Migrating all things business to Google.

cormie

Hey folks,
I'm considering creating a separate Google account that will be used for business, independent from my personal@gmail account so down the line if I end up having multiple business accounts for different ventures, each account can be accessed by anyone I assign, without having to worry they can see any personal info and everything on the account would be strictly business.

The primary business I have in mind to migrate right now thankfully doesn't need much else than what can be found on Google. So Gmail could manage emails, contacts and calendar, DOCS could manage accounts etc, DRIVE could manage other files and so on.

I think it would be easy enough to get going if it was a fresh business, but I'll need to migrate over from my current set up which involves several thousand emails stored on Thunderbird with blacknight as the host, documents stored locally etc.

I've been using POP3 email since the start and from the little I know of IMAP, I believe it's better in terms of keeping things in sync. Ideally I'd want all email to be centralised on gmail, but to still be able to access it maybe through thunderbird and for every email sent and received here, to still show up in the correct threaded format on gmail and no matter what I do in thunderbird, if everything was to be deleted by mistake even, that it would still be all good within @Gmail.

Does anyone know if this is all possible? Especially with the email centralised on Gmail?

I'd also want each account to be accessible from one device. As far as I know, you can be signed into several Google accounts from the one android smartphone, is this correct or would I then be best having a separate phone for each separate account down the line too?

Any feedback would be great.

markiemark2005

Google Apps for business is brilliant, and pretty cheap also. Its around €5 per user per month. IMAP is better than pop3 for email, its easy enough to migrate your existing pop3 email to Google, http://email.about.com/od/gmailtips/qt/How_to_Import_Mail_from_Mozilla_Thunderbird_in_Gmail.htm.

You can have many google accounts signed in on your Android phone.

cormie

Wow, thanks a lot for the quick reply. I understand the apps for business allows multiple users, i.e. user1@business.com, user2@business.com, but really, I just need the one info@business.com address for now. Not that €5 is expensive, not at all, but if I can do all this for free, why not

Do you think it's possible to migrate all the thousands of emails onto the new gmail account? I wonder would it show up in threaded views and that or would it mess things up slightly?

I think I'll be getting a separate mobile that would then be used solely for answering business calls, returning calls etc and the account can be used here, but I'd also like the account synced with my personal phone so I can overlook things if need be.

Do you think it would be possible to still have Thunderbird as a "device" so to speak, that could be used to respond to/receive mails/work offline and it would all be synced seamlessly?

EDIT: Oh, just having a look at that link now, I thought it was going to be a how to set up business email on gmail, but see it's specifically for what I asked, cool

Mrs OBumble

Yes, and yes.

I have all my websites set up with way, so that I can hand them on to whoever without having to unwind things later.

cormie

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Yes, and yes.

I have all my websites set up with way, so that I can hand them on to whoever without having to unwind things later.

This is exactly what I want! How many do you have on the go? Do you have them then all connected to one device or thunderbird or something similar too?

markiemark2005

cormie wrote: »

This is exactly what I want! How many do you have on the go? Do you have them then all connected to one device or thunderbird or something similar too?

You just need one device. When you open Gmail, you can select the account you want to send/receive from. You dont need Thunderbird or numerous devices. You get the first month free on Google Apps for Business, give it a try with a dummy domain and see how you get on.

uck51js9zml2yt

Its very easy to transfer emails.

cormie

Do you mean when opening gmail from a mobile device?

I'd only be interested in having multiple devices if it came to a stage where I wanted someone else to manage the account so could either give them a phone (if the business had it's own number which I also wanted them to manage calls to), or access to the account which they could use on their own phone. Are both possible?

With regards thunderbird, well this would be the same, just to have thunderbird able to access the account too, so I could have thunderbird installed on my laptop as I'm well used to it and like the offline abilities etc it gives, but for any changes I make in thunderbird to be reflected in the main gmail account then too. No need for thunderbird on multiple devices, unless whoever it may be also has a laptop they'd rather use thunderbird with than doing email from gmail itself.

Mrs OBumble

I do use Thunderbird, because I prefer it to the Gmail interface. Different strokes and all.

All accounts are set up on it with IMAP, so all messages live on the server. I've got four different email accounts set up on my Thunderbird client, and five (a slightly different set: three the same, two different) set up on my phone. I have eight main websites, but the email accounts for some of them are so low volume that I don't bother: they're set to forward messages to my personal account and I just log on to them in gmail.com the occasional time I need to send from them.

The only hassle I have is that I enabled 2-factor authentication on my main account person (the one I use for AdSense), and haven't been able to figure out how to get this to interact with Thunderbird. So I need to re-generate an app-password for it each time I restart my laptop.

NB some of my sites are mine (hobby / money-making). Others are for community groups that I'm involved with. I've found that the same model works well for both.

Keeping everything for each one separate from the beginning was the best decision I ever made (but you probably don't need to hear that now!)

Graham

cormie wrote: »

Do you think it would be possible to still have Thunderbird as a "device" so to speak, that could be used to respond to/receive mails/work offline and it would all be synced seamlessly?

Yes.

I have several Gmail for Business accounts which I manage/monitor from several devices without issue. Laptops/desktops/tablets/mobile phones using Windows/Mac/iOS/Android and an assortment of email clients.

cormie

I'm the same with thunderbird, the interface is great and with add ons like Quicktext, emailing is much much quicker. I see gmail has a "canned response" feature in labs, but it doesn't seem as good as quicktext, for a start it seems you can only give one response, so if you have canned responses explaining something like how to make payment, or something else, you can't include them both in the one email from what I can see, it's either one or the other?

I'll avoid the 2 factor authentication so.

So I think the next step is to get a business@gmail.com account open, set up imap on the @business.com account, then sync it with the @gmail account and have it so any sent items appear to be from the @business.com address, and then have all this accessible by the likes of thunderbird and phone mail apps.

What happens if you have two google accounts signed in to a phone and use something like maps? You said with gmail it asked you which account, is it the same with maps? The business requires a lot of use of maps and I'd like all the history etc to be saved as google maps and search history is such an amazing tool for my business.

Graham

Just did a quick check on Google maps on an iPhone, there's an option to sign-in where you can specify which account to user. I presume that's the same for other devices.

Graham

Just checked and it's the same on Android, also spotted the option to change accounts so it looks like multi-account support is standard too.

cormie

Really appreciate all the help everyone! Hopefully won't need to come back with any troubleshooting

cormie

I was just about to get started setting this up and I went to blacknight live chat and they said Gmail can't be set up with imap, only pop

my aim was to have businessname@gmail.com and this could be logged into, but it could also be synced with thunderbird using imap (so all folders etc are synced) and the account and all emails could be viewed by anyone with access to the @gmail and it would seamlessly sync with any mails sent to/from thunderbird and these mails could be viewed via gmail too. Does the lack of imap on gmail meant his isn't possible now?

Ogogo

cormie wrote: »

I was just about to get started setting this up and I went to blacknight live chat and they said Gmail can't be set up with imap, only pop

my aim was to have businessname@gmail.com and this could be logged into, but it could also be synced with thunderbird using imap (so all folders etc are synced) and the account and all emails could be viewed by anyone with access to the @gmail and it would seamlessly sync with any mails sent to/from thunderbird and these mails could be viewed via gmail too. Does the lack of imap on gmail meant his isn't possible now?

IMAP works from my gmail, I was unaware of any pop only issues? Why dont you just setup a trial gmail account and test it out?

cormie

I've just posted the same question on the google group forums. It's pretty complicated to read so I hope it makes sense: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/apps/RJQdVmlCUkE;context-place=forum/apps


It's pretty much the same as I've posted above I think. So I'm hoping the server tech support guy isn't correct and this is possible. Would be great if it is


I can test it with a trial account I guess, I actually wanted to set up another businessY@gmail account in associated with a new businessY domain I got.

Charles Babbage

I'm using Thunderbird with 2 factor authentication, not sure what was involved.

cormie

So I got a response on the google product forums saying that if an individual account goes above the threshold of being used by more than one person, it can get locked down. There's a collaborative inbox that can be used instead with Gmail. I'm still not sure if all the imap/thunderbird etc set up is possible though. All these different methods and options are a bit of a minefield to know what will actually work!

Mrs OBumble

cormie wrote: »

I was just about to get started setting this up and I went to blacknight live chat and they said Gmail can't be set up with imap, only pop

my aim was to have businessname@gmail.com and this could be logged into, but it could also be synced with thunderbird using imap (so all folders etc are synced) and the account and all emails could be viewed by anyone with access to the @gmail and it would seamlessly sync with any mails sent to/from thunderbird and these mails could be viewed via gmail too. Does the lack of imap on gmail meant his isn't possible now?

They are wrong. Unless what they really meant was that this wasn't recommended if there are multiple people using the same account without paying for a multi-person apps account.

However for security, I would suggest keeping businessname@gmail.com hidden, and using either genericName@business.com or cormies.Ownname@business.com as the public address.



You're right, it is very confusing. Just have to keep working methodically thru the options / issues. Maybe even buy some consulting time from a small-business-computing specialist - make sure you get one who has good references from someone you trust.

cormie

Thanks again for the input on this. Yes, I don't plan on publishing the @gmail address anywhere and only plan on publishing the @business address, as I do already.

Any recommendations for someone who could help with all this? If it's something you do yourself, please PM me a quote

I'll probably be able to figure it out myself with help of friends, but would be nice to have an expert to consult if things get messy.

cormie

Hmm, so maybe the blacknight support were correct. I was looking at how to add a business email to Gmail and following the steps, I don't see any IMAP settings

StupidLikeAFox

Hmmm, we have our business email with Gmail - there are two of us and we both log in to the gmail account and can access it via the app on our phone.

Our website is www.business.com and hosted with blacknight, our gmail login is info@business.com and we access it through gmail. Our gmail account is just like any other gmail account, we dont have a business@gmail.com email account set up.

cormie

Oh that's weird. Did you set it up with Google apps and do you pay for it or is it free? Do you use IMAP?

uck51js9zml2yt

I just moved my local school onto google apps for education which is free. It needs t be proven that its a school before everyone jumps to do it:)

I transferred their eircom account over very easily and am forwarding their old gmail account to the new address. Took a few hours but simple enough to do.

M.T.D

I had a brief look, to refresh my memory, at gmail again and unless I am misinterpreting, what you do is set/link the gmail account to your other email addresses, you can leave a copy on your website servers if you wish. You can set the gmail account to send mail as if it was going from your own server/domain. You can access all your mail on the gmail account with either pop3 or imap from Outlook, Thunderbird, iPhone etc.

Ogogo

cormie wrote: »

Hmm, so maybe the blacknight support were correct. I was looking at how to add a business email to Gmail and following the steps, I don't see any IMAP settings

In an earlier answer I suggested that IMAP would work with GMail, I assumed from reading your posts that you wanted to use thunderbird as a client in front of what is actually called "Google Apps for Work". You did indeed refer to this as GMail.

From your more recent post, it now looks like you want to move / forward / terminate your blacknight email in a gmail account using IMAP and indeed this is not possible as you have found out. Apologies if I have added to your confusion, I am unclear as to whether I misinterpreted the requirement or you were unclear describing it but either way I think its not going to work.

Your options if you want to pursue this are probably, forward the emails from the blacknight accounts to the gmail account. I dont use blacknight so I dont know if this is possible - I will assume it is, you can then use filters in GMail to organise the emails, add labels etc.

Some downside to this are;

The messages will be forwarded messages and you will not be able to simply hit the reply button.
An extra hop in the email chain - may provide for very small extra delays, technical complexity etc.
Sending mail from ****@gmail.com may not be the most professional looking.

Alternatively - go and setup a Google Apps for Work account, one user can have multiple email addresses and you can set it up to send from any one of those, you can even add different domains.

StupidLikeAFox

cormie wrote: »

Oh that's weird. Did you set it up with Google apps and do you pay for it or is it free? Do you use IMAP?

We had to change the MX records, so basically Gmail becomes our email provider instead of blacknight (don't know the technical part of it)

Don't use Imap, just Gmails Web interface and their Android apps

Google have this answer specifically related to the blacknight setup:
https://support.google.com/a/answer/3052577?hl=en

cormie

Folks, thanks a lot for the continued support on this and apologies for any confusion. It's getting to sound a little confusing now with MX records, having a @business.com login for Gmail instead of @gmail.com login and everything else, so I'm not sure what route I need to go to achieve what I want, or if what I want is even possible. I drew up a diagram attached here to hopefully better explain what I'm after. I'm not sure is it possible now, but if it is, it would be great.

Notes:
-I have registered the gmail address "business@gmail.com", it doesn't really make a difference if the login needs to be using @gmail.com, or @business.com, customers will never see the @gmail.com address anyway.
-Blacknight is my host, this is who I bought the domain from and where the site is hosted. If changing MX records affects any element of the actual website hosting, I'd rather not mess with this. If changing MX records makes my goal possible, by eliminating blacknight from the setup, but doesn't affect anything of the actual website hosting, then I've no problem with this.

ED E

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

The only hassle I have is that I enabled 2-factor authentication on my main account person (the one I use for AdSense), and haven't been able to figure out how to get this to interact with Thunderbird. So I need to re-generate an app-password for it each time I restart my laptop.

App specific passwords. Generate one for your device/client in yoyr account CP and copy paste to Thunderbird. It uses that pass that ignores 2FA. Works a treat.