Email hosting (mailboxes)

Overview

Wild Apricot does not include email hosting services (neither mailboxes nor email aliases) - we do not want to reinvent the wheel. There are many great free or very cheap email hosting services you can use together with your Wild Apricot account. In a nutshell this is done by setting up your web domain so that Wild Apricot takes care of your website (www.<yourdomain.org> - see Custom domain setup) while all your emails <anything>@<yourdomain.org> are handled by any email service.

Some details to take into account when using Wild Apricot & Google Apps:

A popular (and free!) email provider is Google Apps. You can sign up for it here: Google Apps (Free Edition). There are a few things to bear in mind when setting up Google Apps with Wild Apricot:

Domain Verification

Google Apps provides three different ways to verify that you own your domain. Only two can be used with Wild Apricot.

• Create a TXT record: You create TXT records using the admin panel available from your domain provider (the company you purchased your domain from), not the Google Apps control panel or Wild Apricot backend. For instructions on how to do this, see Create a TXT record
• Add a Meta-Tag: You add a <meta> tag to your site's home page by going to Settings > Page Management in the Wild Apricot backend. Here you will see a list of your pages, to the right of the name for your home page will be a link that says "Meta-tags". Click this and add the content provided by Google in the box labeled "Raw Headers" (you may need to uncheck the box that says "Use Default" first). For more information, see: Modifying Meta Tags

SPF Record

If your Wild Apricot account uses your custom domain name and you use Google Apps to handle email, make sure to properly setup your domain's SPF record. To set your domain's SPF record, publish the following TXT record on your DNS (you may need to contact your domain provider's support department if this is foreign to you):

Additional info:
How do I set my SPF records? (from Google Apps Help)
Should I modify the SPF record to enable the email gateway? (from Google Apps Help)