As posted previously, it’s been a good 2 years with vortexhost.com, but I’m feeling the need to get more and possibly spend less.  Now, the thing that is not negotiable with all of this is my e-mail.  I can stand downtime on my website every once in a GREAT while, but if I am ever inconvenienced by e-mail problems, I’ll be looking for a new solution within the next hour.

So, what I think I’m going to try is using Google’s Apps For Your Domains and use them as my MX handler.  For web space (not as mission-critical as e-mail), I think I’m going to find a cheap solution with a decent amount of space.  1and1 seems to fit the bill (I know it doesn’t have the greatest reviews, but I’m not going to be allowing them to manage my DNS or registrar info and GAFYD should take care of the e-mail reliability thing) with a $2.99/month plan with 5G of hard drive space, iirc.

The missing piece, though, is how to clean up and deal with mail coming in from GMail, since they don’t support IMAP.  I really do not want to have to resign myself to having to use their web interface to keep my e-mail account in order.  In other words, if I have to log into the web interface every couple of weeks to delete unwanted e-mails, that’s going to get really old really quick.  The other option would be to POP everything off into an IMAP server manually and have GMail auto-archive everything that gets POP’d.  I’m just thinking that 2G of e-mail space is going to get chewed up REALLY quickly if I don’t keep cleaning it up (i.e. all the various mailing lists I’m on, etc., etc.).

Any thoughts/comments/suggestions from those who have gone before me?