Google Apps For Your Domains A Review

I have been playing with Google Apps For Your Domains (GAYD?) for about a week now. It does have its own quirks and issues, but overall I enjoy having it as my primary email and calendar. I am using joshuacyr.com and will probably make usefulconcept.com an alias.

Today they have announced a paid solution. Basically they offer now a free version (what I am using) and a business solution for $50 a year.

There are a few key differences between the two:

1) Support. Yes you can finally get support from Google. This may not seem worth it, but ask the many people who have had their email shut down and have NO way of contacting google to find out why, etc. Just ask Sean Corfield.

2) Larger email boxes. After 1 week I am using 31 MB of email. It will not take all that long before I have used my 2048 MB available to me under the free program. Note that regular gmail accounts have 2.8gb of space. Why only 2gb for GAYD?

3) API. This will be especially interesting as time goes on. I can see why some companies will want to have access to the API for value added services, as well as integration into their business systems, etc.

To be sure there are other benefits as well.

Now, what issues have I had thus far?

1) I want to check multiple email addresses under one account. You can do that with having all email forward to your main email account. You can have the reply to set to the right email as well. However it may still look funny to some people saying "on behalf of " etc. This is true of GFYD or just GMail. Though at least gmail can check other pop accounts. with GAYD you must forward email. Why the difference?

2) Only one signature. I have many email addresses forwarding in, I should have custom signatures per email.

3) Documents were just added as a feature for GFYD however there is much improvement needed here. A good start, but I expect this to get better over time.

4) I can get emailed schedule requests from my clients (via exchange) and they properly goi into my calendar, but my response doesn't get back to the client. Again paid support would be helpful in this case, so that certainly helps.

Wish List:

1) CRM! OH, I would love to replace sugarCRM with something better.

2) Users clicking on ads from search portal, etc. should contribute a portion of that clickthrough revenue to the account holder.

3) Backup all documents, events, email, etc. from one interface and save in a standards compliant format. Google may not be my preference one day and I want to be able to move should I choose to.

4) Folders for my email. I would like to archive and have in folders I can browse through. Sometimes I just don't know what I am searching for...

5) Color labels. I want one label to show in red and another in green. While we are talking about labels it would be great to have a label I can apply to email coming from one of my contacts.