Hey there! My blog post this time, is to address a query you might have had about split delivery from a single domain. I’ve seen this being discussed on a couple of online forums so I thought it would be a good idea to shed some light on the topic.

What is split delivery?

Split delivery means emails will be delivered to the same domain but to two mail systems simultaneously. With split delivery, an incoming message is delivered to either a Gmail inbox or a legacy system inbox, depending on the recipient.

This method works well if some of your users use Gmail, and others use a different mail system. For example, you might need to implement special handling for certain types of email, such as messages to the Legal department.

This method also works well if you are migrating to Gmail from a legacy mail server, and you want to run a test with a subset of users.

G Suite and Business Email

G suite now comes with an innovative feature of Split and Dual deliveries. Below are the steps to attain Split Delivery keeping Google as the primary server. Split Delivery, as the name suggests, allows you to split the entire mail delivery function of a single domain into two different servers.

This works on the logic that for the same domain some IDs will run under Google as the primary server and some IDs will run on other secondary servers.

Host Settings

Let us now get through the steps to build up a Split Delivery configuration.

• Log in to Admin Console

• Click on Apps >> Gsuite >> Gmail >> Advance Settings

• Create a Host

• Click on Save

Routing Settings:

Once the host details are saved, we need to proceed with adding the routing settings.

• Click on Apps >> Gsuite >> Gmail >> Advance Settings

• Under General settings >> Scroll down to Routing >> Besides Routing >> Click on Configure.

• Now scroll down to Route >> Click on Change Route >> Now select the Host name that was created in the previous step.
  Eg: In the host settings we created a host with the name “Business email routing”.

• Scroll down >> Click on Show Options >> Now under Account types to affect >> Select Unrecognized / Catch -all

• Click on Add Settings.

This completes the split delivery setup for your domain name. Going forward if any email is sent, the email will be first routed to your Gsuite package. If the account exists under Gsuite the mail will be delivered successfully.

In case the email account does not exist, the mail will be routed to your Business/ Enterprise Email server and the message will be delivered to the intended recipient.

Sending Emails:

1. While sending emails there are multiple instances where the emails are delivered to the Spam box of the recipient.
2. In order to avoid this, we need to add the SPF records for the email servers in the current dns of the domain. An SPF record identifies which mail server is permitted to send email on behalf of your domain.
3. SPF helps mail servers distinguish forgeries from real mail by making it possible for a domain owner to say, “I only send mail from these machines.” That way, if any other machines try to send mail from that domain, the mail server knows that the ‘From’ address is forged.

DNS Records:

1. Only one SPF record can be added for a domain name, In this case, since we are using multiple email servers we will have to club the SPF records.
2. Identify the correct DNS Zone for the domain name and add the mentioned record in the current dns zone.

SPF Record:
v=spf1 include:_spf.mailhostbox.com include:_spf.google.com ~all

Conclusion

I hope this article was able to clear out your confusion about split deliveries. While G Suite is a fantastic cloud-based emailing solution with 30-GB storage, enhanced security and real-time collaborations, Business Email comes with a branded SSL certificate, 99.99% uptime, anti-virus protection & more. Can’t choose? No problem! Just keep both now! , we offer both solutions to our customers at affordable rates. With our products, our customers enjoy security, a pricing advantage and 24×7 support!