Creating Aliases in Google Apps Email for Non-Users

Question

I would like to create an email alias for a domain associated with my Google Apps domain that points to a domain that's not associated with Google Apps.

domain1.com is associated with GA, domain2.com is not.

I'm moving from SmarterMail. In SM, I could create an alias, [email protected], that points to [email protected]. I didn't have to create an account in SM for [email protected], just an entry in the alias table.

In Google Apps, it seems that I have to create a [email protected] user, then forward that mail to [email protected].

My two problems are: 1) Setting up the forwarding is more work than just creating an alias. 2) When I switch to the premium service, I have to pay by account. That will be prohibitive as I have tons of aliases.

Is the way SmarterMail does it the normal way and Google is different, or the other way around? Or am I just missing something?

Answer 1

One way you might get it to work is by creating a catch-all email account on Google Apps (domain1.com) and have all of its email forward to a single account on domain2.com. Hopefully domain2.com has something similar to SmarterMail's easy solution for creating aliases.

If you are going to use Google Apps to forward your emails, there is a limit of 20 forwarding filters per account. So you should factor that in to decide how many accounts you need.

It seems that Google didn't plan for this kind of feature, at least not as well as SmartMail has.

Answer 2

Open the "Settings" tab at the top, select "Email" under "Services" from the menu at the left, then select the "Default routing" tab. Click "Add Setting".

You can now decide between "Single recipient" or "Pattern match" if you have more than one. I chose to use a pattern. My pattern looks something like:

(alias1|alias2|alias3)@mydomain.com

Make sure that "Modify message" is selected, and check "Change envelope recipient". Now you can use "Replace recipient" and enter a new address like [email protected] (or, depending on how things are set up, "Existing-username@" might work for you)

Note: This is a paid Business Apps account, and I don't know if all of these settings exist for free accounts. YMMV.

Answer 3

One more way to do this in Google Apps is to use a "group". A group is like a mailing list. Here are the steps you can follow:

1. "Manage This Domain" (for domain1.com)
2. "Email Settings"
3. "Users and Groups"
4. "Create a New Group". Fill-in your details. In your case, the group email address will be "guy". Make sure you choose "Team" and "Also allow anyone on the Internet to post messages""
5. "Add new members". Here, you should add "[email protected]"

From now on, whenever anybody sends email to "[email protected]" it will automatically go to [email protected] .

Another way to achieve something similar (but not exactly what you are asking for) is to choose "Manage This Domain" (for domain1.com) --> "Domain Settings" --> "Domain names" --> "Add a domain alias" and then add domain2.com as a domain alias.

Answer 4

You could create 1 account, attach the aliases to it (not sure what the alias limit is), and then set rules in that specific accounts Gmail filters to forward the email accordingly.