3 people) where the scenario is usually the same:


The project has its own domain (example.com)
There is a need to setup one or two personal e-mail addreses (peter@example.com)
One common group e-mail address is also needed (support@example.com)
Every person with a personal e-mail address from bullet 2 needs to be able to receive e-mails from support@example.com.
Also needs to be able to reply to those messages as peter@example.com and also as support@example.com
Every person has their OWN personal e-mail address at Gmail/other domain running on Google Apps which he regularly checks and he would like to be able to easily read e-mails related to the @example .com at their own e-mail address, because it won't be effective to check more e-mail accounts separately = ONE INBOX, but the e-mails needs to be categorized (Gmail labels or so)
The project are on a shared hosting and are not as big to invest any money into running Google Apps on each of those.


I came with two possible solutions to this:

1. POP3 fetching




Setup each e-mail address separately on a mail server related to domain hosting
Instruct every person to use their Gmail POP3 fetching ability to fetch those e-mails to their personal account and to automatically label fetched messages with the project name.
Setup SMTP send as Gmail feature at every person OWN e-mail address so they will be able to send e-mails from @example .com domain


+ if a person no longer works on the project, I can just set up fetching on someone elses account and all PAST messages from domain-hosting-mail-server will be fetched to his account

- Every e-mail takes double space - at domain hosting and also at the persons OWN e-mail address
- Person's OWN mail provider has to be able to fetch e-mails (but the major one like Gmail is)

- I need to check for mail storage quotas every once in a while, so the e-mail accounts at domain-hosting are not full and the e-mail are not coming anymore

- Google POP3 fetcher checks the other e-mail accounts just once an hour which can mean a difference dealing with some crisis.

EDIT: I just found that when sending e-mails from OWN gmail address even through @example .com SMTP server the e-mails are not saved at the corresponding domain outbox (they are just in the gmail outbox). Is it possible to set this one somehow? It would be a big advantage for this method.

2. Mail forwarding




There won't be any real e-mail account on the domain, just set of rules where to redirect incoming messages (to person's OWN mail addresses)
Create one real e-mail account on each domain for SMTP authentication


+ Easy to setup

+ Won't take any space on domain-hosting

- The e-mails are only at person's OWN e-mail accounts so if they walk away from the project, it can be hard to get important e-mails back - also hard to transfer to someone else



Is there any other drawback on of each of those? Which one is a more common way to do? What am I missing there in the long run?

Vote Up Vote Down

Login to post a comment!