I've been hosting my website with Crystaltech since 2001.  They are GREAT with Web Hosting and they have awesome Tech Support.  One of the things I really love is they have a community forum open to the public you can use to talk with other customers and support even chimes in quit often (http://forums.crystaltech.com). 

The one gray area that CT has never been all that great at is hosting Email.  I'm not slamming them by any stretch, there are trade offs in most everything and no one is great at everything.  Without going into all the why's (SPAM, Email's not going through etc.) I've been wanting to move my email some place else for some time but never got around to it, mainly because I don't know a lot about DNS, MX records, SPF and so forth -- I've also been afraid I'd just hose it up even worse.

After finding out that GMail would allow you to use your own domain name , setup 100 email accounts, and with 7 GIGS of storage; I decided it was time I moved my email to GMail.  Sure GMail has some ads on the side, but there SPAM filtering is fantastic plus it's another one of those little trade offs in life.

So I finally made the move this past week and wanted to share the details in case others are wanting to do the same. I also decided to use ZoneEdit as the DNS host for several reasons. For one it's free unless you have a TON of DNS lookups happening (your AMAZON.COM or Microsoft) or you add more then 5 domains to the same account.  Another reason is, they offer more DSN services then CT is going to allow you to maintain yourself on a shared account.

What follows is the instructions for moving your CT hosted email (which uses SmarterMail) to GMail via ZoneEdit DNS.  Keep in mind this shouldn't cost you a dime and you'll end up with what I believe is a much better email solution (minus the ads).

Step 1) Create your free account at Gmail Apps by going here: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions.html and signing up for the "Standard Edition" (Note: you could use the Premier Edition and get rid of the Ads but it's quit pricey at $50 per user per year).

Step 2) Once you have your Gmail Apps account it's time to enable email and create your accounts.  You'll want to create an account for each email account you have at CT.  Luckily all mine are family so I knew there passwords and could set them.  If you don't you'll just have to let everyone know that there passwords will be changing soon and tell them what they are.  They can also change there password themselves later.

Step 3) You'll want people to be able to go to mail.yourdomain.com to get there email once setup, so you'll need to tell that to Google.  Once in the Google Apps Dashboard select Service Settings -> Email and under Web Address click on Change URL.  I recommend clicking on the "Change URLs for all domain services" that way you can take better advantage of all Google Apps has to offer.  Click all of the buttons for custom entries such as:

http://mail.yourdomain.com
http://docs.yourdomain.com
http://start.yourdomain.com
ect....

Step 4) Log into the WebControl Center at Crystaltech and get you domains DNS information under the DNS Zone Admin screen.  You'll need to hit the "go" button to display the information.  Your best bet is to just leave this information up in the browser as you'll need to refer back to it as we go on.

Step 5) Create an account at ZoneEdit. 

Step 6) Setup the account at ZoneEdit.  Select the Zone you created for your domain such as youdomain.com.  You'll want to first add your IP addresses (A).  This is all the information under Host Records (A) in CT's DNS Zone Admin screen.  AT ZoneEdit you'll configuration will end up looking something like this:

(Note: CT gives all shared hosts a dedicated IP address which makes this all possible.  If your hosting company doesn't use a dedicated IP you may be out of luck or have to pay extra for one.)

Next you will add your Mail MX Servers for Gmail which will look like this:

Next You will add your Aliases (CNAME) which allow you to essential easily redirect to other Google Apps.  Those settings look like this:

Lastly you want to add a SPF record.  This one took me a while to figure out at its not out lined in the steps given by Google but if you search there help file you will find the info here: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33786

In ZoneEdit go into Advance Settings and add in under "Text Data (TXT)":

Step 7) The nice thing is, at this point nothing has really changed.  All your email is still going to CrystalTech (or your web host), allowing you to do this over a day or so if you want.  Nothing changes till you go to your domain record and change your Name Servers.  So for me I went to GoDaddy and changed my NameServers from the ones CT gave me ( 2 different nsX.webcontrolcenter.com's) to the ones ZoneEdit says to use (2 different nsX.zoneedit.com's).

Additional Tip:

It will probably take a while for your NameServer changes to propagate through the Internet.  Once they do you should start getting your email on GMail.  One thing you'll want to do is get your emails from your CT account moved over.  To do so you can still use POP to copy them down to your PC or you can POP them into Gmail.  What changes is instead of using mail.yourdomain.com as the pop setting, use mailXX.webcontrolcenter.com where XX is the mail server they have you setup on at CT (again you'll have to figure this out on your own if you use a different hosting company).  You should be able to find that information in CT's DNS Zone Admin screen under the MX record.

One of the nice things is GMail works much better for me in responsiveness on the IPhone and even on downloading POP emails to Outlook.  Plus ITS SECURE.

Let me know if I missed anything!! 

I'll do an additional posting soon on some GMail tips I've discovered (using POP, Filters, Labels & Archiving).