Linking custom domain for business email through GMail
As a rsult of the upcoming changes to POP3 compatibility, I’ve been trying to adjust my business email setup.
Currently, I have a custom domain from NameCheap which gives me 3 email addresses on one domain for a small amount each year ($40 ish). I then link these domains up to GMail, and mostly manage them and respond to messages through GMail as it’s a much better interface than the native NameCheap Private Email platform.
As far as I can tell, the most straightforward way to fully integrate into GMail is to just link the domain and create 3 email addresses, which will cost me around £20/month EACH (so a big markup for me), but I’m somehow justifying that it would be worth it for it all to go through Google and not have to worry about changing systems again if the compatibility changes again for whatever other solution I might find.
I’ve got until 12th July before my NameCheap domain renews for another year, so I’ve been trying to make this switch on GMail. I’ve taken family members off the email address that’s been the business GMail and got a trial of Google Workspace Business Starter for 14 days.
However, when I go to add my domain, all is fine until I add the username for the first email address, which will be the new address for the account (hello@). This is the username I’ve used so far, and when I try to proceed I’m told “Try another username. This one is reserved.”
This still happens even when I’ve unlinked the address from my GMail inbox, and gone into NameCheap and shifted the catch-all to one of the other two email addresses and deleted the hello@ address from the account. Interestingly, info@ doesn’t have the same issue - but I was wanting to use hello@ to have some continuation in our communications for clients.
If anyone knows where the hitch might be here, or can advise another option for mail servers linking to Google that won’t cost me £60/month and will remain compatible after the upcoming changes, I would really appreciate your insight. I’m a small business side hustler who works long hours for a totally not computer related day job, so it’s already taken me months to get to this stage! Thanks in advance!
