Changing a primary domain name on G-Apps can be a nightmare. Here are some tips we discovered when we recently helped one of our arts organization clients do just that. As simple as you would think this should be, it was not. For anyone who has tried it, you know you can’t just click away and, voila, Google-Apps lets you login to your new domain name to get mail.

Although deleting or modifying your primary domain name is not a simple G-Apps option, Google-Apps does provide you with the capability of adding names and aliases that will point to and from your primary name. The draw back is that now your users log into one domain to send and retrieve their email, but use another domain name in their to/from communications. That is often confusing for them and, the alias system sometimes malfunctions.

The only permanent solution involves a series of steps, creating a new G-Apps account using the new primary domain name, reapplying for all of your Business and Education level upgrades, the re-provisioning all accounts. Finally, each copy of email is migrated to the new user account. There are several ways to accomplish this file migration.

One method involves a series of POP/IMAP setting changes to transfer all data from the old G-Apps account to a local computer email client, and then back up to the new G-Apps account. This method deletes any label structure the user had implemented, pours the whole archive of messages into the new inbox, and changes the date on the migrating messages from the original date to the upload time and date. It is a time-consuming process, tying up the local computer for hours and days at a time, and this method is prone to file errors and transfer stalls.

Of all the methods we tested, the quickest and easiest solution was to use a migration service. In this case, we employed MigrationBox.com. They were excellent in every way, responding to our needs immediately and completing the migration overnight. Our client was able to perform all work as usual while the transfer occurred in background on MigrationBox’s equipment. We recommend you talk to them if you are considering a domain name change involving G-Apps.