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Amazon Takes On Microsoft, Google With WorkMail For Businesses

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-mail dept.

alphadogg writes Amazon Web Services today launched a new product to its expansive service catalog in the cloud: WorkMail is a hosted email platform for enterprises that could wind up as a replacement for Microsoft and Google messaging systems. The service is expected to cost $4 per user per month for a 50GB email inbox. It's integrated with many of AWS's other cloud services too, including its Zocalo file synchronization and sharing platform. The combination will allow IT shops to set up a hosted email platform and link it to a file sharing system.

65 comments

  1. Spam filtering, unlimited aliases, search, rules by Eustace+Tilley · · Score: 3, Informative

    My top priorities for email service are quality of spam filtering, support for unlimited aliases, search, and rules. I think labels work better than folders for categorization. I have not found any Amazon documentation which addresses these issues.

  2. Incoming reprisal... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    WorkFemail

  3. Human-intelligence FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will they tell me which emails are a priority and which are important? Will they filter them out of my inbox for me without asking first?

    1. Re:Human-intelligence FTW by ubrgeek · · Score: 1

      What is this? Paradise By The Dashboard Light?

      --
      Bark less. Wag more.
  4. Is it NSA compatible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I mean, when they get FISA/NSL/BS letter to search my company's R&D emails so they can steal my technology or commit insider trading... but my non-US company is hosted on non-US Amazon AWS, will they still acquiesce to their request?

    1. Re:Is it NSA compatible? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      I mean, when they get FISA/NSL/BS letter to search my company's R&D emails so they can steal my technology or commit insider trading... but my non-US company is hosted on non-US Amazon AWS, will they still acquiesce to their request?

      Yes, they will.

  5. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another Kloud Service. At last my company can have its email scanned and delivered to my competitors. Just what I needed.

    1. Re:Finally by hawguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Another Kloud Service. At last my company can have its email scanned and delivered to my competitors. Just what I needed.

      Most small businesses are better off entrusting their mail to a cloud provider than to try to run their own email service and trying to keep it secure and highly available.

    2. Re: Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that Microsoft is a much bigger target than most small businesses and uptime is not that hard.

    3. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $48/user/year is kind of a lot.

      Isn't that like the annual rent of a small IMAP/POP server for hundreds of users?

    4. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      who pays list price?

    5. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nice sarcasm. You sound like my boss before our recent Microsoft disaster. He even sounded like that after we got screwed by Rackspace that lost mail constantly then lost all of our mail one morning. That was after having to switch quickly from gmail because they stopped accepting mail for our domain suddenly one day without warning, and we couldn't reach anyone on the phone at Google. After three horrible cloud experiences, he no longer sounds like your sarcasm.

    6. Re: Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I find it HIGHLY unlikely that Rackspace, or even Microsoft, lost your emails and couldn't get back. Sounds more like a user problem, or based on your attitude sabotage.

      For small, non technical, businesses cloud based email services are a great option. $48 a year per user is peanuts.

    7. Re: Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that Microsoft is a much bigger target than most small businesses and uptime is not that hard.

      Cloud services are always telling me that uptime is hard because they come in and tell my bosses that they can do it better. But then when I look at my modest system compared to theirs my annual uptime percentage is always better than AWS and the other big boys.

      And what compensation does my company get when the cloud doesn't work and we lose money? Nothing. At least nothing that makes up for our losses.

    8. Re: Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Rackspace

      In general yes they're great, but when we used Rackspace, we used their proprietary garbage Microsoft Exchange product. That is probably what the GP was talking about. It is complete and utter garbage. It constantly loses email. After switching to running our own server (a ten year-old Dell with CentOS, Postfix, SquirrelMal, etc., all pretty easy to setup and all free), the amount of mail from customers more than tripled, and we had to hire new people. It saved our business. Because Microsoft is so embarrassed by that Exchange product, they can't release source code so Rackspace can't fix any of the problems. Exchange is a nightmare, but trying to do it at the scale of Rackspace is hell. There is a reason, for example, the forty person team at Microsoft I worked for from 2002-2007 had over $200k worth of hardware to run mail very poorly. We spent about $6k per user in just hardware! When you overspec hardware by that much, Exchange doesn't lose email as often, but even that massive kit would lose messages if someone attached a file sent to the entire team. Then Exchange would thrash for several minutes and lose all other incoming mail.

    9. Re: Finally by hawguy · · Score: 1

      > Rackspace

      In general yes they're great, but when we used Rackspace, we used their proprietary garbage Microsoft Exchange product. That is probably what the GP was talking about. It is complete and utter garbage. It constantly loses email. After switching to running our own server (a ten year-old Dell with CentOS, Postfix, SquirrelMal, etc., all pretty easy to setup and all free), the amount of mail from customers more than tripled, and we had to hire new people. It saved our business. Because Microsoft is so embarrassed by that Exchange product, they can't release source code so Rackspace can't fix any of the problems. Exchange is a nightmare, but trying to do it at the scale of Rackspace is hell. There is a reason, for example, the forty person team at Microsoft I worked for from 2002-2007 had over $200k worth of hardware to run mail very poorly. We spent about $6k per user in just hardware! When you overspec hardware by that much, Exchange doesn't lose email as often, but even that massive kit would lose messages if someone attached a file sent to the entire team. Then Exchange would thrash for several minutes and lose all other incoming mail.

      I managed exchange 2007 for 500 users and we had about $14K of hardware, including the replicated Exchange server in the remote data center (but not including the AD servers and the tape backup hardware). We lost the primary site a few times due to power failure, and we had a RAID controller failure in the remote node that brought it down, and we never lost any email or had any significant unscheduled downtime. We did have to restore a few deleted employee mailboxes from backup tape due to a lawsuit, but that wasn't a problem either. It was not trivial to set it up properly, but we paid a consulting company to come in for a day and validate our configuration.

      If MS spent $6K per person on hardware, it's because they wanted to, not because they had to, we did it for $33/user in hardware costs.

      I left the company as we were setting up the 2010 servers on brand new hardware (virtualized on VMWare, so it's hard to pin down the hardware costs). I'm no fan of Exchange, I think it's too difficult to set up properly and requires more hardware than it should, but when set up properly, it does run well. Paying professional services fees was well worth it to make sure we had it set up correctly.

  6. Privacy by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My top priorities for email service are quality of spam filtering, support for unlimited aliases, search, and rules. I think labels work better than folders for categorization. I have not found any Amazon documentation which addresses these issues.

    My top priority is privacy.

    Does their service have built-in encryption, such that they cannot decrypt the message contents?

    I can do spam filtering, searching, and other rule-based operations on my home system. What I *can't* do locally is prevent others from sticking their noses in my business.

    Whether it be my ISP adding ads to the data stream for goods and services I might be interested in, or the website provider tailoring ads for goods and services that might be of interest to me, or my home country looking for perceived criminal activity, or someone *else's* country looking to steal corporate secrets or leverage me into forced compliance, or any of a number of other reasons.

    Of late I'm actually pretty interested in the privacy aspect.

    How high up on your list of priorities is privacy?

    1. Re:Privacy by hawguy · · Score: 3, Informative

      My top priorities for email service are quality of spam filtering, support for unlimited aliases, search, and rules. I think labels work better than folders for categorization. I have not found any Amazon documentation which addresses these issues.

      My top priority is privacy.

      Does their service have built-in encryption, such that they cannot decrypt the message contents?

      Not if you want server side search. Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).

      If you really don't trust anyone with your email, tell everyone that emails you to encrypt everything with your public key, then you can decrypt the messages on an airgapped computer when you're ready to read them.

    2. Re:Privacy by swillden · · Score: 5, Informative

      Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).

      No, it doesn't. S/MIME, PGP-mail, etc. Of course that only works if the party you're e-mailing can also use client-side e-mail encryption.

      Google is working on enabling OpenPGP-encrypted e-mail for Gmail with a Chrome extension: https://github.com/google/end-...

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    3. Re:Privacy by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1

      Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).

      Huh, I didn't know that.

      If figured that the message body and subject text could be encrypted separately from the routing (and other) header information.

      Today, I learned.

    4. Re:Privacy by hawguy · · Score: 1

      Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).

      No, it doesn't. S/MIME, PGP-mail, etc. Of course that only works if the party you're e-mailing can also use client-side e-mail encryption.

      And how close to you think the internet is to ubiquitous client side encryption? Oh, right.

      You might as well speculate how secure mail would be if it were personally delivered by unicorns.

    5. Re:Privacy by hawguy · · Score: 1

      Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).

      No, it doesn't. S/MIME, PGP-mail, etc. Of course that only works if the party you're e-mailing can also use client-side e-mail encryption.

      And how close to you think the internet is to ubiquitous client side encryption? Oh, right.

      You might as well speculate how secure mail would be if it were personally delivered by unicorns.

      I'll add that the OP could use S/MIME and/or PGP right now with any mail provider (as I said in my original reply), at the expense of server side searching (which is one of the best things about Gmail -- I can search years of mail archives instantly)... all he has to do is convince everyone he corresponds with to do the same. Oh, and zealously protect his private key.

    6. Re:Privacy by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Google is working on enabling OpenPGP-encrypted e-mail for Gmail with a Chrome extension: https://github.com/google/end-...

      Or you can have it on Firefox right now with enigmail. Or well, you could. Maybe it doesn't work any more. I had nobody to exchange encrypted email with, so I no longer have it installed.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:Privacy by HTMLSpinnr · · Score: 3, Informative
      Amazon's Press Release (well, blog post rather) suggests that data is encrypted at-rest. Excerpt from https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/a...

      WorkMail Security Controls Let’s talk about security for a bit. WorkMail includes a number of security features and controls that will allow it to meet the needs of many types of organizations. Here’s an overview of some of the most important features and controls:

      Location Control – The WorkMail administrator can choose to create mailboxes in any supported AWS region. All mail and other data will be stored within the region and will not be transferred to any other region. During the Preview, WorkMail will be supported in the US East (Northern Virginia) and Europe (Ireland) regions, with more to follow over time.

      S/MIME – Data in transit to and from Outlook clients and certain iPhone and iPad apps is encrypted using S/MIME. Data in transit to other clients is encrypted using SSL.

      Stored Data Encryption – Data at rest (messages, contacts, attachments, and metadata) is encrypted using keys supplied and managed by KMS ( https://aws.amazon.com/kms/ ).

      Message Scanning – Incoming and outgoing email messages and attachments are scanned for malware, viruses, and spam.

      Mobile Device Policies & Actions – The WorkMail administrator can selectively require encryption, password protection, and automatic screen locking for mobile devices. The administrator can also remotely wipe a lost or mislaid mobile device if necessary.

      Sounds like it has the makings of a usable service.

      --
      $ man woman *
      -bash: /usr/bin/man: Argument list too long
    8. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can encrypt the body with things like PGP, which works. But you better download the email to a safe computer before you decrypt it. "Online" email is terribly insecure and any idea that you can keep content secure in a web browser is not really realistic.

      You can probably make some JS PGP software, but then how could you know that the key is not being sent out somewhere?

      Anyway, header information is not encrypted. So From, To, Date, Subject, Received, etc. are all plain text. You can use TLS for SMTP, but it's optional and basically opportunistic, not required.

      Still email with PGP is vastly safer than any online messaging system. Hard time to get XSS or other hole exploited when the email just has PGP signed/encrypted message and some headers.

      But then US is now assassinating people based on SIM card numbers or other meta data.... so I guess content is irrelevant.

      http://rt.com/usa/158460-cia-d...

    9. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so long as plain text smtp exists, encryption is irrelevant in a hosted email product.

      so your first priority should be self hosted product that only allows smtps, but even then it doesn't provide absolute privacy because you have no control over routing before it lands on your hardware and network.

    10. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > My top priority is privacy.

      With email??

      So how exactly do you think any form of modern-day email provides _ANY_ form of privacy?

      I hate to burst the hipster-bubble here, but let's break it down.

      privacy of sending emails
      Let's say you are very diligent and encrypt all your outgoing emails. You even use a secure connection to contact your outgoing email server.

      Problem 1: How do you think your email actually makes it to the recipient privately?
      Answer 1: It won't, because the servers along the way, including your outgoing email server, need to know the "from" and "to" email address, as well as other meta data. Granted, the actual message stays encrypted.

      Problem 2: How do you know your recipient reads your email privately?
      Answer 2: You don't. I mean, I don't think I need to elaborate, but you just can't be sure about what the recipient does with your email, knowingly or unknowingly. Chances are (although not high) that your email will go straight to front page CNN.

      privacy of receiving emails
      So you gave people your public key, and they totally encrypted their message to you. Awesome. But.

      Problem 1: How does the email get to you?
      Answer 1: The "to" / "from" is inherently exposed to intermediate servers by the protocols used to deliver email.

      Problem 2: How do you know where the sender encrypted your email?
      Answer 2: You don't. They may very well have Google/Amazon/Yahoo take care of that, in which case those organizations see the content in the clear.

      Finally let me ask: how often have you exchanged keys with other email users? Because I can tell you that I'm a very security/privacy conscience person and the answer for me is "never".

      conclusion
      Please don't freaking fool yourself to think that email is in any way/shape or form private.

      If you and someone else have bad intentions, yes, you can exchange information encrypted through email, but the to/fro addresses certainly are known by intermediate servers. (if you had bad intentions, you'd make sure that didn't matter)

      And with regards to content of the email; I bet it's statistically insignificant, the amount of email that is exchanged for which the security mechanism is handled truly secure enough so that it couldn't be decrypted by some intermediate service/server.

      bottom line
      Don't fool yourself thinking that your email is private. ;-)

    11. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, why don't you want the benefits of targeted marketing from companies who harvest your emails? Wouldn't it be fabulous, if the service provider can sell the your-username to ad-network -matching services so you would be able to enjoy full experience of ads automatically selected by your inbox? So whenever you get marketing messages from eg. member expansion companies, you would get related ads when browsing the web.

    12. Re:Privacy by swb · · Score: 2

      I had nobody to exchange encrypted email with, so I no longer have it installed.

      This is the biggest problem. I have two friends, both technology savvy (one works in IT, in healthcare, so is very familiar with encryption) and both are conspiracy savvy, too.

      I got both of them using PGP at one point, fully integrated with whatever email client they were using but couldn't get either one to sustain use of it, despite both of them fully aware of the NSA, surveillance, etc.

      Maybe they just don't like me, but if getting these two to use encryption on a consistent basis is hard, getting ordinary people to do it is impossible.

    13. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Less than that, if I email my cow-orker something, then it never travels over SMTP. Such emails should remain private unless my employer wants to see them. They're my employers property, and the regulators that my employer works under don't like the prospect of data going walkies, especially not to the American government (anecdote: those same regulators don't trust Akamai's PCI compliant connectivity because there's a moment when Akamai have the traffic unencrypted as they terminate the SSL at the edge before re-encrypting it back to origin).

      My employer has an internal Exchange server, and no, it's not encrypted, but it doesn't have to be because it resides in relative safety in the same protective environment and legal jurisdiction as everything else my employer owns. Even if Amazon opened up a London datacentre, we still couldn't use it.

      However, for a small business, some extra competition in the 'hosted email' market is probably a good thing. From Amazon's point of view, it's a way of contributing to some of the costs of their own internal email service (like their other cloudy offerings). For the NSA, it's just another place to get some juicy information.

    14. Re:Privacy by Magnus+Pym · · Score: 1

      It looks like they support encrypting all the stored messages using your security keys, so there is that. From the description: "Stored Data Encryption – Data at rest (messages, contacts, attachments, and metadata) is encrypted using keys supplied and managed by KMS."

    15. Re:Privacy by Jawnn · · Score: 1

      How high up on your list of priorities is privacy?

      Top of the list. Has to be, for compliance reasons. Right behind that is an archiver that would also pass muster under those same rules. Aparently, no one wants to sell a "cloud" solution that includes those things.

    16. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's exactly why blockchains are being investigated as the next layer of the internet. DNS though blockchains opens up so many possibilities it's staggering, but still resource cheap for the most part and miner secured. You use git or something to manage what token has what access. Bada bing, bada boom you have a scalable permissions from task scheduling to the big red button in the White House and the addresses to deal with it all.

      No more political shenanigans, lawmakers will have to deal with proper write access and logging. It's time we do this the engineers way.

      People get too hung up on the money side, that's just necessary, it's not the end of the road, it's barely the beginning. Something something internet of things. After that Star Trek, or Gene Roddenberry owes us all an apology.

    17. Re:Privacy by swillden · · Score: 1

      Google is working on enabling OpenPGP-encrypted e-mail for Gmail with a Chrome extension: https://github.com/google/end-...

      Or you can have it on Firefox right now with enigmail. Or well, you could. Maybe it doesn't work any more. I had nobody to exchange encrypted email with, so I no longer have it installed.

      Yup, that is the issue. I'm weakly hopeful that having Google behind it will encourage wider use. Weakly.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    18. Re:Privacy by swillden · · Score: 1

      Sure, you've been able to use S/MIME or PGP for years. I used to use S/MIME religiously. Adoption is, of course, the big obstacle. Maybe encouragement from Google will help to make it less of a niche, geeky thing. I'm not holding my breath, but it isn't inconceivable.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    19. Re:Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I recently launched a service that attemps to improve privacy. It allows bitmessage users interact with any email address. I still can, in theory, read the emails (if someone in the chain uses plaintext email, that's unavoidable), but other than that, I try to provide as much privacy as I can. In particular, I do not receive anything from you that shows your identity (bitmessage is P2P, so I don't have your IP address). Maybe you can check it out: https://mailchuck.com

  7. it's not free with prime? by alen · · Score: 1

    everything else seems to be

    1. Re:it's not free with prime? by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      There's Amazon Prime for Business?

    2. Re:it's not free with prime? by operator_error · · Score: 1

      Only a matter of time.

  8. Re:Spam filtering, unlimited aliases, search, rule by Snotnose · · Score: 1

    My top priority is being able to have Thunderbird connect to the mail server. I much prefer having my email local, rather than in "the cloud".

  9. When is it going to turn profit? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 0
    Amazon is amazing. Gets patent for one-click. Gets oodles of money from the investors. Can do amazing things like tracking packages and deliver fresh produce. But it feigns inability to calculate local taxes. It drove the booksellers out of business.

    But what is most amazing is that it does not seem to have made any profits yet.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:When is it going to turn profit? by lucm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is actually by design. Their model is not profit, it's growth and innovation. It's a new economy where the balance sheet is becoming less and less a key factor for large corporations, and for the most part shareholders are ok with it because investments are made in the short term and the skyrocketing share price is more attractive than actual equity or dividends.

      I'm not saying I agree, just that this is not by mistake that they don't make a profit.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    2. Re:When is it going to turn profit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is actually by design.

      Indeed, it is.

      Their model is not profit, it's growth and innovation.

      Investment without profit is like foreplay without sex, frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying.

      and for the most part shareholders are ok with it because investments are made in the short term and the skyrocketing share price is more attractive than actual equity or dividends.

      Dividends are a large part of the total return in any long term stock investment. When management hangs on to those dollars and doesn't respect shareholders by offering to return their capital you have to question their motives. They're either scheming to unjustly enrich themselves or hatching some hair brained scheme to buy another company (HP and Autonomy) or other such nonsense. All of these schemes have the short term effect of enriching management at the expense of long term shareholder value. Conversely, sustainable dividends signal two things to investors. First, that management respects them and second that they company is well run and thus able to continue paying or even increasing the dividends as performance incrementally improves.

      I'm not saying I agree, just that this is not by mistake that they don't make a profit.

      This is a big part of the reason that I don't invest in individual tech companies. They tend to be run by jerkwads who set things up to maintain control, even when they own less than 51 percent of the equity, and then disrespect shareholders by taking their capital for granted. Amazon is famous for doing this, but even the faithful are now asking Bezos to "show them the money". Well, where is it?

    3. Re:When is it going to turn profit? by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a legal, high-tech Ponzi scheme.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  10. Link to Amazon's official announcement by cetialphav · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here is the link to Amazon's official announcement so you don't have to go through the networkworld article.

    It is notable that this is not just about email as it also supports many of the other features offered by Outlook like calendaring, tasks, etc. It also works with existing Outlook and ActiveSync clients so it is easy for an enterprise to start using it.

    As I'm not an administrator of mail systems, I would like to hear from some experts about how the features Amazon has introduced today compare to the existing enterprise offerings.

    1. Re:Link to Amazon's official announcement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it only me, or admins these days just don't care anymore? A feature list of msexchange, even the hosted version, is like 16 pages long, and that is just the one liner list. For this great new product that is about 16 lines: https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/details/ I know I am old and rusty, but how can you make a fair assessment based on this? "Details" my ass. This qualifies as a "overview" page, and the short version at that.

      E.g. there is this entity that wires me money every month to feed my kids. This entity expects me to keep their emails going. This entity has all sort of expectations regarding their emails, e.g. they want to securely browse their emails on their mobiles. They even prepared a mobile security protocol to that end. Guess what, that protocol has some very exact requirements, some of which are not met by EAS 14. Now where does this page tell you which v of EAS this solution implements? Nowhere? Is it even ActiveSync? Should I speak to a sales rep and educate him on the matter so he can put me in contact with tech support? Well, not me, fuck you very much.

      Not the kind documentation you'd expect from "Enterprise grade email".

    2. Re:Link to Amazon's official announcement by Pascoea · · Score: 1
      I would think that most admins are going to look a little deeper than marketing material when they are selecting a product. Marketing material is great for a first pass, but I'd think speaking to a sales rep, and eventually some technical people would be par for the course.

      Btw, here is Microsoft's Advertized "details" (they call theirs "Top Features") for exchange: http://products.office.com/en-...

      I know, I know, you can go on TechNet and find anything you want. Do you really think that Amazon doesn't have similar documentation stashed around somewhere?

    3. Re:Link to Amazon's official announcement by lamber45 · · Score: 1

      As long as we're linking to official announcements of business-targeted e-mail systems, I should mention IBM Verse. (disclaimer: I work for IBM. I do not speak for IBM.)

  11. Re:Spam filtering, unlimited aliases, search, rule by lucm · · Score: 1

    I gave up on built-in spam filtering a long time ago. Instead I route email thru a cloud antispam provider. It's super cheap and very convenient.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  12. Amazon would do anything for your love by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2

    Amazon would do anything for your love, but it won't do that.

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    1. Re:Amazon would do anything for your love by zlives · · Score: 1

      i wonder if it will suggest others emails that i might be interested in? /meatloaf

  13. Re:Spam filtering, unlimited aliases, search, rule by CBravo · · Score: 1

    Although I don't agree with you... Spamfiltering means you need data (from a large number of users). Not having free accounts means much less abuse data. Their service will not be as good.

    --
    nosig today
  14. Welcome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This service isn't targeted at standard smtp & imap services. Microsoft has monopoly on corporate e-mail, and had has it for some while now with Exchange/Outlook. Anything cheaper and more administration friendly than Exchange is welcome.

    1. Re:Welcome! by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      . Anything cheaper and more administration friendly than Exchange is welcome.

      That is where o365/hosted exchange comes in. Amazon are currently seeing MS market grow with triple figure growth percentages and email is one of the big reasons as enterprises no longer have to worry about the complexities of running it themselves.

    2. Re:Welcome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah but are you really going to trust your company's most sensitive communications to an actor like Microsoft? Security and competency are certainly not Microsoft's strong points. Just look at the 12 hour+ outages they've had in the past. Yuck, no thanks.

  15. Do I trust Amazon? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OK, I think it would be hard for me to trust a company like Amazon to not scan my mail, push ads, and generally not be a good postmaster. I could be wrong, but I don't see Amazon bragging any of this up as being anything more then another money maker brainstorm from Bozo who seems only equipped to spend money on worthless ideals with no real sense on how to actually make a profit. I have nothing against Amazon as a online retailer or a media content streamer. But I won't be trusting them with cloud storage or mail or any personal services.

    1. Re:Do I trust Amazon? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please stop complaining about scanning emails to push ads. That's just a ruse and there are for more worse uses to scanning someone's email.

  16. More all the market will bear pricing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Slashdot article prominently states "$4 per month per user".

    This Slashdot article is actually an initial marketing test to see if they have the most effective "right price" for an enhancement to a long established Internet service.

    Consider this, the net per user actual cost of the server is modest. From an operating point of view, the server and administration costs will be very similar for 1000 users all the way to 100,000 users. But the company has come up with a marketing plan for the service.

    While we don't know any of the inside accounting expenditure allocations, .

    Back in the late '90s, the huge value added email activity I saw was an academic Sun-type unix box running Sendmail and hosting a worldwide email reflector for graduates of a famous business school. At the time, it seemed this email reflector was providing a tactical time advantage for graduates that were pursuing business opportunities.

    The cost structure of this activity was about 4 administrator hours per week (say $400 per week), server costs ( say $60 per week) and the beneficiaries were perhaps 200 graduates and the economic benefit was perhaps one $100K for 1 year job acquired per month of operation. The user cost ( $1840 cost per month over 200 users) works out to $9.20 per month. The user 'average value' would be ( $100K/12 / $ 1840 -> 4.53 dollars earned per dollar of operation cost).

  17. IMAP support by nyet · · Score: 1

    How about IMAP support that doesn't completely suck?

    o365 is such a huge POS.

  18. unlimited aliases by johncandale · · Score: 1

    support for unlimited aliases

    I really REALLY wish gmail had this. Or at least 10 aliases if not unlimtied. yeah, you can create multiple accounts, but their integration on Google is terrible. I would pay for this.

  19. I wanna Try by VivekPatel · · Score: 1

    Looks Good I wanna try this. Querease