Re: [cobalt-users] Webbased Email

[PowerClicks <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Question is:
> Is Webbased Email possible on RAQ2+?
> Which program should I use?

of course. There are plenty of cgi solutions which run fine on raq2. Some
examples:

http://alias-mail.com
http://www.mailnow.co.uk

also http://www.joydesk.com/ which has a special raq2 package version (but,
in my mind, pricing is completely out of hand)


> What are the pros and cons for this kind of
> software?

Pros: works on YOUR server:
- you keep control of everything.
- you own YOUR userbase
- you get to keep 100% of advertising
- and although migrations to different solutions (if you decide to change
software...) may be tricky, you will not lose all your current users during
the switch as you would when email is outsorced to third parties like
bigmailbox.com or outblaze.com (which we use) and you decide to leave them.
For example outblaze offer to sell you back the users (they own 50% of the
userbase in exchange for their service (not such a bad deal...)) if you
decide to quit, but at what price? and I don't think the transition would be
smooth, or cheap for that matter.

Cons: works on YOUR server:)
- the no1 problem is abuse: people forging your domain once they find out
you are in the email biz. You will get tens of thousands of returned email
from the larger spams, and hundreds of complaints. This WILL blow your
server (raq2 or other) and often break the scripts that have to parse
through incoming mail. This will make your users very unhappy.
- scalability: most of the software you will find are written for one server
environment and do not offer scalability. If you reach a certain userbase
say 20 or 30000 users you will need some custom solutions to make your
service run on multiple machines.
- you have to take care of all the technical aspects and keep in good terms
with your upstream provider.
- support

Bottom line:

If your site is to focusing mainly on providing free-email the you should
obviously keep everything in-house so you have total control over things.

If email is only a fraction of your site's offering, I suggest you outsource
because the overhead of doing it yourself is enormous and will cost you and
your staff huge amounts of time better devoted to develop other parts of
your site.

This is my opinion, maybe others have had better experience doing it.

> Is it possible to use this kind of software next to
> standard email facilities.

yes, the other domains hosted on the server can continue to work as usual.

Hope this give you an idea of what you may be getting into.

Regards,
David.