This is an aside, but does anyone know if there's a way to get Google Apps but keep using your gmail address? I'd be happy to pay the Google Apps subscription rate, but I don't want to go through the pain of switching my email address to a new custom domain. I'm guessing that you can set up a forwarding rule from the gmail account to the new one, and then use the Send As feature in the new account, but that seems pretty kludgy. Is there a better way?
As a Google Apps user, you do NOT want to do this.
You are well advised to host your email elsewhere and have it relayed to your normal Google account (and add the email address as a Google identity and a send-as in gmail).
I'll tell you why:
+ Google Apps users are the LAST group of people to get access to new google products (Google+ for example)
+ You can NOT add new emails to your identity information
+ There is no appropriate way to transfer your identity
Thanks for the first hand feedback. What do you mean about 'not add new emails to your identity information'? I'm OK with missing out on the latest & greatest features/products. I also don't really care about Google+, if that's what your third point was talking about?
Thanks, but that seems kind of backwards - that way you're using the free/unsupported gmail account as the 'front end' to relay incoming mail to your paid/supported Apps account. If you then call Google up to troubleshoot something, would they blame issues on the free gMail relay? What if the free account was occasionally flaky, and you missed getting some emails forwarded... Also from what I've read, the gMail 'Send As' feature has been not exactly transparent previously, maybe that's been fixed now? I don't know if the fact that both email accounts are Google would help make this not a problem.
