Pre-Sales Question

#1

Hello MX Route folks - I read Pre-purchase questions and it answered most of my questions but I have some additional questions / confirmations

Just as some background I am currently using OpenSRS for my mail hosting, and while I like their service, there have been a few too many hardware / connectivity issues and I’m looking at other options.

Their service is specifically email only and I pay per mailbox. I currently have about 160 mailboxes with approximately 800GB of allocated space and 170GB of used space (5GB/account allocated / quota)

  1. If I understand your pricing, I’m paying for the disk space not per mailbox.

  2. Are you effectively selling a managed cPanel (or other dashboard) limited to just email?

  3. If I understand your response from the referenced post - if an email account should get compromised, it is that single email that is suspend, not the entire server / account - In my 3 + years with OpenSRS I’ve had 2 or 3 accounts where the password was compromised and therefore suspended - we were able to reset the password and the then get the account restored

  4. OpenSRS was / is using RoundCube with their own UX on it - are you using the RoundCube or something different.

  5. I don’t allow my clients to manage their own accounts - if they need an additional mailbox they contact me, they are just doing WebMail / IMAP / POP / SMTP - Just making sure there is no issue here

  6. Does your service include CalDav / CardDav??

  7. Backups - If a client should accidentally delete mail / empty trash - do you keep a backup that can be restored for a certain account - I tell my clients to use IMAP so if something should happen to their computers they have a backup

  8. Webmail URL - do you have a specific URL or do I setup a CNAME and is there SSL on the webmail - It looks like you are using LetsEncrypt so I can use a domain specific URL for webmail with SSL - just looking to confirm.

  9. Based on all the above which account / package would be right for me?

  10. Support - as a single person business I get limiting support channels to keep things manageable - that being said I have found the reason that I contact email support is a) an account is suspended and I need to get it reset b) restoring a mailbox c) there is a service issue - As a business owner / server admin I respect people’s time and can use a forum for common issues - I saw in one of your posts you use slack, but it seems to be a private slack channel - Just wondering how best to post / contact support for one of the items above

I think this is it for now - I’m not looking to move all my accounts tomorrow but I’m looking. OpenSRS is $0.50 / 5GB mailbox so for the price it is very good - but if I need to pay a little more to get better / more reliable service it is worth the added cost.

I look forward to your reply / direct message if needed.

#2

Happy to answer these. I’ll go in order.

  1. Correct.

  2. The inbound setup is basically a highly customized DirectAdmin server. Just to give you some insight into how much we customize on those servers, this is the table of contents of my internal wiki for server deployment: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2pl884pm9l0723b/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-16-19-06.75.png?dl=0

The outbound system though, that’s my real baby. It has nothing to do with licensed software, it’s a finely tuned beast built from open source software. I feel like I don’t hype it enough, when the reality is the only equivalent to it on the market is priced dramatically higher and doesn’t come with an inbound setup. You can read about it here: https://mxroute.com/our-unique-outbound-infrastructure/

On top of that DirectAdmin server though, we also license this to add some flair: https://crossbox.io (Their developers are awesome and highly interested in our customer’s feedback)

I don’t want it to sound like we just run an install script and start taking orders, it’s just better at this stage of our business to outsource the frontend panel for security purposes. I feel like we’re rapidly approaching a future where we’ll have developers building something in-house.

  1. Right now the working method is that we change the account’s password and email you about it (to your billing contact email). We’re only interested in suspending entire accounts when the account holder (not their customer) is obviously, directly, and intentionally involved sending unsolicited marketing emails. That’s probably 3-4 customers per year out of the 5-10 customers we gain on average each day.

  2. We use Roundcube and I consider it the “default” email client. It uses the Elastic theme which is now default in the Roundcube project, only adding in plugins to manage server side filters and enable email users to change their password from within the email client. Crossbox, however, is what we show an image of on mxroute.com and a lot of customers use it as their default.

  3. Perfect setup for that, they don’t have any control outside of the email account they’re logged in with (filters, password, folders, etc).

  4. It does not. Right now we do offer NextCloud which uses IMAP logins, each email user can access it for a small amount of file storage (10GB), the primary intent being to give them access to a Cal/CardDAV system for each email account. It’s at cloud.mxroute.com and I’m still calling it beta right now, it isn’t flawless and I wouldn’t buy the service based on it. It may let you down right now. I won’t push it any more until I’m certain that it will be consistent.

  5. Right now we only do full account backups daily for disaster recovery purposes, nothing you’d have access to. When JetBackup finishes their DirectAdmin version, I’d like to expose that to you so that you could manage it.

  6. If you consider Roundcube the default as I do, you’ll like this tutorial for using your own URL for it: https://mxroutehelp.com/index.php/2019/08/25/custom-webmail-pop-imap-smtp-domain/

A lesser known feature is that you can create an “admin@” (any domain) and log in to the Crossbox webmail client, and gain access to an admin area where you can set a custom URL for it as well. We haven’t made a tutorial yet, this isn’t a feature we’re pushing yet (time constraints more than anything, not a lack of confidence in the feature).

  1. The storage space is the rough part. As you’ve no doubt noticed we only offer up to 50GB for an individual account on the non-reseller plans. If you can split up domains across multiple accounts to spread out the usage, then our plans might work for you. If you end up having to use the reseller plans to have enough space, I want you to be aware of what you’re getting into, and for that read this:
  1. Ideally I like to make sure that you don’t need to contact me. The idea is that by giving you the most power over your choices and how you handle situations. For example a compromised email account, changing the password and then delegating the rest of the resolution to you. Our support chat is actually internally hosted RocketChat and uses the same login as portal.mxroute.com. You’d find it really convenient to reach out to me on it if you needed me. The full support plan is outlined here though: https://mxroute.com/support/

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

#3

Thank you for your quick reply - So right now it is roundcube with elastic.

So some follow up comments / questions. This definitely seems like a possible solution - I was considering a VPS with AWS SES as the relay but your offering is at a much better price point and then I don’t have to worry about it.

The CalDav / CardDav was more of a curiosity then a need.

I’m assuming the individual plan is paid for the entire year. Where as the reseller plan is by the month.

Since I’m looking at something turnkey and the fact that I’m only giving access to each specific mailbox vs a domain level login it seems like the Personal Large might be a better option as I’d be looking at $180 vs $300 for the same amount of disk space and then I don’t need to do the customization of the admin and I’m not so concerned about hiding your name / brand

For the “Large” I am assuming that when I add new accounts it won’t let me go beyond the total allocated space - so if the first account I add is at 5GB the 2nd account could go up to 45GB

I’m leaning towards the Large Plan right now as I mentioned this is part of a turnkey offering so although I’m “reselling” it, I’m not from the traditional sense where I need to configure it for that - am I thinking along the right lines?

#6

Forwarding in this manner is sometimes not reliable as some domains such as gmail and yahoo and facebook do not allow their mails to be forwarded via use of SPF and DMARC, so just be forewarned about this …

No need to even have a mailbox – the control panel allows you to set forwarders whether there is a mailbox for that alias or not.

#5

Jarland - Thank you again for taking the time on a Sunday evening to help out with this… I’ve started the process of identifying accounts to move - right now I found 4 domain which is 36 mailboxes
4 Aliases and 6 forwards = the forwards just pass the email to an external account - no mailbox - since on your service I assume I would just configure this as a mailbox with forwarding and tell it not to leave a copy on the server.

Current = Quota of 5GB per = 180GB of quota Used = 1.92GB

So I could get the “Large” Plan which would give me 50 GB so plenty of room for growth and I’d be looking at a cost of $60/yr (Non-refundable)

And to migrate - I could use imapsync or add both accounts to an email client and drag between the two

#4

You can allocate over the disk allocation you’re given, it’s only enforced at actual combined total usage of the account on that service.

Aye, sounds good. It’s a lot more streamlined UX if not using the reseller packages.