RE: [IMail Forum] OT: customers caught in the middle

[Marc Funaro]

You haven't said how many email accounts we're talking about here, or the average type of traffic (lots of attachments, none, etc.).  Aside from that, here are my thoughts:   1.  If you are their hosting company, BE their hosting company.  Be a turnkey solution.  Customers HATE the exact situation you've presented -- your subject line says it all... "customers caught in the middle".  SO... YYYYAANK them out of the middle, give them even more reason to stay with you.  Host their website, their databases, their inbound and outbound mail, do it all.  Work your numbers, and charge what you need to.  But get them out of this awful situation where you send them back to their ISP for outbound mail issues, especially when the ISP has no dedication whatsoever to providing good (or ANY!) outbound mail services.  When a customer is in the middle, it's the vendors to blame, and the "bigger" vendor is the one that becomes an advocate for the client and HELPS them.  The returns in loyalty pay off over time.   2.  Travis is right - to accomplish #1, open up 587 and tell them how to use it. I don't know about iMail 'cause we've stopped using it and I never saw the latest version, but on our bsd box we made all connections to 587 absolutely require authentication.  It's not hard... and again, it removes the customer from "the middle".   3.  (again, not knowing how many accounts we're talking about here...) Bandwidth on smtp is a pittance, compared to other services.  If it's costing you too much, find a better datacenter.  Don't let THAT be a reason to "not take the customer out of the middle".   4.  If you are in one country and you have hosting clients halfway around the globe, find a good datacenter near them and stick a mail server in it.  (BSD is less expensive to host, at almost all the datacenters I've seen around the world, but you can pick whichever you like.)  If that's still not cost effective, then consider connecting up with another company near your clients and just buy some smtp usage off some existing servers.  (But make sure they're good.)   5.  Related to #4... unless networks are just terrible between the countries in question (and you've not provided that info either), it's not really that big a deal to have a message come halfway around the globe and back.  Heck, we have clients in NY while our datacenter is all the way across the country on the east coast... mail message delivery is in the order of SECONDS for us.  I've seen at least one fortune 500 company that has ALL their mail go all the way across the ocean, for all their mail.  Doesn't seem to bother them.   6.  If you compare the calls you get where you send the customer back to their ISP, with the number of calls you'd get if you just gave them a good smtp solution, i bet your man-hours would go DOWN.  ISPs have to provide smtp for thousand and thousands.  By comparison, I'm guessing you are a smaller company.  It's a lot easier for you to support a few users out of a smaller pool, than it is for the isp to support the same number of users out of an "ocean" of users.  And it's a lot easier to run a smaller, decent smtp server for that smaller pool overall.  Again, BE the good provider for them, and you'll gain more than you'll lose... customers like calling one place for help, and god knows a lot of companies have forgotten the importance of regular contact with the customer.  use their "problem" as an opportunity to give them a good experience... heck, maybe they'll recommend you to someone else.  Now you've MADE money on their support call.    A pipe dream?  Not really.  Our customer confidence always goes down while our support calls stay the same, when the customer uses their own ISP for smtp.  In contrast, when we just started setting up users to use our smtp on 587, customer confidence is up where it belongs, with no noticeable effect on support time.  I'll take it.   Just my (long) two cents. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matrosity Hosting Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 4:27 PM To: Imail_Forum@list.ipswitch.com Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] OT: customers caught in the middle we have but honestly would prefer customers use their ISP. Travis Rabe wrote: Open port 587 up!!! This is supported in 8.2X and up.  I use it here and it works wonderfully.  That way Imail listens on 25 and 587. ----------------------------------------- Travis Rabe From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matrosity Hosting Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 1:17 PM To: Imail_Forum@list.ipswitch.com Subject: [IMail Forum] OT: customers caught in the middle I just got off the phone with a telco in Atlanta who refuses to allow one of our clients access to their smtp server even though it's clearly defined in their contract for a T1. Apparently, there's a loophole in the contract that allows them to remove this service. At any rate they're doing this with many clients in the Atlanta area saying they must use their hosting company's smtp server. Since we've had out phone system lit up like a christmas tree a couple of times when ISP's turn off this kind of access we've advised customers to use their broadband providers' smtp servers. Now it seems that some ISP's are turning the customers back the other way. #1 reason is so we don't have an instance where our customers cannot suddenly send email and blame us. Obviously, saving the bandwidth and load on our server is a reason as well. It's also kind of foolish for clients in other countries to connect across an ocean to send an email to the next desk in their office. Just wanted some thoughts on the subject of how most will move forward.