Multiple Domains for Google Apps

Google just announced that Apps will now support multiple domains. They’ve sort of had this support before with domain aliases, but aliases just mean .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) will work for you if .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the primary email.

What this new feature means is that a business with separate subsidiaries with different names can have that domain name and email addresses be the primary domain name under the parent domain. Also it allows for sharing documents between domains which is nice but could also be done in the past to a certain extent. Basically it boils down to easier admin management for your IT people and your users not having to login to your domain1.com account but giving out a domain2.com email address.

There are, however, a few limitations to this. One of them is that it currently does not support merging multiple accounts into a single multiple domain account. So if you have a user that has an account in your parent domain and your subsidiary domain, you can’t merge them into one that will work with both.

Anther big limitation is the lack custom URL’s for the subsidiary domain. If you setup a custom URL like mail.domain1.com to go to Gmail, that custom URL applies only for ‘users accessing the services at the primary domain’. So you couldn’t have a mail.domain2.com route to the subsidiary’s Gmail.

Yet another one that I don’t like is that if you’re using the free included Postini service for spam filtering on your primary domain, you can’t actually add other domains to your Apps account. You have to disable that service and then add them. And after that you can’t re-enable the free Postini service but you have to subscribe to one of the more robust services Postini offers.

Some of these limitations should be addressed or worked around at least before I’m going to get super excited about this, but I do look forward to the ability to merge domains under a parent with Google Apps.