Small Business Webhosting + Email

Discussion in 'Internet & Networking' started by zy, Dec 21, 2011.

  1. zy

    zy zynine.com Staff Member

    Hey guys,

    I need some advise on webhosting/email related stuffs.

    The company I work for is running off Yahoo Small Business webhosting + email, and we are thinking of switching over to another provider.

    Webhosting part is not so critical, the critical part is the email part that has to be reliable because it is being used everyday.

    Any advise on this items?
    What should I look out for? Who should I look at? Or how should the network be set up?
     
  2. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    How many users are using the email? TechARP is using gmail, and I have just setup a personal domain using gmail as email provider and it is free below 10 users I think.
     
  3. PsYkHoTiK

    PsYkHoTiK Admin nerd

    Our family biz runs off of gmail as well. As soon as I heard the daylight robbery prices they were getting charged, I changed it ASAP.
     
  4. ZuePhok

    ZuePhok Just Started

    if your company is comfortable with having its email service hosted by external service provider, gmail is one of the best options available. almost maintenance free i would say, and of course, almost zero spam. however, a problem with gmail is that you can't use it for mass emailing. (e.g. Sometimes your company might need to send out a notice to > 1000 customers/subscribers/clients). google's smtp will cut you off if your domain is sending more than 1000 (around this figure. can't recall the exact limit) emails a day.

    if the top management has some KPKB, kiasu, and kiasi policy about IT asset, then you will have to get a mail server (MS exchange if grandpa is rich. else go with centos/dovecot/.. list is too long to be written down) and rent a broadband with fixed IP. If they want in-house service but do not want to pay for broadband, UPS and 24x7 air conditioning, you can ask your boss to go fly kite. Ok joking.. you can co-locate your server in a DC of your choice. don't forget to get a spam filter as well. you can opt for anti spam appliance (like.. BARRACUDAAAAAA), or software based solution that sits on the email server. now you can even subscribe to "cloud based spam filtering service", meaning having your incoming emails routed to the spam filtering SP before reaching your mail server. IMO, subscribing to cloud based solution is kind of defeating the purpose of running in-house email service (your emails will be partly owned by outsider)

    With MS Exchange you can do all sort of wonderful configurations, but course, to have this fun grandpa needs to be rich. check with your top management if they want to establish email retention policy. good to have. it's better to cover your backside because I tell you sekali one day your ex-co ki siao and decides to come back and sue your company due to some pending bollywood payment (kay leng nah syao).

    Alternatively, you can rent servers from softlayer, rackspace .. (again, options aplenty) and setup your own email services on them. you can get a cloud server if you do not want to worry about managing ?hardware. backing up cloud server is alot simpler as well. Capture the entire image and you are done. besides, you can always spin these images off to create new instance of email server in minutes!

    in cloud space, you can setup as many instances as you want and they are linked to each other via virtual network. Each of them has its own internal and external static IPs. very useful if you want to separate your user DB from the mail server, and have the spam filtering service hosted on another instance (divide and conquer, for manageability purpose. or high availability.)

    however, a problem with cloud server is that the public static IP assigned to your instance might have been abused by some 18yo spammers before (due to the nature of cloud platform. one can spin new instance in seconds). So you will have to live with an IP that doesn't quite have a good reputation. your outgoing emails might get rejected. if the IP has been blacklisted, it takes some effort to get it de-listed.

    solid cloud server provider: rackspace cloud, amazon, linode, slicehost (owned by rackspace).

    Also, do read about SPF/DKIM configuration. it's good to have them set up correctly in your DNS so that your emails can be authenticated accordingly.
     
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2011
    1 person likes this.
  5. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    I would go with Gmail. It's free and (so far) pretty reliable.

    However, they no longer offer 50 e-mail accounts free. I just set up our clinic's e-mail system using Gmail and we were only given 10 accounts free.

    This is a limitation you will have to live with. Of course, you can always pay if you want more accounts.
     
  6. zy

    zy zynine.com Staff Member

    Crap, I thought I replied to this thread.
    Anyway, thanks guys however I failed to mention the size of the business. Currently, less than 10 people, so cloud server is overkill :oops:
     
  7. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Well, looks like your choice is pretty obvious then - Gmail. :D
     

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