I'm so sick and tired of trying to make the Gmail SMTP-server work.

If you plan to use Google-Apps for your startup's outgoing email the short answer is - don't! I'm trying to make it work for 2 years now. Two freaking years. I even created backup accounts and programmed a dispatcher that switches between them, if the outgoing email count exceeds the Google-Apps limit... It just does not work. Even with a paid account.

Tons of errors, account suspensions due to bouncing emails, every 4th email throws an exception etc. etc.

This headache is over, I'm setting up an SMTP on our own server.