Fastmail to host email for my webpage? - Page 2

***Edwin*** · 3 Nov 2001, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kyle Babich
** Idea **
Edwin, if you read this, how about a forum for email/domain hosting, or something like that? A forum for hosting our domains with hosts that provide good email features like how plesk works with IMAP, and how RaQs have easy control panels for editing mail accounts, etc. [/b]

That's an interesting idea... I think we need to get there in stages. The Technical Forum, combined with the newly renamed forum about running Email Services (I took out all the references to "free" and made it clear it's for personal-use services as well) should suffice for now.

As the volume of ACTIVE users (i.e. people who post) increases, it will become easier to open new Forums. While the technical side takes only a few minutes, I am more concerned about the "user" side. From experience, there's nothing worse than empty Forums with posts every few weeks. Questions don't get answered, people get bored etc...

Eventually (and I'm talking many-months-to-years rather than soon) I could imagine this site with hundreds of Forums on dozens of topics - each of which was introduced once the demand was obvious...

Besides, I've always wanted to do something with the domain name Noticeboards.com

But this is going way off on a tangent. For now, I hope the expanded remit in the existing Forum will go some way towards meeting the demand you outline.

Edwin

**Shelded** · 5 Nov 2001, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kyle Babich

Godaddy.com is, imo, the cheapest registrar with the best features.
(ie ns creation, dns info modification, multiple domains under one account, etc.)

As far as hosting a domain, that might be going off topic.

** Idea **
Edwin, if you read this, how about a forum for email/domain hosting, or something like that? A forum for hosting our domains with hosts that provide good email features like how plesk works with IMAP, and how RaQs have easy control panels for editing mail accounts, etc.

If still interested in providing personal mail service Godaddy's $9 for one year is as cheap as I have seen. But I don't see much DNS there, can't set subdomain, MX, mail forwarding, web forwarding -- only set the host record and the ownership info. You need http://www.zoneedit.com for that. Having MX control allows you to have "plug-in" mail on your subdomain using such as Everyone.net, Ownmail.com, NetMongol.com -- or Fastmail

, and you can still use mail forwarding on your main domain. Who knows, you may make $9/year by selling accounts to friends and break even.

We want free email, and Godaddy $9 + Zoneedit $0 for one year combined with your favorite free email account lets you be cheap and in control.

Jeremy Howard · 5 Nov 2001, 05:59 PM

It sounds like we're dangerously close to achieving a 'best practice consensus'... For forwarding use pobox.com (paid, @pobox.com, spam scoring) or zoneedit.com (free, @yourdomain, forwarding only). For domain registration, godaddy.com (cheap) or Verio (big). For email provider, runbox.com (paid, large quota, established) or fastmail.fm (free or paid, large quota, IMAP and SSL, new). All these providers have proven themselves as being reliable so they'll get the job done.

Is there any benefit in FastMail.FM providing forwarding and domain registration/hosting to get everything in one place, or are people happy picking up the different bits from different providers? I think we'll probably set this all up anyway (since we'll need it for co-branding / corporate outsourcing) but I'm wondering how popular it would be with individual users...

**Shelded** · 5 Nov 2001, 06:11 PM

Your summary seems pretty good to me, excluding going with any registrar but the cheapest (since you can transfer).

If you can make this a clearer process for folks you will be doing a good thing, but I feel http://www.mydomain.com has clarified and taken the registration/dns part where it needs to be, so what we need you to do is host mail and serve files. I am looking forward to seeing what you can offer as far as administration over my small group of users, and if you can offer bulk pricing. Note that plugin mail has no functional peer to what you plan to offer (IMAP

), but comes at a cost of perhaps $20/1000 users (NetMongol). You offer a better product at a much higher cost. It's a hard sell, because most of my users are not sophisticated enough to pay for quality.

Jeremy Howard · 5 Nov 2001, 07:26 PM

Yeah, I saw your post about NetMongol pricing a few days ago. Imagine if someone had 1,000 users who all used 10MB and had a lot of email going in and out--NetMongol would lose a bundle! But that's not real likely to happen with POP users I guess, because the email gets moved across the the user's PC...

I've seen other services for a few bucks per account per month for 25MB which don't even offer IMAP, so there's certainly a lot of variance in pricing!

***Edwin*** · 5 Nov 2001, 10:02 PM

If I can just put in a quick positive word for http://www.mydomain.com/ which was mentioned a few posts back...

Their service is fantastic! This site uses their free DNS service, and it is very, very rarely down. And emailaccount.com uses their free MX record control service to power 26,000+ free email accounts (via Everyone.net). Even though their services are free, they seem to provide truly "industrial-strength" solutions.

Edwin

**Shelded** · 6 Nov 2001, 05:24 AM

Thanks, Edwin, that's how I feel (I use them).
There's no limit to the domains you can have there. But you will have to either register or transfer your domain to NamesDirect (that's a big registrar, no problem there).

If you have fewer than 5 domains zoneedit will serve you for free and it has one feature you won't find on Mydomain.com -- you can adjust the SOA.

Sry, the longer this goes the more technical it seems, but I feel there are a lot of people out there who want to assemble this kind of info and can't find it in one place. This seemed a good time to unload some of it.

Is Greg still reading?

Jeremy Howard · 6 Nov 2001, 06:17 AM

I hadn't looked at mydomain.com before. Nice that it is unrestricted. So how do they make money--it's not full of popups or spam, is it?

kirill · 6 Nov 2001, 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by shelded
There's no limit to the domains you can have there. But you will have to either register or transfer your domain to NamesDirect (that's a big registrar, no problem there).

No, you don't need to have NamesDirect as a registrar for the domains you want to use with MyDomain. To use MyDomain services you only need to change nameservers for your domain to ns[1-4].mydomain.com. That's it.

--
Kirill

kirill · 6 Nov 2001, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeremy Howard
I hadn't looked at mydomain.com before. Nice that it is unrestricted. So how do they make money--it's not full of popups or spam, is it?

MyDomain is owned by NamesDirect which is a registrar. Money come from NamesDirect.

--
Kirill

***Edwin*** · 6 Nov 2001, 08:37 AM

And their business model WORKS - at least for me. I now have over 100 domains now at NamesDirect.

I guess because MyDomain.com is very highly automated, it can be run at (relatively) low cost, which makes it a win situation overall when you consider that x% of MyDomain.com users are/will become NamesDirect customers.

Edwin

OtaconTV · 6 Nov 2001, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeremy Howard
Is there any benefit in FastMail.FM providing forwarding and domain registration/hosting to get everything in one place, or are people happy picking up the different bits from different providers? I think we'll probably set this all up anyway (since we'll need it for co-branding / corporate outsourcing) but I'm wondering how popular it would be with individual users...

If the services were in one place, and had the support, features, and quality that fastmail does then I'd use it

(your talking about fastmail managing more than just e-mail right?)

**Shelded** · 6 Nov 2001, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by kirill

MyDomain is owned by NamesDirect which is a registrar. Money come from NamesDirect.

--
Kirill

NameZero owns NamesDirect and MyDomain. NamesDirect.com is an operational ICANN accredited registrar, NameZero is not operational but is accredited as a registrar (why bother now that they own one?) and NameZero (used to?) work with Verisign.
http://www.namezero.com/about/pressr...e/032001.shtml
http://www.namezero.com/about/pressr...e/081501.shtml
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html

Presumably the MyDomain revenue comes from the incidental purchases we make from NamesDirect as we read the weekly mailings they send as part of our contract with them. Yes, we get one message a week but I don't mind for what I'm getting.

**Shelded** · 6 Nov 2001, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by kirill

No, you don't need to have NamesDirect as a registrar for the domains you want to use with MyDomain. To use MyDomain services you only need to change nameservers for your domain to ns[1-4].mydomain.com. That's it.

--
Kirill

I'm delighted to be corrected on this! It resolves one of my two misgivings about recommending them over zoneedit (who has a less-attractive interface). I happened to have NamesDirect on most of my domains and misunderstood this comment on the MyDomain home page.
"* Note: Only domains registered through NamesDirect.com can be managed this way. "
With Kirill's help I now realize they're referring to a *link* which can only be used to manage ND sites.

Now, my other misgiving -- how do you "Set name server values like Time to Live, Refresh and Retry" as they claim http://www.mydomain.com/services/mydomainplus/features
I think their help screens are way out of date. That's something zoneedit appears to provide on line and MyDomain does not.

**Shelded** · 6 Nov 2001, 01:10 PM

Um, make another misgiving about thinking mydomain has it all .... zoneedit and hn.org will give you dynamic dns for free. That's really good for you if you want to run your mail server on a dynamic ADSL. But I will say most of us aren't doing that otherwise we would be reading another board.

5 Nov 2001, 05:59 PM	#18
Jeremy Howard Ultimate Contributor Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,501	It sounds like we're dangerously close to achieving a 'best practice consensus'... For forwarding use pobox.com (paid, @pobox.com, spam scoring) or zoneedit.com (free, @yourdomain, forwarding only). For domain registration, godaddy.com (cheap) or Verio (big). For email provider, runbox.com (paid, large quota, established) or fastmail.fm (free or paid, large quota, IMAP and SSL, new). All these providers have proven themselves as being reliable so they'll get the job done. Is there any benefit in FastMail.FM providing forwarding and domain registration/hosting to get everything in one place, or are people happy picking up the different bits from different providers? I think we'll probably set this all up anyway (since we'll need it for co-branding / corporate outsourcing) but I'm wondering how popular it would be with individual users...

5 Nov 2001, 06:11 PM	#19
Shelded Moderator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: USA Northwest Posts: 3,849	Your summary seems pretty good to me, excluding going with any registrar but the cheapest (since you can transfer). If you can make this a clearer process for folks you will be doing a good thing, but I feel http://www.mydomain.com has clarified and taken the registration/dns part where it needs to be, so what we need you to do is host mail and serve files. I am looking forward to seeing what you can offer as far as administration over my small group of users, and if you can offer bulk pricing. Note that plugin mail has no functional peer to what you plan to offer (IMAP ), but comes at a cost of perhaps $20/1000 users (NetMongol). You offer a better product at a much higher cost. It's a hard sell, because most of my users are not sophisticated enough to pay for quality.

5 Nov 2001, 07:26 PM	#20
Jeremy Howard Ultimate Contributor Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,501	Yeah, I saw your post about NetMongol pricing a few days ago. Imagine if someone had 1,000 users who all used 10MB and had a lot of email going in and out--NetMongol would lose a bundle! But that's not real likely to happen with POP users I guess, because the email gets moved across the the user's PC... I've seen other services for a few bucks per account per month for 25MB which don't even offer IMAP, so there's certainly a lot of variance in pricing!

5 Nov 2001, 10:02 PM	#21
*Edwin* Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: UK Posts: 3,118	If I can just put in a quick positive word for http://www.mydomain.com/ which was mentioned a few posts back... Their service is fantastic! This site uses their free DNS service, and it is very, very rarely down. And emailaccount.com uses their free MX record control service to power 26,000+ free email accounts (via Everyone.net). Even though their services are free, they seem to provide truly "industrial-strength" solutions. Edwin

6 Nov 2001, 05:24 AM	#22
Shelded Moderator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: USA Northwest Posts: 3,849	Thanks, Edwin, that's how I feel (I use them). There's no limit to the domains you can have there. But you will have to either register or transfer your domain to NamesDirect (that's a big registrar, no problem there). If you have fewer than 5 domains zoneedit will serve you for free and it has one feature you won't find on Mydomain.com -- you can adjust the SOA. Sry, the longer this goes the more technical it seems, but I feel there are a lot of people out there who want to assemble this kind of info and can't find it in one place. This seemed a good time to unload some of it. Is Greg still reading?

6 Nov 2001, 06:17 AM	#23
Jeremy Howard Ultimate Contributor Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,501	I hadn't looked at mydomain.com before. Nice that it is unrestricted. So how do they make money--it's not full of popups or spam, is it?

6 Nov 2001, 08:37 AM	#26
*Edwin* Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: UK Posts: 3,118	And their business model WORKS - at least for me. I now have over 100 domains now at NamesDirect. I guess because MyDomain.com is very highly automated, it can be run at (relatively) low cost, which makes it a win situation overall when you consider that x% of MyDomain.com users are/will become NamesDirect customers. Edwin

6 Nov 2001, 01:10 PM	#30
Shelded Moderator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: USA Northwest Posts: 3,849	Um, make another misgiving about thinking mydomain has it all .... zoneedit and hn.org will give you dynamic dns for free. That's really good for you if you want to run your mail server on a dynamic ADSL. But I will say most of us aren't doing that otherwise we would be reading another board.