So I ran across Google Apps for Your Domain today...

Google Apps for Your Domain lets you offer private-labeled email, instant messaging and calendar accounts to all of your users, so they can share ideas and work more effectively. These services are all unified by the start page, a unique, dynamic page where your users can preview their inboxes and calendars, browse content and links that you choose, search the web, and further customize the page to their liking. You can also design and publish web pages for your domain.

It's all free* and everything is hosted by Google. No hardware or software required.

I signed up yesterday for email and calendar on my domain just to see how it all works, and it honestly couldn't be simpler. All you do is sign in with your Google account, pick the services you want on your domain, and update the appropriate CNAME and MX records with your DNS provider.

I'm now reachable via email at tim timfanelli com, which I'm able to check by logging into a page on my domain, hosted by Google... and I get all the features, flexibility, and storage space of a standard gmail account. It's pretty sweet.

Available services include mail, calendar, chat and customizable start pages for logging in.

One of my favorite features for the email is domain aliasing... if you own multiple domains, you can alias them together in your Google account which allows you to receive email at multiple domains to a single mailbox.

Definitely worth checking out if you need a free, powerful email solution for your domain.