Setting Up Google Workspace for Your Business

We recommend Google Workspace to almost every client, and the reason is not brand loyalty. It gives you three things at once: email that reliably arrives, addresses at your own domain rather than a generic provider, and mail that lives on Google’s servers instead of the same server as your website. That last point is the one nobody thinks about until it matters, and it is explained below. Signing up takes about twenty minutes, and there is one step in the middle where you should stop and hand over to us.

Why we recommend it

Your address is your domain. [email protected] reads as a business. A generic free address does not, and some customers will quietly discount you for it.

It arrives. Deliverability is the whole game with business email, and Google is about as good as it gets. Their reputation with other mail providers is what gets your quote into somebody’s inbox rather than their spam folder.

Your email is not on your web server. This is the one worth understanding properly. Many hosting plans include mailboxes, which sounds convenient and free. The problem is that your email then shares a fate with your website. If the site is hacked, the server is overloaded, the host has an outage, or you decide to move hosts, your email is caught up in all of it. Worse, when a website on a shared server starts sending spam, mail providers blacklist the server’s address, and legitimate email from every site on it stops being delivered. You did nothing wrong and your invoices stop arriving.

Keeping email at Google and the website at your host means a bad day for one is not a bad day for both. It also means that when we eventually move your website somewhere else, your email does not move at all and nobody notices.

Before you start

• You need to own your domain already. If you do not, tell us and we will sort that first. Do not buy a domain through the signup flow.
• Decide your first address. Whoever signs up becomes the administrator, so this should be an owner or manager rather than a general info@ mailbox. You can add info@ as an extra address later at no cost.
• Have a payment method ready. Google bills you directly, per person, monthly or annually. It is not billed through us.
• Know who currently receives your email. If you already have mailboxes somewhere, list every address in use before you start, because all of them need to exist in the new account before you switch over.

Signing up

1. Start here: create your Google Workspace account. Using this link sometimes attaches a discount to your first year, and it costs you nothing either way.
2. Enter your business name and roughly how many people will need an address. An estimate is fine; you are not locked in.
3. Enter your contact details, then choose Yes, I have one I can use when asked about a domain, and type your domain exactly as it is, with no www and no https.
4. Create your own username and password. This becomes the administrator account for the whole organisation, so use a strong password and store it in a password manager rather than a notebook.
5. Enter payment details and confirm. You now have an account, and Google drops you into a setup wizard.

Where to stop and send it to us

The wizard will now ask you to prove you own the domain, and then to point your email at Google. Both of those are DNS changes. If we manage your DNS, you will not be able to make them, and you should not try.

1. When Google shows you a verification code, usually a long line of text beginning google-site-verification=, copy the whole thing.
2. If Google also shows you a list of MX records, you do not need to copy those. We already have the correct values.
3. Email us the verification code and tell us the domain it is for. We will publish it, normally the same day, and reply when it is live.
4. Leave the wizard open or come back to it later. Nothing is lost by waiting.

Choosing a plan

Google offers Business Starter, Business Standard and Business Plus, with Enterprise editions above them. Prices change often enough that any figure we printed here would be wrong within months, so check them on Google’s own page as you sign up. What actually differs:

• Storage per person. Starter is the tightest, and it is shared between Gmail, Drive and Photos. If you keep years of mail with attachments, Starter will fill up.
• Meeting length and recording. Starter cannot record meetings. If you run client calls you want a record of, you need Standard or above.
• Shared drives. Standard and above give you team drives that belong to the business rather than to a person, which matters when somebody leaves.

For most of our clients, Business Standard is the sensible default. You can change plan later without losing anything, so do not agonise over it. If you are unsure, start lower and move up.

Once your DNS is done

1. We will confirm that verification is live and that your MX records point to Google. See Google Workspace MX record values for what we set and why.
2. Go back to the setup wizard and finish verification. Google should now confirm your domain immediately.
3. Set up DKIM. This is a separate signature that proves your mail is really yours, and without it some of your email will be rejected outright. It is not switched on by default and it has to be generated inside your own account. Follow generating your DKIM record in Google Workspace.
4. Send yourself a test message from an outside address, and send one out, before you rely on it.

Adding your team

In the admin console, go to Directory, then Users, then Add new user. Each person you add is billed separately. Two things that are free and often missed:

• Aliases. An extra address that lands in an existing mailbox. accounts@, info@ and sales@ can all arrive in your inbox without paying for three accounts.
• Groups. One address that reaches several people. Better than an alias when more than one person genuinely needs to see the mail.

Mistakes worth avoiding

• Do not cancel your old email until the new one is proven. Once MX records change, mail stops going to the old mailboxes. Anything sitting in them that you have not exported is stranded. Move it across, confirm new mail arrives, then cancel.
• Do not sign up twice for the same domain. If somebody at your business has already tried, tell us before you start. Two accounts claiming one domain is a support case, not a five-minute fix.
• Do not use a personal Gmail address as the administrator. It works, and it becomes a problem the day that person leaves.
• Do not skip DKIM. Everything can look finished and working while your mail is still being rejected by some recipients. It is the most common email problem we are asked to look at.

What we need from you

Reply with the domain, the verification code Google gave you, and whether you have any existing mailboxes we should know about. That is enough for us to do our part.

Related

• Google Workspace MX record values
• Generating your DKIM record in Google Workspace
• What not to touch, and when to email us instead