Google Apps Premier vs. Free Google Email
 

I'm considering switching to Google and having my personal email domain hosted through Google apps. For those of you who are using Google for your own domain, is the email interface any different than free Gmail?

Also, my uses the same domain, but presently has a separate any email account. Is there any way to avoid paying another $50 for a second Gmail domain-hosting account?

Thanks!

There is a free version of Google Apps and a premium or $50 per user/year version. Google website has a table showing the differences.

You can pay for one Premier account for yourself and define the addresses in the domain that should go to your mailbox, then have Google route (relay/forward) email for undefined addresses to one or more external providers (you can also route email for defined addresses, or all addresses).

But note that you cannot have Google Apps Premier route email to a separate free Google Apps account.

In my experience (as a standard/"free" user), there is no difference, though it sometimes takes longer for new Gmail features to come to Apps ("themes" is an example of something Gmail had quite a while before they introduced it in Apps).

The big difference between GA Standard and GA Premium is mainly the APIs and 25GB of storage (instead of ~7GB). Hence as long as you don't need the API for application integration for instance (or have a huge mailbox), you won't need Premium.