Using Google Apps Mail With Fasthosts – The Solution

March 10 View Comments Category: Findings

Last night I decided, once and for all, to work out how the hell to get Google Apps Mail to work with Fasthosts. Ewan from Mobile Industry Review has been a consistent support in this quest and I would like to express a public thank you for the encouragement he has given me to sort this out properly (and for his unending offers of help!)

The below, albeit slightly geeky, is for people with a Fasthosts website who want to use the Mail function within Google Apps (which rocks hard with Mailplane). Actually, the theory still stands if you use any other host but still want your mail to be in Google Apps – so please feel free to replace the Fasthosts reference with your own hosting company.

The main issue is that Fasthosts don’t allow you complete nameserver control. For example, Fasthosts control panel will ask for an IP address when changing the MX server records, yet you actually need full DNS control to make the changes required.

Its a fecking nightmare.

Well – it took me pretty much all night but actually the answer is remarkably simple – here it is in 4 easy-peasy steps:

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1. Sign-up free to ZoneEdit and create a new domain with your website details. Look for the nameservers ZoneEdit needs you to change yours to. In my case it was ns2 and ns13.zoneedit.com

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2. In your Fasthosts control panel, change your nameservers accordingly:

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Fasthosts control panel.jpg

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What this is doing is pointing site visitors to look at ZoneEdit DNS settings rather than Fasthosts DNS settings.

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3. In ZoneEdit, create an ‘A’ record for your domain by clicking on the ‘IP Addresses’ link at the top of the page:

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Edit Zone_ jonathanmacdonald.com (ZoneEdit.com)-2.jpg

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You need the IP address from your Fasthosts control panel so you can enter it in here – like so:

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Edit Zone_ jonathanmacdonald.com (ZoneEdit.com)-1.jpg

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4. Enter the Google Apps Mail MX records. These need to be entered in the Mail Servers (MX) screen of ZoneEdit and are shown, in full, below:

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Edit Zone_ jonathanmacdonald.com (ZoneEdit.com).jpg

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That’s it.

Now I have my website pointing at Fasthosts and my email being looked after by Google Apps Mail.

Hope this helps.

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  • Worked perfectly - top tutorial!
  • Thanks for the the tutorial. It worked for me too
  • gregwallis
    Many thanks for taking the trouble to do this; although it's not exactly complicated it certainly seems a little daunting. A simple visual explanation always makes the task easier and reassuring, so this is very much appreciated.
  • David
    Google Apps Mail MX records: Why do the Rank allocations skip numbers 2 and 4?
  • Neil
    Thanks for these useful instructions. Just a quick point. Google asks for the MX records to contain the trailing . however Zoneedit does not like this. I guess they add it for you?
  • looking more into that point fyi - they 'suggest' that the trailing is 'often' needed - but actually, i dont use the trailing '.' at the end of the MX string and its fine :)
  • Not sure - would check support - the instructions work tho.. ;)
  • Thomas Cooper
    Hi Jonathan,

    I followed your guide above 2 days ago & have 2 questions:

    1-Having done the transfer on Tuesday lunch, & it now being Thursday lunch, my email is still going into my fasthosts webmail. The email section of the Google Apps Dashboard Says "Updating... We are checking MX records for your domain. This may take 48 hours to complete." Should this have been done by now, or does it sometimes take this long to do?

    2-Will my website stay with Fasthosts, or will things such as the ftp access for the website change to somewhere else?

    Thanks
  • Hi Thomas

    I would wait for another day and see if its completed. It's up to how fast the servers refresh - you never know!

    Yes, your site will remain with Fasthosts.
  • hello, i read this site and i agree with you!
  • ER
    Thank you very much - this has been driving me nuts for days!!!
  • Yes - the term 'www' is a sub-domain. In the 'A records', you need to point the main and sub (www) to the desired destination.

    Just put your domain WITHOUT 'www' as the property in all the right-hand columns :)
  • andysimpson
    HI,

    This all looks great and all being well will do what I need, but I can't see where to find my fasthosts IP address on the control panel.

    Its probably really obvious, but can you suggest where to find it?
  • Go to your domain overview page. There is a box called Web Hosting Settings. The 6th row down says 'Server IP Address'.
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