Although a Virtual Private Server can handle quite a bit of load, one of my favorite tricks is to use an external mail server such as Google Apps for business to handle emails. The user gets about 7GB of space, great POP and IMAP support and an excellent anti-spam filter to boot. Signing up for the basic service is free, and they’ll provide step by step instructions on how to configure your DNS to them.

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In Plesk, its quite simple to do it. Go to the DNS zone management (Read about the “missing” DNS zone management in Plesk 9) and configure it like the image on the right. You might have to delete the primary MX entry first, then add them all again from 10 to 30. Google recommends a higher setting, but I’ve found 10 to 30 works fine.

Next is an important part of this configuration – turning off emails so that your VPS knows you’re using an external email server. If you don’t, your users will face problems emailing each other within the same domain (or server if you have other domains that email this user). Its also important when you have a form mail installed or even any other script that sends emails from a web-based form so that it does try to deliver your email locally.

So, here’s a Plesk tip – go to Mail Accounts > Mail Settings and  uncheck the box next to “Activate mail service on domain”. This will tell Plesk to not use the local mail service.