Outsource - Why?

Ever considered the real costs of running an email server?

Possibly not. After all, it doesn’t normally feature very high on people’s priority list. Or maybe, seeing how you’ve found your way here, you’ve realized there’s a problem.

There are millions of poorly maintained, slow, feature-poor servers out there running their host company’s most essential online service.

This is especially true of many ISPs. An ISP is expected to offer email services to it’s customers. So much so, ISPs typically bundle an email account in with broadband connections. Most home users stick with this address whilst small businesses get email servers of their own. All three of these groups now have a problem to deal with:

The ISP

ISPs typically view email as a cost centre. It something that is bundled to keep customers happy. A product of this nature is typically under-resourced. It may be running a single server, with minimum backups and no real monitoring of activity.

As email is essentially a ‘freebie’, the customer doesn’t get many of the features that are becoming essential to email, such as anti-virus or anti-spam support. So, the customer has to go out an spend money on client-side software to protect themselves against their ISPs own servers!

The fact is, ISPs have a great opportunity to make money from email services as well as increasing customer satisfaction. Furthermore, through outsourcing, the ISP frees existing resource back into core activities.

The Business Customer

Especially if you’re a small business, you might find implementing an email service intimidating. If you need separate mailboxes for your employees (and you probably do) you’re probably not going to find what you’re looking for from your ISP. Which is a bit of wasted opportunity, really. So, you’re probably going to have to get your own email server.

How many non-IT small businesses could implement an email server that provides protection against spam and viruses, provides mailboxes for all staff and is resilient against Internet-borne attacks. Oh, and don’t forget to put in an exact replica of the server in case the first one goes wrong.

In other words, implementing your own server is a very expensive option and technically challenging to do right.

The End User

End-users need email as much as any business. However, they are often at the mercy at whatever their ISP has chosen to supply. Features such as anti-spam and anti-virus, or multiple mailboxes for the family are not available. Why do you think HTML-based services became so popular? People like to mind their own business thank-you-very-much.

We’ve found end-users will gladly ‘upgrade’ accounts to get extra features such as additional mailboxes or their own domain name. Some of our resellers have discovered a rich seam of ‘up sells’ that would never have been realised keeping email in-house.