3 ms·

Ask YC: Small Business Email

1 points by iamdave 18y ago

I've acquired my hardware this morning (thanks to next-day shipping. An extra $250 but it was well worth it). All of our software is deployed, hackers are cracking away at code and everyone is happy. We've got 4 hard drives going, 1 for production and testing, and the other is live. The 3rd is for personal stuff, and the fourth is just sitting there doing nothing. My co-founder suggested a rather interesting idea. Offer small business email for local businesses, and use Google Apps for a front-end until we (either decide to or find another solution for) develop a front-end. I think this is a great idea, the team agrees. This may require upgrading our connection coming in to a T1 (running on a 10meg drop at the moment without a twitch). This would be an expensive move, but if we get businesses on board that would be a very solid amount of passive income rolling in that we could put towards net profits. Thoughts?

brk 18y ago
My thought is that I've been in that world in the past, and it's generally a support nightmare. I don't know what your business/product is overall, but email hosting is such a cutthroat commodity item, I can't imagine why any startup would want to take on the overhead for small incremental revenue.
- iamdave 18y ago
  On the topic of support, almost our entire model is built around support since we write software for local companies, so it would fit in very well with everything right now.
  - brk 18y ago
    Again, not knowing your whole business model. But, supporting software you created is much different than supporting all the headaches/overhead of a mail server. If you want to do this, I would look at a formal resale agreement with a place like Mailstreet (not I heartily do NOT recommend them, but their name popped (haha, get it, popped...) into my head as an example). Use the benefit of THEIR support department and setup instructions when possible. You could also run your own mail server (what I do/did), then you have full control of uptime/downtime, version upgrades, etc. But still, I don't think this alone is much of a business you want to be in.

1 points by iamdave 18y ago

brk 18y ago

My thought is that I've been in that world in the past, and it's generally a support nightmare. I don't know what your business/product is overall, but email hosting is such a cutthroat commodity item, I can't imagine why any startup would want to take on the overhead for small incremental revenue.

iamdave 18y ago
On the topic of support, almost our entire model is built around support since we write software for local companies, so it would fit in very well with everything right now.
- brk 18y ago
  Again, not knowing your whole business model. But, supporting software you created is much different than supporting all the headaches/overhead of a mail server. If you want to do this, I would look at a formal resale agreement with a place like Mailstreet (not I heartily do NOT recommend them, but their name popped (haha, get it, popped...) into my head as an example). Use the benefit of THEIR support department and setup instructions when possible. You could also run your own mail server (what I do/did), then you have full control of uptime/downtime, version upgrades, etc. But still, I don't think this alone is much of a business you want to be in.