Domain Webmail for the public and domain site members

[durangod]

I have had this on my project board for some time. "Client Side Clients - Domain Webmail". Meaning i would write a script that would allow members of a domain (example: social site), lets call it mydatingsite.com to have the availability to sign up for and be issued a myname@mydatingsite.com email address. So you would basically be selling or giving away email accounts to get your brand name out there.

 

This would be via an interface arround or linked to the cpanel webmail link, they would sign up and then be able to log in without any interaction from the admin of the site or the host company support.

 

The reason i have had this on pending on my project board for a while now is because im not convinced yet that it has more benefits than liabilities.

 

Since the liabilities are more lets start with those.

 

1. If someone spams then the ISP or other organizations will ban your domain name.

 

2. If you happen to go out of business then they are out an email address and people dont want something that is here today gone tomorrow, and then their emails are gone forever. Thats why big name free email addresses like msn, hotmail, yahoo, gmail are so popular, chances are they will never die. Well maybe yahoo lol

 

3. Liability, liability, liability... There would need to be quite an extensive disclaimer to cover you if someone should endulge in illegal activity. Having email for domain employees is one thing, but having email for site members and basically the public is better left to those with deep deep pockets who can afford good lawyers.

 

4. There are several scripts on the market, none of them that i found to be a complete deal. Basically they are simply the grass roots of something started and then they just stopped development. Maybe for the reasons above they decided it was not a good idea, i dont know.

 

5. If your going to be in the hosting business then be in the hosting business, if your going to be in the email business then be in the email business, but dont mix the two. For me this spells disaster.

 

6. Servers are vulnerable enough as it is without giving the would be no good doer another avenue to penetrate the server.

 

7. People are fickle many times and it might go well at first and then just die off and the idea turn to dust. I just dont believe that people will embrase this idea long term from some hosting company they never heard of before. Not even 3rd and 4th tier email companies. You would have to be one of the top two tiers in email distrobution to have people trust you.

 

 

 

Benefits...

 

1. Brand name dispersement

 

2. Unique feature presentation

 

3. The access to market email subscribers to help turn them into hosting customers.

 

 

How do you all feel about this?

Edited November 21, 2014 by durangod

[blakeh]

We did a partnership for one of our clients. They are a membership association in a particular industry, and we worked them them for their members that are still using email at yahoo, gmail, isp, etc to have an email address at the membership association's domain (their employees have email on different domain) and it's included in their membership fees. We bill the association a bulk amount for active accounts. Eventually the members move on and get their own domains.

 

I've been wanting to get the signup process scripted as our provider has a full API for everything but haven't gotten around to it.

 

I think what you're talking about is a good idea, and could be scripted.

 

bh