Large Web Host Urges Customers to Use Gmail

1sockchuck writes "LA hosting company DreamHost, which hosts more than 700,000 web sites, is encouraging its customers to use Google's Gmail for their e-mail, rather than the DreamHost mail servers. DreamHost is continuing to support all its existing e-mail offerings, but said in a blog post that email is "just not something people are looking for from us, and it's something the big free email providers like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google can do better." DreamHost addresses a question about Google that has vexed many web hosting companies: is Google a useful partner, or a competitor that intends to make "traditional" web hosting companies obsolete? In this case, partnering with Google offers DreamHost a way to offload many of its trouble tickets, reducing the support overhead. Is Google starting to make web hosts less necessary?"

Webmail

For me non-webmail is a thing of the past, I love being able to easily access my mail from any computer anywhere (and I'm on quite a lot of different ones on different places). And GMail is the best of all webmails, so they sure made a good choice!

Not just webmail

For me non-webmail is a thing of the past, I love being able to easily access my mail from any computer anywhere (and I'm on quite a lot of different ones on different places). And GMail is the best of all webmails, so they sure made a good choice!

For those who want a bit more than simply webmail, there is also the SMTP and IMAP interfaces offered by GMail.

Re:Webmail

Use the correct tool for the job. Google makes for a wonderful mail host. You can still have your [e-mail] address through their mail servers while gaining access to their superior spam-filtering and fantastic uptime.

There will always be a need for web hosters, though a different niche may need to be found. For example, not ever host offers PHP, or Python, or fill-in-name-of-technology and that is where the hosters can differentiate themselves from the free providers like Google, geocities.

From previous experience, e-mail seems to be the red-headed step-child in the service package that a web host offers.

Re:Webmail

For me, GMail equals unprofessional. It equals Mom and Pop.

It means you can't even afford to run your own mail server or have someone do it for you.

It means not knowing if the person I'm dealing with is really associated with the domain or the business in question.

It means that my communications are being scanned by a third party, and that I should self-censor accordingly.

It just doesn't reflect well on a person to use GMail for business, in my opinion, and would make me seriously question the credibility of the business.

Re:Webmail

For me, GMail equals unprofessional. It equals Mom and Pop. It means you can't even afford to run your own mail server or have someone do it for you. It means not knowing if the person I'm dealing with is really associated with the domain or the business in question.

Last I checked, you could pay for Gmail and use your own domain name.

Re:Webmail

For me, GMail equals unprofessional. It equals Mom and Pop...

Last I checked, you could pay for Gmail and use your own domain name.

Actually it's free for your own domain for the same services as a generic gmail account. You only need to pay for it if you want 24/7 phone support and an obscene amount of HDD space. I host a few dozen websites for clients. I've converted most of them over to gmail using their own domain names. I can even remove the gmail logo so it isn't obvious they're using gmail.

Re:Webmail

My company has 3 domains that are set up with google apps. Obviously, all of our mail goes directly to [e-mail]. Google provides the mail servers and a web based interface, as well as calendar, chat and a couple other collaboration tools that all stay neatly contained in our domain. We also moved our customer management system off site to a server running SugarCRM, for those of you who know what that is.

Now, this is where things start to get interesting. Our ISP, E-LEVEN, got into a spat with its backbone provider, Belgacom. Belgacom cut them off, and we were left without internet in the office for over a week. May is a very bad time for this to happen: we sell summer travel and May is the month where we make most of our sales. Thanks to Google Apps, we didn't miss a beat. We just forwarded the phone lines to employees' home phones and sent everybody home to work. Employees communicated with google chat, customers experienced no lag in their response times and we were literally saved. Since our customer DB was off-site and web-based as well, it was a completely transparent transition.

We got our lines back in the office and went back to work in the office for obvious managerial/supervision reasons, but that week was the most the productive we have had in years.

Anybody who doesn't think google apps is an excellent solution for small business either doesn't have any idea how small business work or doesn't know how google apps works.

Re:Webmail

Last I checked the six domains I have sitting on GMail, you can use your own domain name for free.

Re:Webmail

And if you're not a DreamHost-customer, you can *still* use GMail with your domain name for no extra charge (meaning, free). Isn't the world just amazing?

Re:Webmail

gmail doesn't reveal that it is being used - you still manage [e-mail]; it's not forwarded. I suppose if you inspect full email headers you'll find a google mail server handling the message, but the vast majority of people don't bother.

Still, it's a valid point that people should be considering - when you start using gmail for your business, you're giving them permission to mine your business data.

Re:Webmail

Far more importantly, where [google.com] does it say that you do not [epic.org]?

Re:Webmail

It means that my communications are being scanned by a third party, and that I should self-censor accordingly.

If your mail passes through the USA, this is unavoidable.

Re:Webmail

It means that my communications are being scanned by a third party, and that I should self-censor accordingly.

Most email are sent plain-text, so it doesn't take much effort to scan the contents. That is why you use PGP. :)

Re:Webmail

While GMail may be unacceptable for business communications in a company of 100+ employees

Why? I work for Google, so I'm not entirely impartial, but we use Gmail here with well over 10k employees, and it is by far the best corporate email experience I've had. I'm on several high-volume mailing lists which I have permanently archived and can search through immediately.

With Google Apps, nobody knows your domain is using Gmail, so there's no appearance of unprofessionalism to external companies.

For most large companies, email is not their main focus. It's just a distraction, something they need in order to do their real business. I'd think that offloading that headache would be a relief.

I just prefer...

I just prefer to set up and run my own email server from home.

That way, I can handle spam they way I want, set up accounts for friends if need be (or businesses)

At the very least..."I" know who is storing and reading my mail. Me, not some corporation that holds it, reads it to display ads....and turns it over to the govt. at the govt's whim.

We switched to gmail.

My company switched to useing gmail. Primarly because it is too expensive to keep our mail server running smoothly. The mail server is one of the most volnerable parts on your network, Linux/Unix or not it is a huge security risk. And it needs to be kept up todate constently, Reconfigured spam filters... For a company mail server is very expensive. And if gmail is willing to do this for Free even though we get adds, we end up with a better email service for less costs. We switched and we are getting less Spam, out internet connection speed is better (slightly). And we are getting mail more relabably.
The employees can check their mail remotly. Management is happy they are not getting killed with Spam, and the office can be left uninteded and locked up for Weeks.

Re:We switched to gmail.

For your sake, I hope your company doesn't have any trade secrets.

For your sake, I hope you're not stupid enough to think that your company's trade secrets are safe in email that doesn't go through gmail...

I'm a Dreamhost customer

... and if they require me to pipe my mail through Google, I'll take my business somewhere that doesn't.

First, do no harm (to another's marketplace)

partnering with Google offers DreamHost a way to offload many of its trouble tickets, reducing the support overhead. Is Google starting to make web hosts less necessary?

One of the things I don't like about free software is that it basically pays for itself off the profits of an unrelated industry, eliminating competition in an otherwise viable industry because someone can afford to offer the service for free as a loss leader to other business.

A thing that is especially troublesome is that not only does it basically make it so that no one can afford to be in the business area (software development for money) competing with the free thing (software given away for nothing), but also no one can afford not to use the free thing because the cost of the luxury of buying an alternative brand will be exposed by the market as superfluous if passed along to end users.

It seems to me that if this becomes a trend, it will be the effective continuation of that paradigm shift by Google into another area, and that the logical continuation of this, by analogy, would be that not only can no one afford to compete with Google and other agencies giving away free mail but no one will be able to afford not to use Google's mail.

That would be sad if it turns out that there are reasons why using Google's mail is not a good idea... such as, for example, concerns about privacy.

If Google becomes the standard of mail, the problem is that it can afford to add incidental services in parity with any nuisance it causes, making it impossible for would-be competitors to match on a value-point by value-point basis even if they find a way that should theoretically be able to compete.

it's all about the SPAM...

I'm a very small webhost provider (< 20 domains), and for me, it was a no brainer to get all my customers to get GMail for Domains, point all their MX records to Google, and wash my hands of the SPAM. I use it for all my personal domains as well. Google does a far better job of SPAM filtering than I ever could with SpamAssassin and the blacklists thing... and for this small set of users (< 50 people total), it just wasn't worth it. My tech life got a lot easier when I decided I wasn't going to mess with email anymore, just like the day I decided I was going to ignore Microsoft's APIs. Both are losing propositions in the extreme. So, for me, Google is a VERY useful partner. And I like their web/chat interface too, both the browser version and the mobile edition, which I access from my Treo 650.

Playing with fire

I set up my wife with a free email account which she used for sending emails to Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, etc. After a few years, they canceled her account for spamming. I thought I would never hear the end of that. She still brings it up.

If you have a free account, don't expect a whole pile of customer support. If they decide to cancel some VP's account, it just sucks to be you.

Gmail - a natural extension of Postini

A few comments seem to suggest that using gmail for your business is "unprofessional".

Gmail can host email for your domain. You manage your domain, Gmail hosts your mail - most people will not realize that your email is kept at Gmail's servers.

This product grew out of the Postini merger. Many, many companies use Postini for "front-end" email security and filtering. Your domain's MX records point to Postini's mail servers. Postini receives your mail, scans it, filters it, and then delivers it to your mail servers. I've used Postini's service in the past, and it is an awesome service.

The only difference with Gmail is that the mail now is not forwarded to your mail server, it is kept at Gmail.

Unprofessional? Hardly.

-ted

Re:Very unprofessional move

Using google apps for your domain [google.com] enables you to use your [e-mail]... they just take your mx record and handle your mail.

Very professional move

The idea that I'm going to be content putting "[e-mail]" on my business card instead is laughable.

Who said anything about gmail.com? Google also provides DOMAIN based hosting of your email. i.e. [e-mail] can go to Google's servers.

If Dreamhost doesn't want to include email with their web hosting accounts (and it looks like this is the first step towards phasing it out), then they need to get out of the web hosting business

I very much disagree. Web hosting and email hosting have very little to do with each other. They both involve the internet, but beyond that, there's little crossover. Why not let each provider provide what they can do best? I don't eat at gas stations, even though driving across country often involves feeding myself as well as my car. Why should my website host try to also provide poor email?

Re:Very unprofessional move

No one is asking you to use the gmail.com domain for your professional emails.

Google App is a free mail hosting for companies domain (up to 100 email) using their gmail technology. And yes you can replace the gmail logo with your company logo and choose your favorite colors.

I recently decided to get rid of our internally hosted and managed email server to use google free services and as a part time sysadmin I am delighted. It hassle free. Took all of five minutes to set-up including sending an email to my ISP asking them to redirect our MX server.

It gives our employees POP, IMAP and a state of the art Web access and it runs on a distributed server farm with 99.99999% reliability. My boss is paying $0 for it and is very happy about that.

I didn't even bother looking into the other features but apparently we also have our own company branded google calendar, google chat, google docs and google sites.

There currently isn't any interesting "Google App Engine" based application but from the look of the admin dashboard it seems that I will be able to add the one I like to my domain. If the Google App Engine picks up that will mean free company branded - server farm hosted - applications like forum, image gallery and even maybe CRM application...

An small to medium sized company would be really stupid not to take advantage of that kind of offer and dreamhost advice is actually making sense. Want to host your own PHP pages? use DreamHost. Want a professionally run email server? Go see google/hotmail/yahoo.

From a business standpoint it makes a lot of sense. Running an email server is a much more complicated matter than stacking a few servers together and providing AC, UPS, fire extinguisher and fat pipes. I am pretty sure it provides them and their customers with little added value for the cost of running it. Especially with the current barely manageable spam levels.