How to use your Gmail or Google Apps e-mail with IMAP or POP

When you set up your Google Apps account for a domain to include e-mail there are several steps involved. It is still a little flaky (sometimes it doesn't connect), but it is nice to be able to add various e-mail accounts to one program like Thunderbird or Outlook Express and see everything.  If you have a regular Gmail account just skip the first part which is for using your own domain in the email address via Google Apps.

I assume that you've already added your domain to Google Apps. At this point I'll assume you'll want to set up e-mail for the domain administrator (which you selected on registration). You can add more users in Google Apps and you'll need to go through the gmail specific steps for each one.

To have email work for your Google Apps domain you'll need to set up the MX records with your domain name registrar's control panel. If you are with Godaddy and you were using the domain with a different host, be sure to "park" the domain and wait a few minutes the go back in to the domain manager for your domain to edit the zone file.
Here is the table from one of the Google help pages. However another says to set the priority to 10,20,30,40,50 instead of 1,5,5,10,10 so it really doesn't matter.
in the MX records add the first one and if your domain registrar lets you add the others. Set the time to update to around an hour, but again that really isn't crucial.

1	ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
5	ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
5	ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
10	ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
10	ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM

For e-mail for Google Apps you only need to change the MX records. However if you are wanting to use Google Sites or Blogger custom domain option you'll also change the CNAME record for www (or blog, etc)  to ghs.google.com and make the corresponding changes in your Blogger blog or Google Sites settings. I already wrote a post about that on this blog.

Save the settings and go to the Google Apps email page to verify everything. The Google Apps set up also mentions the settings for mx records so no problem. The important thing is to get the servers added.
After everything is saved you'll have to wait a while for the DNS records to populate for the gmail account to actually work.

Now go into gmail. gmail.google.com or mail.google.com both seem to work. Log in with your Google Apps user name and password. If you are logged in with your regular account you'll need to log out first.

On your first gmail log in you'll have to accept the user agreement. Next go to settings. It is either at the top of the new e-mail message display or at the top right corner of the page.
After clicking on Settings go to "Forwarding and POP/IMAP". Enable either POP or IMAP and click on "save changes".

At this point, you'll need to configure your e-mail client software.
Your user name is your complete email address.
The password is the password for the user.

For outgoing e-mail use:
smtp.googlemail.com
port:465
use SSL/TTS


For incoming e-mail use:

IMAP:
imap.gmail.com

Use SSL: Yes
Port: 993

POP:
pop.gmail.com

Port: 995
Port for TLS/STARTTLS: 587
Port for SSL: 465