OX App Suite - Who Actually Supports This?

[Cowboy 1]

Today I decided to pull the trigger on trying this out with MarketConnect for the first time. I registered a new domain, added the $20 to my MarketConnect account and bought the App Suite + Productivity option. 

I got pretty flustered when trying to set up the cloud storage because when you install this app via the App Store for Mac it will ask you for a server URL, plus your account login details. The server URL isn't shown anywhere so a client trying to set this up on their own is going to probably be even more frustrated than I was. I eventually figured it out, but still. Not cool. 

So once I had the cloud storage figured out I got it working - very happy with that. I then set up my email account in Mac Mail and that was fairly easy to do. I sent a test email from the new domain and it went through fine. When I replied to it the reply never arrived. There was no bounce notice either, so I put this down to DNS still propagating from the new domain name. The first test reply from iCloud actually just arrived a few minutes ago, as did my last from the same domain (at least 9 hours later), but all the other tests I did in between using GMail haven't arrived yet. Assuming this is probably still a DNS propagation issue. 

What I need to know before I consider this as a viable alternative to Google Workspace (ptooie!) is whether it is possible to set up email aliases? I can't see anything on their systems on how to do it. I have sent an email to their support, but I havent even received an acknowledgement of that. 

Does anybody have any experience in setting this up? 

Oh yes, one more thing, there's a post on this community about a promotion on this product where mailboxes are billed at 0.01c until March. I got billed the full $2 and some change. What's up with that? 

[brian! 3257]

7 minutes ago, Cowboy said:

Oh yes, one more thing, there's a post on this community about a promotion on this product where mailboxes are billed at 0.01c until March. I got billed the full $2 and some change. What's up with that? 

my reading of the blog post below (which I assume you're referring to), is that you have to enrol on the promotion to get the discount...

https://blog.whmcs.com/133665/whmcs-80--ox-mail-introductory-promo-pricing

possibly if you contact MarketConnect support directly, they might be able to tweak your pricing to match the promotion (don't know if they can or will, it's just a suggestion).

https://marketplace.whmcs.com/help/connect

[Cowboy 1]

Thanks, I have done that now. 

Obscurity isn't a good bedfellow for marketing prowess...

[WHMUp 15]

Maybe a bit out of topic, but what I can say is that you definitely did a correct start with OX App Suite. Didn't knew that App at all but lately I registered for a 2 months free trial with Namecheap and I've been surprised with this App. And all this, just testing the Mail section which works perfect. I assume that cloud storage and office documents should be the same quality.

I don't deal with Hosting services to use it in my website but for sure I'll use it for my own use.

Chris

[Cowboy 1]

Still non-the-wiser regarding the use of aliases for email, or how the migration tool works. When you follow that link on the WHMCS generated email it takes you to a blank page. See here: https://migration.appsuite.cloud/ 

[WHMCS ChrisD 452]

@Cowboy Let me see what I can find out for you about the migration portal 

[Cowboy 1]

2 hours ago, WHMCS ChrisD said:

@Cowboy Let me see what I can find out for you about the migration portal 

That would be great, thanks. 

I'm quite serious about moving over to OX from Google, but obviously need it to be a seamless transition if possible. The info on aliases being possible would also be handy. 

[WHMCS Zac 0]

Anyone who needs support regarding OX app suite products should get in touch with the Marketplace support department.  I am currently looking into the option for alias domains per email user with OX support, I cannot see any option to do so in the OX product currently. However, there is the option to forward all incoming mail to a certain email address for similar results. 

The migration portal is under development with OX , after delays it is expected to be released this quarter.

[edherroj 0]

Hello everyone,

This is just the subject I was looking for and I’m really curious about knowing the reselling process of OX services.

Are we reselling plans that the people from MarketPlace bundled and make available in WHMCS (meaning reselling what they resell) or are we reselling the service directly from OX being the main provider?

In any case, more importantly, where are these email accounts hosted? Is it OX proprietary infrastructure or is this running on MarketPlace/WHMCS servers as resellers.

Is something I’ve been thinking about and cannot find any clues on the web.

Thanks,

-ED

[WHMCS John 215]

Hi there,

With WHMCS MarketConnect services you are our customer, the vendors would not recognise you as the billable party. This enables us to use the combined might of the WHMCS user-base to negotiate preferential prices with vendors and pass that on to you, that individual organisations would be unlikely to achieve without committing to significant volumes or upfront costs.

The services provided by WHMCS MarketConnect are hosted by the vendors themselves, so there is no requirement to install specialist software or infrastructure on your systems once WHMCS is up and running.

 

 

[edherroj 0]

Great, perfect, good to know! Yes, I pretty sure they won't even bother in answering a contact form request for just a couple of email accounts 🙂  ... Good thing we have these solutions available in WHMCS.

[Cowboy 1]

There are two things that are holding me back from launching this service to my customers, because I know I will be asked about it. 

1. How can they get an email alias to work? This is important because lots of people have set up role based emails that all come to the same box (sales@, support@, etc). They won't want to run separate email boxes for those and have to pay for them. This is an easy setup in Gmail, so to compete we have to have a comparable service. 

2. How can we move existing email from their server or local storage into OX Mail? The whole premise of offering large storage email boxes is to maintain an archive that can be accessed from any device, so this is important. 

Once I can answer those two questions I am primed to launch the service to my base. I think they will be ready for this. 

[WHMUp 15]

1 hour ago, Cowboy said:

1. How can they get an email alias to work? This is important because lots of people have set up role based emails that all come to the same box (sales@, support@, etc). They won't want to run separate email boxes for those and have to pay for them. This is an easy setup in Gmail, so to compete we have to have a comparable service.

I can reply only to this. It's very easy. From setting you can choose which email account will receive such emails

Of course you can select "None" which means that in such case all unrouted emails will be delete.

 

[Cowboy 1]

5 minutes ago, WHMUp said:

I can reply only to this. It's very easy. From setting you can choose which email account will receive such emails

Of course you can select "None" which means that in such case all unrouted emails will be delete.

 

Thanks, but I can't seem to find this setting anywhere in my test account I have set up. Where is it? 

[WHMUp 15]

@Cowboy

My apologies, ignore my post. Even if (from what I know) features are the same for all installations (I mean in different providers), this is from Namecheap where I had a testing account, and I can say that have been very happy using OX App Suite, even if for my own reasons , I canceled it.

 

[Cowboy 1]

No problem. I have been hunting for this and coming up empty, so I don't think its turned on for WHMCS. Hopefully somebody in  a decision making capacity will be alerted to this email and we can do something about it. It's quite important. 

[edherroj 0]

On 2/15/2021 at 11:30 PM, Cowboy said:

There are two things that are holding me back from launching this service to my customers, because I know I will be asked about it. 

1. How can they get an email alias to work? This is important because lots of people have set up role based emails that all come to the same box (sales@, support@, etc). They won't want to run separate email boxes for those and have to pay for them. This is an easy setup in Gmail, so to compete we have to have a comparable service. 

2. How can we move existing email from their server or local storage into OX Mail? The whole premise of offering large storage email boxes is to maintain an archive that can be accessed from any device, so this is important. 

Once I can answer those two questions I am primed to launch the service to my base. I think they will be ready for this. 

Hey Cowboy,

I don't think OX offers the aliases option, instead users have to create a separate email account so that they can use it as an alias. In your example sales@ department will have an email account sales@my-business.com ... and so all users will be able to setup that email account as a separate inbox into their personal accounts (like nesting the department accounts) using OX App interface.

Regarding question 2 its pretty simple, you just use a good email client, can be Outlook or other, and import/export all email data. But I'm sure you can import/export directly into OX App inboxes. So whatever email client or service your customers are using now, they can easily move to OX App by importing the entire inboxes.

Thanks for the comments, good thing we can learn from each other!

-ED

[Cowboy 1]

Some feedback after using it on a couple of my own domains for a couple of months;  it works well. Setup for email was easy enough, simple DNS change and then inputting the info into the email client. You do have to wait for DNS to propagate so some tests took a while to arrive when I first made the change. 

Setting up the iPhone app for OX Cloud is a bit clumsy as you are asked to input the server URL, which isn't obvious or easily remembered. 

The desktop app for OX Drive on macOS has some syncing issues when the computer is restarted. It seems to forget where the folder it needs to sync is located. 

The one thing I would like to do now is made some changes to the landing page in WHMCS to show the pricing options for longer terms. Is this even possible? Right now it only shows a monthly amount. 

[Cowboy 1]

Oh yes, the migration tool from Gmail to OX Mail is very efficient and it brought over all my emails in a very short space of time - probably a couple of hours at most, whereas when I did this exercise after upgrading from Gmail to Google Workspace it took several days.