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How to Start a Hosted Email Service ?
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How to Start a Hosted Email Service ?

MridulMridul Member
edited September 2015 in Help

I wish to provide a few local firms with hosted email service. They need Google Apps like service, with a good inbox.

I am planning to use a VPS. What platform would be suitable ?

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Comments

  • Zimbra :^)

  • I'd start by asking Jarland and reading his comments http://www.lowendtalk.com/profile/Jar I think he said someway that he'd be willing to share his config. Get a jump start in your biznitz. But good luck.

  • jhjh Member
    edited September 2015

    Google Apps costs $5/mailbox/month. They have developed their own distributed system technology, using their own file system, own their servers, network and global data centres outright, have hundreds of PhD-level engineers around the world as well as 24x7 support who are willing to help people, even to set up Outlook. They have invested in the interface and usability as well, and the spam and virus detection are second to none. They have plugins to make it easier to use Outlook and implement the Exchange protocol for push email.

    You are using whatever you can find that's not too expensive or complicated, own nothing and are posting on a random forum looking for basic advice. I'm guessing you dont have any real technology qualifications or financial backing, or any way to provide useful support or innovate in the market.

    Who do you think these companies are going to choose?

  • First you need a nice domain, i have inbox.li but never got around creating a service out of it - Too much work manually and b1gmail is expensive...

  • @jh said:
    Google Apps costs $5/mailbox/month. They have developed their own distributed system technology, using their own file system, own their servers, network and global data centres outright, have hundreds of PhD-level engineers around the world as well as 24x7 support who are willing to help people, even to set up Outlook. They have invested in the interface and usability as well, and the spam and virus detection are second to none. They have plugins to make it easier to use Outlook and implement the Exchange protocol for push email.

    You are using whatever you can find that's not too expensive or complicated, own nothing and are posting on a random forum looking for basic advice. I'm guessing you dont have any real technology qualifications or financial backing, or any way to provide useful support or innovate in the market.

    Who do you think these companies are going to choose?

    Big things start from small. He might have an great idea.

  • jhjh Member
    edited September 2015

    elgs said: He might have an great idea.

    I'd love to see that but so far I'm just seeing nonsense. A quick look at other threads don't help either:

    http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/62237/ram-issue-with-vps#latest

  • Its hard the set up everything right to get mail delivered. But if you do it good you will get a good mailserver.

  • Hostingking said: Its hard the set up everything right to get mail delivered. But if you do it good you will get a good mailserver.

    Can't argue with logic like that. What a well thought out contribution!

    Thanked by 2ricardo Ole_Juul
  • @Kupol said:
    Zimbra :^)

    Thanx

    @jh said:

    I am sorry for sharing my problem.
    Btw, ideas dont get limited with technology.

  • can haz, i have, you know.

    More seriously, the topic seems to pop up here every couple of months. It's a hard task.

  • @ricardo said:
    can haz, i have, you know.

    More seriously, the topic seems to pop up here every couple of months. It's a hard task.

    I was thinking of getting a vestacp + roundcube for each of their domains.

    my clients need a simple mail , ami missing something ?

  • Setup DKIM, SPF for domain, install and configure ASSP for incoming and outgoing mail.

  • any one has tried reseller club mail plans ? they seem very affordble and reseller friendly.

  • kkrajkkkrajk Member
    edited September 2015

    Mridul said: I was thinking of getting a vestacp + roundcube for each of their domains.

    cpanel is much easier

  • Domain registrars generally have pretty slow and mediocre email/forwarding services. The fact they're cheap/free is a sign the quality isn't there. I say that as a domain reseller with 12 of them.

    No doubt there is some benchmarking, somewhere... for those who wish to delve deeper about which services give best value.

    The simple advice is let the big boys take care of it. If the email is worth sending and receiving then you should be able to stretch to a little more than free/very cheap.

  • ben78ben78 Member
    edited September 2015

    Cpanel would be easiest I guess. There are also some quite good free panels that could do the job you can check ISPconfig http://www.ispconfig.org or alternc http://alternc.org

    If you want to make your hand dirty, you might like to read the code of @Servercow 's mailcow http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/58855/mailcow-a-complete-mail-server-suite and build your own system. They support MX2 and everything so it should be pretty easy to build what you need from there and just ask your customers to redirect their domains names to your MX

    You also might want to read a bit about firewall and intrusion detection and have good security practices to keep your server safe and your customer's data safe. (good firewall rules, process isolation, review all the code you use, automatic security updates and so on)

    Thanked by 1Mridul
  • @William said:
    First you need a nice domain, i have inbox.li but never got around creating a service out of it - Too much work manually and b1gmail is expensive...

    how does MailHost.in sound. The service is for india. i own it.

  • @ez2uk said:
    cpanel is much easier

    I love vesta... its lightweight and has all i need. do mail hosting serve better in cpanel ?

  • Mridul said: how does MailHost.in sound. The service is for india. i own it.

    Sounds nice. But a domain is not all what's needed. You need to create and maintain a stable system and market it well...

    Good luck

    Thanked by 1Mridul
  • @ben78 said:

    We are locally going to reach out in technical festival of colleges and give free .pw for the first year....

  • Thanked by 1Mridul
  • Mridul said: They need Google Apps like service

    If they need a Google Apps like service, they need Google Apps. But I'm guessing those are not their actual requirements. Get those straight first and then decide what's best for them.

    Thanked by 1Mridul
  • @mpkossen said:
    If they need a Google Apps like service, they need Google Apps. But I'm guessing those are not their actual requirements. Get those straight first and then decide what's best for them.

    I actually meant email on their own domain.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited September 2015

    It's not so much about the back end platform you choose, or even if you choose to make one, as it is about maintaining it. Let me give you some insight into my day/week.

    1. Every 2 hours I print the mail queues to a Slack channel (join at slack.mxroute.com if you're interested). This pings all of my devices.
    2. I spend a minimum of 2 hours every day tailing exim mainlog of a server to identify trends. You don't need to invade privacy really, it's pretty obvious that "[email protected]" is spam.
    3. To come up with fresh ideas, I take 3-4 hours every week to ask myself "If I was to redo this entire thing from the ground up, what would I do differently?" and then spend time investigating how I can reasonably integrate my ideas with the current system.
    4. Every day I print out eximstats on the last 24 hours of activity and I go over it line by line looking for anything that should concern me.
    5. I still get chargebacks and refund requests from people who openly tell me that they think that I did nothing but install cPanel, connect WHMCS, and sell accounts.

    You have to be able to deal with this question on a regular basis:
    "Why are you better than Gmail?"

    My answer, personally, is "Because if you have a problem, I actually give a shit."

    • I've taken more verbal beatings, from people who signed up expecting the world and thinking that I do nothing because they can't see the work that I do, than I ever did selling VPS at Catalyst.
    • I get more feature requests than I would care to put on a spreadsheet and many of them are impossible without bringing on investors and hiring a development team. Most of them are followed with "Well if you can't do this or give me a deadline for it then I'd like a refund."
    • I only have to wake up in the middle of the night to deal with a spammer on the nights where I so desperately need sleep the most.

    Yet, I have a ton of happy clients who are understanding and happy to work with me when they have a problem. I'm a customer of my own product. I make decent money for a secondary income source. I love my work. If you think you can handle this and you're ready to commit to what it takes to be an email provider, I'm thrilled for you and happy to offer any advice that I can :)

    My current SA customizations:
    http://pastebin.com/WuMkbNsu

    Also may or may not be relevant to my sauce:
    https://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/CustomRulesets

  • @Jar Your post reminds me that I might owe you money. Sending now, don't cancel me bro!

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @badpatrick said:
    Jar Your post reminds me that I might owe you money. Sending now, don't cancel me bro!

    Fortunately, with all of those jobs above, the one I care about the least is going through the overdue invoices :P

  • Great job @Jar.

    Thanked by 3jar MikePT Infinity
  • shovenoseshovenose Member, Host Rep

    If you have to ask how to do it then you should not do it.

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