Outsourcing Email For An Entire Domain?

CritterNYC writes: "I was wondering if any fellow Slashdotters have experience outsourcing email for an entire domain(s). My web host includes mail hosting, but I'd like to be able to use ORBs or MAPS to filter spam (among other things)... and my host's fees for additional domains on the same account are a bit unreasonable. I'd probably only have a couple accounts with mulitple domains pointing to them, but may grow in the future. Has anyone found a good reasonably-priced company that does email hosting?" Mr. Critter is probably not alone -- charging for services like mail is one way that hosts try to increase their profit margins. Any ideas out there?

Comments

Re:colocation

[larien]

The main reasons I haven't looked at colocation are:

1. How are backups performed?
2. What happens when some hardware breaks?
3. What happens if a config change fails and the box doesn't boot?
   • Where a company hosts your site, they will (hopefully) perform backups and restores and will also fix any broken hardware. With coloc, this is your responsibility.

   • Also, some updates will require reboots and where they go wrong, you could have problems getting access to the system (especially if it's some distance from you) or getting an onsite engineer to check it out for you.

     This is why I'm currently using a hosting company for my site and email, so I don't have to worry about those problems.

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Re:colocation

[larien]

1. It depends on the coloc company, but I would imagine quite a few of them wouldn't be that helpful. I guess shopping around is the solution for that. 2. colo near by? Depends where you live. I live in Aberdeen, Scotland, and I don't know if there are any facilities here (haven't looked to be honest). If I lived at my parents' house I'd be 60 miles from the nearest big city which would have colo facilities. Nearby isn't always an option. 3. Well, you can have that, but it costs extra :) An obvious solution is 2 Sun boxes with serial cables between them so each can act as the other's console and you can connect to them via the internet.
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I Hate to say it, but a MS EXchange Server

[Llama Keeper]

If you have a static IP address at your sight, then A MS Exchange Server (version 2000) allows you to do what you want. You just need o have your ISP set up an MX record for the server. I know MS is evil, but Exchange + Outlook is a very powerful combination. There reqally is not an Open SOurce alternative that does what it does. You get calendering Tasks, contacts, it has web-email support and except for the fact the licenses are so damn expensive its a decent solution. Be sure and back up those databses w/ Veritas Backup Exec exchange Option!!!

Re:I Hate to say it, but a MS EXchange Server

[dave-fu]

> Be sure and back up those databses w/ Veritas Backup Exec exchange Option!!!

FWIW, we haven't had problems with corrupted mail databases so much as Backup Exec choking out servers. It's lovely to flip a server on and find a blue screen (not of death!) staring back at you.
Easy does it!

E-mail solutions

[dublin]

There is indeed a dearth of good e-mail hosting services. Here's what I do know:

I've used Burlee.com with good success for both web and mail hosting. They're not fancy (in fact, their web mail interface is downright ugly), but they are reliable, very competitively priced, professional, and offer good tech support on those occasions when you need it. If you need a better webmail interface, use one of the many good free ones, like Eudoramail or even (ack!) Hotmail.

There are several other companies trying to make a go of this sort of thing. Critical Path (I think at www. criticalpath.com) is one of them. No idea what their rates are.

Finally, you may want to reevaluate the do-it-yourself option. All-in-one, pre-cooked packages such as the e-smith server and gateway solution could be a good option here that would keep you from having to dive under the hood. I'm not generally in favor of appliance-type distros, but this one is *very* good, and deserving of the great reviews it's been getting lately. Check it out at www.e-smith.com (commercial site - they'll send you a CD for free, if you ask nicely) and www.e-smith.org (the developer site.) It looks like more coolness is in the works, too...

hushmail.

[Zurk]

outsource it to hushmail. they give you strong encryption and web based email with attachments fully encrypted. they'll handle your domain nicely and are really reliable.

Re:colocation

[MemRaven]

I think it's reasonable to point out to many of the people responding here, and the author of the post might not have thought about this, but what if you really just don't want to manage your email infrastructure? I mean, it's essentially a utility at this point. What if he just doesn't want to bother?

Email is reasonably easy to set up, but it's quite important to get it right, and maintainance of it can be quite difficult at times. And if it really is that easy, then all the more reason to outsource it, because then you're at absolutely zero maintainance. But in terms of backups, even if your colo does provide it (it's an additional fee at someplace like exodus), you have to setup the scripts. And if something does go wrong, you're expected to be integrally involved in the resolution. Why not just let somebody else handle that altogether?

But the bigger issue is that email provides complete economies of scale. Figure he's a small installation (as he said). I doubt he'll have need for more than 1GB of total mail space (including spooling and IMAP space). With his own box, figure 1GB for software, and 1GB of email storage. For that he's got to pay for 1RU and a box to go in it. That box can almost certainly handle a lot more than just him. If the outsourcing company is able to put 10 or 20 such customers on the same box, then you're spreading the cost of the box, the disk, the maintainance, the backup, all amongst 10 users. And a lot of outsourcing companies will use something like a medium (280R or 420R) sun box for that, with 100-200 customers, all in like 4-6u (2u for storage).

Finally, there may be some advanced features you might want to use that would justify a commercial server (like Sendmail, or OpenWave, or InterMail). 5 users is not enough for those companies to even write a quote (you might not need the features, or you might), but if you're able to get a bunch of users doing it, and one person maintaining the system, you're in the clear.

I suppose the critical issue is whether you believe in the economies of scale, and whether you get a kick out of maintaining email. If you don't, don't bother with maintaining the thing and try to outsource it.

By the way, the closest Exodus location to Aberdeen is in London. Not really a "stop by and muck with the box" sorta distance.

Re:colocation

[MemRaven]

But I think the point is that he doesn't want to. Running your own infrastructure is time consuming and resource intensive, even if you're just spending the time to set it up. Why not outsource it if you can?

He might also be somebody who's savvy enough to know what he wants, but doesn't want to spend the time and effort to constantly evaluate the latest and greatest packages to implement what he wants. Why not just leave that headache to somebody else entirely?

Everybody has different priorities.

[Nonesuch]

Along with the costs, you need to figure the benefits of doing e-mail in-house instead of at an external ISP:

• Confidentiality. Assuming you take the most basic precautions (QMail on OpenBSD, update as needed), your spooled mail is more secure when it's stored on-site. Plus internal messages need never cross the internet.
• Security. Usernames, passwords, and purely internal mail are never seen on the internet.
• Offline access. When your internet connection is down, mail received previously but not yet read is still accessible on the local server.
• Speed. Downloading mail from the server to the user is all on the local LAN.
• Portability. If your ISP goes bankrupt, you need only update your DNS entries. Even easier when you have your own portable IP addresses.
• Control. Add, delete, audit without waiting for response from an outside vendor.

If any of the above are important issues to your business, you will want to handle mail hosting in-house.

If you are tiny little group of a few dozen users with no expectation of growth and no in-house IT staff, then by all means, outsource email.

electricmail

[chuckfee]

We're using electricmail. My boss found them
when our company had first started and we were too
small to bother with the hassle of running our
own mail system. They've had some reliability
quirks over the last year or so that we have
been using them but all in all it's not
too bad. I think we pay about $100 a month for
pop, imap and webmail. they also aggressively
spam filter and their support people are sharp
and easy to get a hold of. I'd recommend you
check them out. ElectricMail

I'm just a reasonably satisfied customer, not an
employee, director, controlling person, yadda
yadda yadda.

--chuck

Re:colocation

[kill_9_1]

The guy is talking about OUTSOURCING his email to someone else who will also provide SPAM filtering. Hosting a server to use specifically for several mailboxes sounds like a waste. Also consider the time/effort/learning required on your part to maintain and admin the box.

eMailman has some information about email outsourcing and links to providers.
SpamCop appears to, besides spam reporting, provide an email filter relay for your inbound messages. The service does cost ($.50 / MB)
LanSoft does the same thing

I know there are more. My experience with outsourced services are mixed. The lack of control & flexibility are balanced by the extended knowledge the vendor usually has, support they provide (which includes knowledge, hardware/software fixes, 24/7, etc) and the measurabley reduced headache on my end :)

Re:colocation

[SuiteSisterMary]

Well, all three questions are answered with 'depends on who you're coloing with, and what you're willing to pay for' but I'll go through all three just the same. 1: Usually by the colo people; at Exodus, they tell us to export whatever we want backed up to an NFS share over a private internal network (requires a second NIC). But, you could always INSTALL A TAPE DRIVE! They'll rotate tapes for you if you want. 2: What happens if some hardware breaks in your server room? You wander over and fix it. This usually means you pick a colo near by. 3: You ARE using server grade hardware, with support for remote consoles, such as Sun, Dell or Compaq, yes? But that having been said, what kind of config changes would you be making to a live, production server that might cause it not to boot?

Re:colocation

[stilwebm]

1: Usually by the colo people; at Exodus, they tell us to export whatever we want backed up to an NFS share over a private internal network (requires a second NIC).

It doesn't necessarily require a second NIC. You can always just do ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.1.1 and voila you have a virtual adapter. Then setup a static route if necessary. I believe a virtual adapter requires kernel support in Linux (anyone remember the option?) or whatever the OS of choice is. If you're worried about sniffer attacks, a second adapter may have better security.

colocation

[AX.25]

Forget the hosting companies where you pay large fees for part of a server. Find a colocation company where you can put a box and do what you want. A lot of them will even let you use them as secondary dns so you can control the dns updates.

Not if you value your time

[blang]

co-location is a good alternative. (and cheaper in the long run)

Absolutely not true. Outsourcing is the very cheapest way to do this for a small company.

If your company is very small, less than 20 people, outsourcing of email, as well as hosting of a web site, can be had for as little as $20 a month. Shop around and find a reliable provider for the right price.

By doing it yourself, you'll be spending a lot more than $20 a month. Assuming that your time is worth $80 per hour to your company, this is what it would cost to do it yourself:

If you have not already set up a mail system before, 2 days to learn how to configure and set up the box and mail software. 16 hours.

2 hours per month for basic maintenance such as backup, software updates, security updates etc.

Cost of server. Can probably use a cheap server, lets say $1000.

Backup media. $50 should cover it.

So how much for DIY: initial cost of $1280+$1000+$50, and recurring monthly cost of $160. In 2 years DIY would have cost you $6170. And that's not counting time and money wasted every time new admins need to be showed the ropes.

For outsourcing I'll assume 8 hours work to find the right provider, and a monthly charge of $20. Total cost over 2 years: $1120

And I am not pulling these numbers out of my ass, The small company I work for pays $19.95 for our mail accounts, including web space. So far we have not had a single problem. It just works, and we never have to think about it. And if the current provider one day bails out, it would be a quick and simple thing to get another provider, update the whois and dns entries, and there you go.