Email Hosting

t1mm

Hi Guys,

I've realised recently that I'm paying for two crap shared hosting accounts where I host about 10 client websites. I'm going to move over to a VPS, but I just have one qualm: what to do about email?

I've messed around with Postfix before and to be honest I found it a bit of a nightmare. As email is pretty much mission critical for a lot of clients, I would like to come up with a better solution than managing it all myself.

1. Some clients would just like email forwards
2. Some clients will probably use Google Apps
3. Some clients will actually want an inbox with pop3/webmail/imap access.

What d'you reckon?

daymobrew

Could you get VPS and separate email hosting?

Graham

Take a look at any of the larger mail service providers.

Off the top of my head I can think of OpenSRS, Zoho, and Rackspace along with the usual suspects Google, Office365/Microsoft.

If you're looking for something you can brand, a few of the providers offer a white label service.

t1mm

Yep daymobrew - intending on having email hosted elsewhere. Thanks guys - I guess I'll go with one of the large providers for those who want full email support.

For those who just want email forwards, rather than incurring additional costs, would you recommend just setting this up using Postfix or similar?

Thanks again!

Kinet1c

Google Apps or Office 365. It will depend on whether they are fans of gmail or outlook. Mail migration for both is fine, except for pop3 with Office 365 which means manually moving mail within a client as opposed to an automated process.

Limitations: O365 won't work with Office 2003, might even be 2007 now as it's been some since I checked. Unsure if Google sync tool working with Office 2013, imap always an option.

Both sync well with android/ios. Both offer a kick back to you for the referrals, O365 immediately with Gapps after 25 seats.

Graham

t1mm wrote: »

For those who just want email forwards, rather than incurring additional costs, would you recommend just setting this up using Postfix or similar?

Depends of the type of clients you have. Personally I'd recommend you leave email well alone unless you know what you're doing and you have the resources behind you to do it properly.

For plain email forwards, could you not pick a reliable and relatively inexpensive shared hosting package (from a trusted hosting company) and just use their email forward services?

t1mm

@Graham - very good idea actually with the cheap shared hosting package. I'm just in the process of signing one of my personal domains up to Zoho to check it out. It seems they have a free (5GB) email plan (using your own domain) which is pretty cool - I'll judge based on the webmail client etc.

mneylon

t1mm wrote: »

Hi Guys,

I've realised recently that I'm paying for two crap shared hosting accounts where I host about 10 client websites. I'm going to move over to a VPS, but I just have one qualm: what to do about email?

I've messed around with Postfix before and to be honest I found it a bit of a nightmare. As email is pretty much mission critical for a lot of clients, I would like to come up with a better solution than managing it all myself.

1. Some clients would just like email forwards
2. Some clients will probably use Google Apps
3. Some clients will actually want an inbox with pop3/webmail/imap access.

What d'you reckon?

If you're moving to a VPS will it have a control panel (ie. Plesk or Cpanel)?
If it does then managing email is pretty easy.

If it doesn't setting up email with Postfix and Dovecot isn't terribly complicated, but managing it manually for multiple users can be a pain, but there are plenty of tutorials out there like the ones over on http://www.howtoforge.com/

Of course email is way more important for a lot of businesses than anything else so if you're not comfortable managing it for them then it would make sense to outsource it