How to Migrate Your Domain from SmarterMail to Gmail

1. Sign up for Google Applications here. You are an administrator.
2. Add the CNAME DNS record that Google tells to you to verify that you control the domain. While you are in there, add the following DNS record as well...
   
   GMAIL CNAME ghs.google.com
   
   ...and, if possible, set the TTL on your MX record to something short like 1 minute.
3. Wait 24 hours or longer. This will give your old MX record time to expire in DNS, which will reduce the amount of email that might inadvertently get delivered to the old server after you make the switch over.
4. From the Gmail control panel, go into Service Settings->Email->Change URL and set the URL to be gmail.your-domain.com.
5. Go to http://gmail.your-domain.com and make sure you can log into your new Gmail account.
6. Use the SM2GMAIL tool here to create a CSV file with all your users in it. Save this file somewhere on your local hard drive.
7. From the GMAIL control panel, go into Advanced Tools->Bulk Account Update and upload the file containing your user list that you just saved.
8. Use the SM2GMAIL tool here to make a list of all your User Aliases.
9. From the Gmail control panel, go into Users and Groups->Users and manually add all the nicknames (aliases) from the step above to the corresponding users. I wish there was an automatic way to do this, but I can't find it without upgrading to the Premier Edition.
10. Use the SM2GMAIL tool here to list any domain aliases you have and then add these to Gmail under Domain Settings->Domain Names->Add a Domain Alias. You can skip this step if you are sure you don't have any domain aliases.
11. Read, edit, and then send this email to all your users. Be sure to edit it to match your domain name. This email will go to their old email accounts on the SmarterMail server. You can use SmarterMail's handy Mass Messaging->Send Email feature to do this.
12. You are now ready to throw the switch to have Gmail start receiving all new emails for your domain! You can find instructions on how to do that here. Be sure to also update the MX records for any domain aliases you have.
13. From your Gmail control panel, go to Users and Groups->Groups->Create a new group and create a new group called everyone and the check the All all users checkbox. You can now easily send an email to everyone at your domain by addressing it to everyone@your-domain.com.
14. Log into your new Gmail account and read, edit, and send this email to everyone@your-domain.com. This email will go to all your users new Gmail accounts.
15. Test everything. Try sending an email from a Yahoo or Hotmail account to your new Gmail account and make sure it goes directly through. Try sending emails to yourself via your domain aliases.
16. After a few days the only new emails coming into your old SmarterMail server should be spams. At this point, you can turn off the SMTP service on that server to block any more spams from coming in.
17. After maybe a week, check the logs on the SmarterMail server to see if any of your users are still using it. If not, and you are pretty sure that your users have migrated all their mail over to the new Gmail accounts, then turn it off!

FAQ

Q:  After I ran the Bulk Account Update, I could not log into my Gmail account anymore?
A:  If you had the Update Existing Users checkbox set, then you probably overwrote the password on your Gmail account with the password from your old SmarterMail account. Also remember that if your SmarterMail password was less than 6 letters long, then the new Gmail password will have x's appended to it to make it 6 letters long.

Q: Why do you hate SmarterMail so much that you'd write a tool to help people abandon it?
A: I don't hate SmarterMail. In fact, I still use SmarterMail for my personal domain. But I have had enough of my users ask me to move their domains to Gmail that is seemed worth it to automate the process as much as possible to save myself time. I figured enough people had the same problem I did that it was worth taking slightly more time to document everything and save some time for them.

Q: When I go to http://gmail.your-domain.com, I get an ad page.
A: Replace your-domain.com with the actual name of your domain. name. My domain is josh.com, so I go to http://gmail.josh.com.

Q: When I run the Sm2Gmail tool, I get an error message.
A: There will usually be something inside the exception that will give you a hint as to what is wrong.

• Empty response error? Are you sure you put the right URL to your SmarterMail server?
• Invalid URI error? Make sure the URL you gave starts with the http:// and does not have a trialing / .
• Failed to log in error? Are you sure you have the right username and password?
• Failed permissions error? Are you sure that the account you used is either the domain admin or system admin?

Q: How do I move all the existing users' email from my SmarterMail server into their new Gmail accounts?
A: There are lots of ways to do this depending on how your users are set up (Do they use Outlook? Do they keep all their old mail on the SmarterMail server?, etc). Google has lots of info online on how to deal with the various situations.

Q: What about contacts/calendar/lists/etc?
A: I only needed to move actual accounts, so that is what I documented here. There are ways to move other stuff, but they are more complicated. If you are looking at a really huge migration and want professional help doing it, let me know and I'll see what I can do to help. 

Q: What about existing emails that live on the SmarterMail server?
A: There are several ways to handle this.

One is just to leave all the old emails on the SmarterMail server. Users can still access them when needing by logging into the old server using the same URL they always used. This is the easiest to implement and for users to understand.

Next easiest is to let users deal with it. This is good if there are lots of different users doing lots of different stuff.

For people who use only the web interface and keep all their mail on the server, they can use GMAIL's "Import mail and contacts" on the settings screen to pull in all their old mail. This is very simple, but has the downside that it will loose folder info.

For people who keep their email locally in Outlook or something like that, they can use Google's email upload tool to move everything if they want.

If you know that all your users keep all their emails on the server, and you want to move it all to GMAIL for them, then you can use GMAIL's IMAP migration tool. This is a premium only tool, but luckily GMAIL lets you have a free 30-day trial of the premium service so you can get the move done during the trial for free.

Q: How much does this tool cost?
A: This is all free. I do ask that you do not copy and redistribute it- instead, please send people to this webpage so they use the latest version directly. 

If this really saved you a huge amount of effort in your migration, you can express your gratitude though a tax-deductible donation of any size to my favorite charity, The Aasha Foundation. They spend zero on administration and fundraising, so every dollar you give goes directly to helping the orphans.

Q: What is your relationship to SmarterMail or Gmail?
A: None, except that I am a user of their respective programs. 

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