anuragbhatia.com !!!

Hi there….

Out sourcing is really going everywhere and really EVERYWHERE!

And now it has reached Email Hosting too!!! Sounds exiting, isn’t it?

and latest work by one of US big web hosts proves that.

More and more companies these days are moving towards outsourced email hosting and fun is web hosts are too in that cue!!!

A few months back even Dream Host also recommended Google hosted email via GApps suite….in one of their blog >>> http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/05/23/what-web-hosting-is-for/

observe the lines

But why would you use Gmail? Well, they do have a pretty cool web interface, which you can add your own logo to and access at your own domain; but besides that they also have regular POP/IMAP/SMTP access, plus awesome archiving, searching, filtering, reliability, accessibility

Thus Dream Host is also accepting that GApps provide better service then an hosted email at there server…..truly saying thats true!!!

Actually, there is much profit in having an outsourced email hosting with service like Google Apps…

1. Out sourced email….so you don’t need to put effort in maintaining servers at office, looked after by a server admin (adding more to the cost) , you don’t need to worry about storage, hardware, ISP’s link, spyware and Virus issues…..actually truly saying all these points become good excuses to not have an @company-name.com id by small businesses.
2. In comparison with email hosting of web host, its even still better……say lets compare GApps with an web based email service like squirrel mail .
   In this case, unfortunately most of small web hosts show 1-2 min downtime ever week (as per what i observed…) and in this setup here is only one server which hosts email, thus late delivery can be an common issue with small web hosts, having one server hosting about 500 small business web sites with email…….
3. After reliability, data protection is also an issue, since most of email hosting is based on Linux server giving cpanel in front end and WHM panels in backend, its really not much difficult for hackers to get into a server which is like kids playing football in a showroom ;)but till now i haven’t heard any case of data loss by Gmail, thats true it was down a few weeks back and the outage was for about 24hrs for some accounts, but isn’t its STILL MUCH BETTER then seeing an own server being crashed with data loss after morning coffee ?
   So the point i wana say, GApps gives a feeling, might be not reachable but its there!!!

   I heard many critics just crying out for little downtime in GApps……yes! …it was about 24 hrs BUT BUT and BUT for “a FEW” accounts and i don’t feel it that much painful, after observing other reliability features.

4. And if we talk about things other then reliability, features is another great attraction towards Google hosted email.

So actually truly saying out sourcing mail has many profits BUT for small business… how? (read on…)

your office?

if we look at cost of an email server….

• cost of hardware
• cost of storage…..(really high as remember, we are comparing it with Google’s hosting)
• cost of bandwidth
• uplink speeds, since most of small biz email server have uplink of 5-10Mbps which can make everything slow in case of peak time hours
• Facilities like sending attachments can cause heavy load on low infrastructure (storage and link speed)
• cooling solutions to have an “always-on” …i repeat have an ALWAYS ON…. but for small businesses maintaining all that will be even more tedious.
• cost of a guy called “server admin!”

So thus truly saying out sourcing is good BUT there are a few problems still evolved…. or we can just put a question - is there is any need to have a personal data center for small businesses just to have an @company-name.com id ?

Negatives of using out sourced email…

• Data security……yes that can be… e.g an server admin handling mail server can …….
  but but and but small business don’t have that much trouble and also we can rely on reputed email hosts like Google…..but for a Very BIG organization, it can be troubleful …….
• Buggy servers! there can be whole lot troubles in using …like e.g if you add and domain alias in Google and then delete it, there is high probability that you won’t be able to add it back to Google “smoothly…” and also same case lies with deleted user etc……..which are not at all any problems when you have your server is nxt down floor of your office.
• You will be having full control on eveything, like e.g taking you can’t assign a user less/more then 7GB space in GAPps and at max is 25GB which is in premium edition at $50/user/yr cost whereas you can assign any limit on storage of individual account.

BUT if we observe these things, they are the features which small businesses doesn’t need any more…..

Concussion

Its really good for small businesses to have an out sourced email rather then having own data center just for providing a few people with business email but yes, can cause a little pain for big organizations who can afford personal data centers for reliability and can spend huge money on it.

So for a company having less then 500 users GAPps hosted mail is much better choice, for more then that, company can invest in server …mind it “reliable server!”

Category: Web Hosting by Anurag