5 Reasons NOT to Rely on Web-based Email

Although the corporate move to cloud computing has been measured and cautious, many average computer users have made the move without even realizing it. Users of Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and other web-based email, have all entrusted their communications with cloud services.

Generally speaking, this is not a bad thing and provides the users with a lot of flexibility, but there are at least 5 reasons to think twice about using cloud email with your own website.

1. A commercial company will have the only copies of your data.

2. Archiving may be a pain if you ever decide to shut down the email accounts but keep the messages.

3. When you cannot connect to the Internet, you cannot see those emails.

4. You are at the mercy of the email company, which can change their software or even shut down completely.

5. You cannot control mail server configuration, except what your service provider allows.

Some cloud services offer a happy medium by providing users with web-based email and pop/imap service. That way, your data is still ultimately yours.

Photo Source: Flickr

Offering web-based email on your web server

These days, many email users rely on free services such as GMail or Yahoo! Mail for their messaging needs, but these services lack the customization that some business customers may want (i.e. myname@mydomain.com). For that, they have two options: setup cloud services with Google or another service provider, or use the email accounts offered by their web hosting providers.

If your web hosting customers opt for the latter, you have some things to consider. POP3 and IMAP offerings are a given, but if your customers want a web-based option, you will need to provide one. Some hosting control panels come with web-based email solutions. If you have that option, use it.

If you do decide to install your own web-based email, make sure you choose secure, well-tested software that is easy to upgrade and maintain. The last thing you want is to have to manage poorly written software and spend your time fighting off hackers who exploit its security holes. Finally, make sure that things like quota control limits are easily enforceable and that the server load is not too high. You and your clients will hopefully be happy with the results.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Web host encourages clients to use Gmail

You might think that as one of the largest web hosts in the United States, DreamHost would want its customers to use its own email service. You’d be wrong to think so, however. Since May 2008, the company has encouraged its users to switch to Gmail for their email needs.

In a blog post, Dream Host co-founder Josh Jones stated, “Just over HALF of all the support requests we get are about email… It’s just not something people are looking for from us, and it’s something the big free email providers like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google can do better.”

So rather than improve its own email system to make it more user friendly, DreamHost has opted to outsource it to Google. This is a great cost-cutting measure and it’s nice that the company is giving its customers more options. But I think the real underlying problem here is that DreamHost isn’t as user-friendly as it could be.

The company may have improved since I switched to a different host several years ago, but from my experience, the DreamHost control panel is hard to use. I remember it being very slow and arranged in a very illogical fashion. As DreamHost half-heatedly admits, their email service wasn’t easy to set up. Instead of copping out by switching to Gmail, the web host should fix what was broken in the first place.

How to setup Google Apps DNS records in cPanel

Google Apps is a cloud computing suite of services that includes web-based email, documents, and other services. Unlike standard Gmail, you can use it with your own domain (i.e. instead of yourname@gmail.com, you would have yourname@yourdomain.com). To setup your domain to use this service in cPanel, you need to edit three things:

1. MX records.
2. CNAME record
3. SPF record.

To edit the MX record, go to the Mail section in cPanel and click MX Entry. Enter the records according to Google’s specification, but exclude the period at the end, as it is not needed in cPanel.

To edit the CNAME records, click Simple DNS Zone Editor in the Domains section. If “mail.yourdomain” is already taken, you can choose another name or click Advanced DNS Zone Editor to change it.

Finally, Google recommends setting up an SPF record. This is also found in Advanced DNS Zone Editor. Once you have that setup, you are finished setting up Google for mail service, but the DNS will take some time to propagate.

Photo: Flickr

No, you can't have gail.com

When Kevin Watson bought the domain gail.com for his wife, Gail, back in 1996, I don’t think either of the two ever imagined how much the gift would end up being worth.

If you use Gmail, at one point or another you may have misspelled gmail.com and ended up at gail.com. Considering the number of people using the free email service, the site likely gets thousands of visits per day.

A number of individuals and companies have tried to get their hands on the domain, but Gail and her husband won’t budge. A small Q&A page set up on the domain says the two will not sell.
Read More >>