My domain name using Hotmail and how to switch to Gmail

[Julien321]

I have a special premium Hotmail account that has my name as the address (XX@johndoe.com) and domain. MS offered these a few years ago and I don't think it was too successful. I now pay a company in Australia called Melbourne IT for registration but my mail still goes to Hotmail just like it always did. Since I pay for the domain doesn't that mean that I own it and can change or move it? I have recently switched to a mac and want to use the Mail program with POP mail. Can I just sign up for Gmail and use my johndoe.com or do I ned to have it released from Hotmail somehow? Also how do you go about getting it released and "installed" (or whatever it needs to be) for Gmail?

[dualsub2006]

Contact Melbourne IT and ask them how you go about changing the MX records for your email setup to point to Google. They will either do it for you or you will use their control panel to change them yourself.

Without a website for your domain you will need to validate with either a CNAME record or by changing the MX records in advance. As soon as your site is validated you will start getting email at Google Apps, but for the time frame that it takes to make the change and then validate you could get a few bounces.

It is a little messy, but it is simple enough to do. Google Apps is free by the way.

[Julien321]

Contact Melbourne IT and ask them how you go about changing the MX records for your email setup to point to Google. They will either do it for you or you will use their control panel to change them yourself.

Without a website for your domain you will need to validate with either a CNAME record or by changing the MX records in advance. As soon as your site is validated you will start getting email at Google Apps, but for the time frame that it takes to make the change and then validate you could get a few bounces.

It is a little messy, but it is simple enough to do. Google Apps is free by the way.

Have found that using IzyMail I can push my Hotmail to Gmail and then push my Gmail to Mac Mail. Talk about messy. I may try living with this for a little while since I don't know or understand enough about domain moving.