Mark,
As a WISPA sponsoring vendor for Postini, I can offer some information as I
was a Postini customer before I was asked to become a Postini Partner
Reseller. Postini uses an MX directed service that redirects your customer's
messages through the Postini hosted filtering data centers. Accounts can be
manually created or use one of two automated user creation methods. There
are no software or hardware concerns and the interface is 100% web based for
all your system administration.
Since closing down our dialup data center in 2002, we moved all our
webhosting to our secondary provider we have used from our beginning and
needed stronger filtering methods. Since we were too far away to administer
an appliance type service, e.g. Barracuda, Ironport, etc., we gave Postini a
try. Our main concern was reducing our server loads and increased disc space
for handling the increasing amount of spam and viruses.
Postini handled this by being at the front edge of the network and killing
off a significant amount of wasted bandwidth created by spam/viruses, a
definite plus. Since we did both virtual and dedicated hosting, our
virtually hosted accounts that had high amounts of spam traffic, we saw
increased server performance and significant amount of reduced disc space as
well as reduced bandwidth overall.
The cost of using Postini was genuinely a concern, but so was the potential
cost of losing revenue from customers wanting a better filtering service and
costs of increased bandwidth and server resources. We took advantage of
Postini's 30 day trial and gave all our clients the same. We put all of our
customer domains on the service and in using Postini's reporting, were able
to see our largest email contributors and provide those stats to our
customers on a before and after period of using Postini. This provided a
good development tool in determining our costs to our customers and how we
could offer the service to them and at what price.
That said, we also began reaching outside of our own hosted customers and
promoted Postini to other businesses, especially those hosting their own
mail servers, e.g., MS Exchange. We again offered free trials and developed
a significant amount of additional business by promoting Postini and
leveraging their existing marketing and press credentials. By Postini being
a hosted service, (Software as a Service - SaaS) we were also able to
provide businesses with multiple offices a centralized management control of
their email system messages.
We have customers with as little as five accounts and some with over a
thousand users and I can honestly say our churn is hardly measurable in
almost 4 years of providing Postini, because they did not like or afford the
service. One of the best features I feel Postini offers is a wireless
feature for filtering to PDA's, e.g. Blackberry and Treo's. We actually have
a few IT specialty companies promoting this feature alone and doing a very
good job at that.
As for the impact, all I can say is that in all my time providing Internet
related services, I have never had an easier time than that in offering
Postini. In fact, I have completely focused my company's direction on
providing Postini exclusively and hopefully adding other related email
services in the future.
In closing, no matter what service you use for spam/virus control, your
customers need it and want it.
Best Regards,
Frank Muto
President
FSM Marketing Group, Inc.
Postini Partner Reseller
http://wispa.spam-virus.com
Toll Free: 800-246-7740
Cell: 630-258-7422
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Nash" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
For those of you using this service, please tell me about it.
1. How accounts are set up to send through their system.
2. What you like about it.
3. What you don't like about it.
4. How do you pay for it? (increase subscriber costs, eat it, etc)
5. Has it had a positive impact on your customers (if you can tell)?
Mark Nash
Network Engineer
UnwiredOnline.Net
350 Holly Street
Junction City, OR 97448
http://www.uwol.net
541-998-5555
541-998-5599 fax
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