I was recently reading a Josh Jones blog post about web hosting and the challenges of providing free email services. This is an issue we know all too well here at Pleth, LLC. He writes:
Just over HALF of all the support requests we get are about email. Everything else we offer, combined, doesn’t add up to the amount of trouble, expense, use, and effort that goes into “simple” old email. And that’s kind of funny, because as far as I can tell, almost nobody CHOOSES a web host based on their email features. They’ve been conditioned by Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and Gmail to give email no value. I mean, everybody gives it away for free… nobody gives (real) web hosting away for free. And yet, in the end, the only thing (sadly?) that actually ends up getting used, is that “no-value” email! If a web server with maybe 750 customer sites on it were to go down for even as long as five hours, we’d probably get two angry messages about it. But if email goes down for the same number of customers for just five minutes we’ll have already received 50!
As I write this post I am listening to my partner in the other room supporting an email customer via telephone. There is nothing wrong with her email, just her Outlook client and/or her network. But customers do not appreciate the differences in things like Plethware, Business Class Email Services and third-party email clients (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.). We definitely can’t tell them to call Microsoft.
There is no such thing as free email service. Just the costs of servers, security and support are weighty. Hosting companies typically absorb these costs elsewhere, but they are not insignificant. Most large, free email services support their free services through activities like ad sales. At Pleth, LLC we do not believe that this is appropriate for most small to mid-level businesses. So, what’s a web hosting company to do?
Plethware
You find a solution. One that makes good business sense and one that makes sense to any customer willing to listen.
For Pleth, that solution is Plethware. Not two years ago we faced the same issue that Josh is describing at Dreamhost. Are we going to tell our customers to go to a free email service? No. That doesn’t make sense, especially for the businesses we deal with on a day-to-day basis.
The problem with pushing customers to a third-party, free email service is that there is no quality control on our side. You, quite simply, are at the mercy of the email provider. They are free to advertise as they see fit and have no motivation to provide timely, human assistance to help you work through your email-related issues. And why should your shouts for assistance have any preference to them? After all, it’s a free service.
Serious businesses should not trust a priority function like email to a free service. These people deserve a stable email platform coupled with attentive support on the part of their web host. It has been our experience that companies who have experienced the rocky road of email service appreciate Business Class Email Hosting even though it does have an associated cost. At Pleth, LLC we have found our solution: Plethware.