It’s been a very long time since I pretty much use Gmail to handle all my personal and business emails. I even use Google Domains to host my domains and handle email forwarding. Recently, I have asked by client to setup domain email for their business, which is currently hosted on my GoDaddy VPS server. Normally, I have two ways to setup email for client.
- Use Email Forwarding to send email to their Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo mail. So they use whatever existing email for the business.
- Setup SMTP or IMAP account on server for client.
There are annoying problems with the above two methods.
- The reply-to email will be their personal Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo email address, which is very unprofessional. With Google Gmail require external secured SMTP server, this method is NO Longer working option. Not too long ago, I decided to use Amazon SES to send email, so I can use Gmail to handle all my company emails. It works like a charm, but it costs money to send outgoing email.
- Using SMTP / IMAP account on my GoDaddy VPS requires SSL. It also requires use to setup their email client to receive and send email. Sending email without SMTP opens the door to Spammer to attack the server.
Until recently, I have signed up more Chinese clients, who are already using QQ Mail. QQ Mail is probably the largest FREE email provider in China. With QQ Mail, you can now add domain email to your QQ account to receive and send email with your domain name. You can easily choose which domain email to work with.
Setting up domain email is very straight forward. However, you can only use this awesome feature if you can read Chinese words.
You simply follow the instruction to setup your CNAME record and MX record. In my cases, I can get the domain email ready in 5 minutes. Client can now use their existing QQ Mail account to login and choose which email to send and receive. The beautiful of doing this is that I have total control which user has the rights to use domain email. It has become an add-on features for my Chinese clients.
So here is how you set it up, if you can read Chinese.
1. Click on Domain Email link (域名邮箱). Enter your new domain name.
2. Choose your domain name hosting company. I choose the others (其它提供商) , since I am using Google Domain and my own company domain name servers.
3. Follow the instruction to add CNAME and MX record. I set the time to 60 seconds. So it will be propagate in one minute.
Once it’s done. You will see a complete screen. You then go into the dashboard to add new email. It’s very easy and straight forward.
What’s missing?
Well. With QQ Mail, you won’t be able to use other email client to send and receive email. However, you can download QQ Mail Client on Mobile device and tablet to handle your email.