Hands-On Tech 236 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Hands-On Tech. What do we do when we want to switch our email solution to a new place? Well, let's take a look. Stay tuned. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech. This, of course is the show where I, Micah Sargent, take your tech questions and do my best to answer them. I'm really looking forward to the question this week because occasionally we get in a question that I think would benefit so many people. Sometimes they're pretty focused, but this one is rather broad and I am looking forward to answering it when I head into the mailbag and pull it out.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:44]:
This question comes from Steve, who writes in My girlfriend needs to switch her primary email account that she uses for her business, which is hosted by Bluehost, and have it run completely as a Gmail address. One of the issues she is having with her current email is that a lot of her emails to clients are lost in the spam folder. What's the best way to take her existing email address and switch it to make it a Gmail address and keeping her old emails of course. Here's the good news, Steve. This is something that a lot of people need to do and a lot of people have done and therefore it is a relatively simple process. It does involve a tiny bit of nerdery, but if you you have set up a site using Bluehost, or even if you've just set up email using Bluehost, then you are well equipped to handling what's going on here. Before we get into that though, I want to explain kind of what's up here, right? There are certain mail servers on the web that are more blessed than others. Gmail, Google's mail servers being one of them.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:54]:
By being a reputable mail server and providing email for so many people and thereby swaying the methodology of spam solutions across the web and frankly being responsible for a lot of the spam filtering that exists, Google has a step, is a step ahead than some of the other options, including in this case Bluehost. So if Bluehost and its servers are seen to be sending spam and plenty of Google users are marking email from Bluehost as spam, then Google is going to start filtering those out. And I'm saying Google because I'm guessing that many of the people that are your girlfriend is sending mail to are probably using Gmail accounts because so many people do. Could be the same for Yahoo, could be the same for Microsoft, but in this case we'll just go with with Gmail as the kind of understanding here as the example. So how do we do this? Well, the best way and the way that this should be done is not simply by using a free Gmail account. If your girlfriend is a business owner and is paying Bluehost, then let's keep this investment going when it comes to managing email through Google. So that means using Google Workspace, formerly known as G Suite, now called Google Workspace. This of course is Google's professional service that lets you use the Gmail interface, but more importantly, send mail from Google's kind of blessed servers while still using your own custom domain.

Mikah Sargent [00:03:53]:
This is different, as I mentioned, from forwarding email to a free Gmail address because in that case, even though your girlfriend could say any email I get from Bluehost, forward it to my Gmail account and then I'll respond from there, that's if it is an attempt to respond to the email with the same email to which that mail was sent, it's going to still be coming from those other servers. And so it's not getting the blessing of being part of Google servers. That's the thing that needs to happen here. So how do we go about doing this? Well, it's not hard. First and foremost, sign up for a Google Workspace plan. There is a starter option that's just $7 per user per month. I'm imagin going to be one user, your girlfriend and that's really all that's needed. Very easy to go to the Google Workspace website and sign up there.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:47]:
When you sign up, you'll see, I think it's like starter and professional and this and that and the other for just having a Gmail account with a custom domain that's the one that's $7 per month. During sign up, you don't have to get into the whole subscription fully. It's going to ask what, what your girlfriend's existing domain name is. So this of course is the one that's with Bluehost. So in this case, let's say it's girlfriendiwifruit.com, right? So in this case, during signup, this is where you would type in kiwifruit.com and Google is going to know, okay, this is the custom domain that your girlfriend wants to use with the account. Then you go through this process where you verify that you actually own the domain. This is really simple. All you have to do is you're going to go into your Bluehost account.

Mikah Sargent [00:05:49]:
So that's where you're hosting your domain, your kiwifruit.com domain. You're going to put in a little bit of text that Google is going to provide. So Google will say, hey, here's some text and you need to show me that you own that domain by logging in and putting that text there. And then we're going to look for that text and if it's there, well then good, we know that you own it. Google actually provides a step by step wizard so you can log into your Bluehost account, head to that DNS or the Zone editor section. I don't have a Bluehost account, but I was kind of looking to try to figure out how Bluehost labels it. And then you just copy and paste that text. It's not at this point not going to change email.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:36]:
We've got more to do. All this does is verify ownership of kiwifruit.com have you heard us talk about Club Twit? It's our membership program. It takes the podcasts you already listened to and makes them better. No ads, more content and a direct connection with us and the community. Whether you listen for news, security or Apple and Microsoft updates, it all comes included. Details are at TWiT TV, Clubtwit afterward and again still before we switch over email. Now it's time to migrate all of your email over to your Google Workspace account. Once again, Google knows what's up and knows that this is a regular common process.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:21]:
So Google Workspace has a built in data migration tool and it will actually let you connect it directly to the Bluehost email account and copy everything over. So the way that this process works not hard. In your Google Workspaces kind of main menu you'll find this tool called Data migration. From here you do what's called set up a new migration. This is important. You need to choose IMAP as the migration because Bluehost email is going to be imap. And then remember when you logged into your Bluehost email account, you probably put in your server details. It was probably MailWifra.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:06]:
You put in your email address, girlfriendiwifruit.com, your password kiwifruit123 and then hit enter basically. And what that does is it lets Google know what it needs to use to sort of be like a mail client, grab all of that mail and copy it over to Google to your new Google Workspace account. Now depending on how much email you have sent, received, saved, it can take a while. So that process needs to complete entirely. And then while that's going on, no need for business lost because you can continue to use your Bluehost email as normal. This is going to happen in the background and make sure to get all of those emails. Now, once you have confirmed that all of the email has been migrated over. So again, we went through that process of verifying that the domain belongs to you, then we migrated the emails.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:05]:
Now we're going to do the most complicated part, which is to say to Bluehost, you aren't in charge of my email anymore. I want Google Workspace to do it. So once you know that all of your email has been moved to the Gmail interface, now we go through the process, we flip the switch. So what this does is it communicates to everything that the mail should now go to Google servers instead of Bluehosts. And my responses should come from Google servers and not Bluehosts. You're going to go back to your Bluehost account. You're going to go to the DNS or again the Zone Editor section. You will find a record called MX Records that stands for Mail Exchanger.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:50]:
And you are going to delete those MX records that are there because right now they will be pointing to Bluehost, like mail Bluehost or something. Those need to get removed. Remember, we're only removing the MX records. And then you add the MX records that are provided by Google, probably about five. That was my experience. And they'll have some kind of long names, but they end in google.com. don't worry, because Google Setup guide for this does list the exact records to add. And the good news is, you are paying for this service.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:27]:
So if you run into issues, Google is much more likely to provide support because you're paying for it. It is different for people who are using the free accounts, which is why, again, I'm not suggesting we mess around with the free version. Invest $6, $7 a month. I mean, for a Google Workspace account with all this stuff built in, it's well worth it. Don't do the free. I'm telling you, if you run into any issues, it's not going to be the same as having paid for it. And then once you've done that, understand that it does take a while for the MX records to be updated. But if you're worried that while it's in limbo, you're going to miss some mail, that's not how it works.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:13]:
The mail will get sent out and then the switch will either be on Bluehost or on Google. There's no. There's no limbo switch, there's no in between. So the Mail is either going to go to Bluehost or it's going to go to Google. That mail's not going to be lost while the process is happening. It'll go to one of the two places, but once it's done, then it's all to the new host, which in this case is Google. Finally, once your MX records are updated, once you've migrated all your emails over, once you've verified the domain ownership, once you've signed up for that Google Workspace account that was in reverse, you'll log into Gmail with your business email. So again, I went with girlfriendkiwifruit.com to access your email.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:58]:
Your old emails will be there waiting for you. New emails will be delivered to Google and when you send it, it's going to be from Google's blessed servers, which is less likely to end up in the spam folder. So that should take care of the problem. Again, why I love this question is you're not the first person to ask this. Steve. Steve, Girlfriend. This is a situation that is common to a lot of people who have small businesses. You know, they've got their Etsy store, they've got whatever, I don't know, you sell wonderful Kiwi based desserts and so you are trying to just do your business.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:41]:
And unfortunately, you know, at one point you saw that Bluehost would give you a domain for 99 cents a year and you chose them as your domain provider. Then they said, oh, it will also include email for $1.99. And then now all the email that you're trying to get to the people, you're not hearing back from your Kiwi supplier because your email ends up in spam. I understand this is the way to solve it. Given that you asked about Gmail, I will say that this is also solvable using other tools. I use Fastmail, it's been a sponsor on the network but have used it long before that. And Fast Mail is also in a great space to keep it from going to spam. And so these are different options available to you.

Mikah Sargent [00:13:30]:
But as someone who specifically asked how to do it with Gmail, this is the best way to go about it. Get that Google Workspace plan. Google is not a sponsor of the network. This is solely about having those extra protections in place and the kind of robust behind the scenes. Rather than using that free Gmail account. I just, if you're a business owner, you want to use that and I'm not a tax professional, but if you talked to a tax professional. I have a feeling they would tell you that your Google Workspaces account is at least partially deductible, if not entirely.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:13]:
Again, not a tax professional. So talk to one who will tell you about how you can save money by using this for your business. So that is my advice for you, Steve and Steve's girlfriend. And I again, love this question. Love questions like this. Always great whenever there's something that can help a lot of people. But again, I also love those very specific questions because the chances are you're going to come across somebody else who has that same problem. The other day, I.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:43]:
I can't remember what it was, but there was some situation. Oh, it was. I was recording my show. One of my shows that I do. It's a show called Clockwise. And I was recording it and one person was on the zoom call and everything was fine. But then they started while they were talking after not having spoken for a little while, and their voice had like an echo, a reverb after it and was going, what in the world? We got to fix that. So they sort of played around in the settings and got that fixed.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:20]:
And then another person on the show, separate from that person also started to echo reverb feedback all of a sudden. And they went and fixed it. And I specifically go, okay, what happened? What did you do? What did you do? I need to know because I need to be able to provide that advice to someone else who might run into this issue. And it ended up that it wasn't the same issue. It was a completely separate issue that just happened to result in the same symptom. But it is nice to know, right? Okay, here is the problem and here is the solution. And then when people are looking for the solution, they've got it. So thank you for asking your questions.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:00]:
Never feel ashamed or worried or concerned that your question is silly or not worth answering. I love them all. hot@twit.tv is how you get in touch. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. We'll be back again next week with another episode of Hands-On Tech. Bye. Bye.