Large Web Host Urges Customers to Use Gmail 436
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ditto. Gmail has one of the best spam filters around, and the convenience of POP3 or webmail.
Now with Google getting into hosting, competition could rear its ugly head ... but would it? Google is competing with free webhosts such as Geocities, but I really don't see it as competition for paid webhosting ... yet.
Re:Webmail (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Webmail (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Webmail (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Webmail (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Webmail (Score:4, Funny)
The the last time you checked was a really long time ago.
Re:Webmail (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Webmail (Score:5, Interesting)
gmail doesn't reveal that it is being used - you still manage myemail@mydomain.com; 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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then i looked at the date the post office stamps the envelope with when it goes out to cross off the stamp. It was dated 3 days before my birthday.
so had the card with decent handwriting and the correct address(yes I double checked) on it been sent regu
Re:Webmail (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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From his description, he's ending up with a
When I tested it, I ended up with a
Re:Webmail (Score:4, Interesting)
This might matter in the "we run Exchange-server because we're ENTERPRISE and important"-segment, but in the "getting shit done" segment, GMail is very very very good value for money ($0 or $50/user/year for the ENTERPRISE-woo-we're-important-plan).
Oh, and you do know that you can use your own domain on GMail, completely transparently, right?
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What gives you the impression that any other web host wouldn't also be doing this? Do you self censor when sending through any system that does spam detection? They're "scanning" your messages too you know.
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For a business? Absolutely, although it doesn't to some people. But for a home account or hobby account? Not so much.
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I use two different domains for email through Dreamhost. My primary domain has it's email set up through Dreamhost, meaning I use their MX records and my webmail is the default SquirrelMail, and my other domain - one that relies on better interaction with my members - has a Google Apps backdrop. They both serve me well, and it should be noted that I bring both of them in throu
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Re:Webmail (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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The problem with your argument is that Gmail is internal to and controlled by Google. Many other businesses may have a problem with using a third-party email service which scans the email for advertising purposes (no privacy) and permanently stores all emails (no forward liability protection). All of which is then subject to the business' ISP's d
Not just webmail (Score:5, Informative)
For those who want a bit more than simply webmail, there is also the SMTP and IMAP interfaces offered by GMail.
Re:Webmail (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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You forgot to mention "anywhere where I have an internet connection". This is why I still prefer a classic e-mail client.
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My e-mail client allows me to read e-mails and answer them while being off-line (in a train, at a customer's site without net access, etc.).
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I realize this is not for everybody, but for my own use, I can do it better than gmail (mimedefang, milter-greylist, aliases, procmail, spamassassin...all con
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But if you get attachments or images or need colour highlighting, then sure, use webmail.
Over the crappiest 14.4K modem connection mutt over SSH with compression is fast. Now try Gmail on that kind of a connection.
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As as a fellow dreamhost user, I noticed recently that they started integrating Google Apps into the hosting management area of the control panel. Might be useful as an alternative to Squirrel Mail (which I also think is klunky, but I use it as IMAP usually, so almost never am actually in that interface).
STREWTH (Score:3, Interesting)
This announcement just makes them seem wonderfully credible, don't you think?
Are there any good, big hosts located in the UK?
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The vast majority of which are written by ignorant script kiddies who think that for $10/month they should be allowed to utilize unlimited resources and slow down the server for everyone else on it. So they make a big stink about it publicly then go to some other shared host where they inevitably make life miserable for 50 other customers on whatever server they get assigned to (I've been on the receiving end of this and it's not
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The cheeky bastard
I just prefer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I just prefer... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Whilst it's not good protection if you've already attracted serious suspicion to yourself, it ought to keep you clear of random traffic scans and any consequences associated with your ISP retaining large quantities of packet logs.
And yes, if you are into doing this fully and properly, you would find a large variety of unrelated hosts that would
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I have control over the whole thing and nobody gets my data.
We switched to gmail. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Perhaps in your business it's OK to potentially miss a message or two every now and then. Where I've worked, we ran our own mail servers and controlled the anti-spam software so if it was too restrictive we could tweak it. We operated on the assumption that it was better to get some spam than to miss real messages. At my la
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Where I've worked, we ran our own mail servers and controlled the anti-spam software so if it was too restrictive we could tweak it. [...] we simply could not miss any messages from certain clients [...].
I hope you're aware that email is not suitable for reliable communications. There's so much that can go wrong before the email actually arrives at your mailserver that it's not even funny.
I would like to hear what your procedure was to handle clients that insist that they sent you a message when in fact their message got lost long before your boundary of control.
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> For your sake, I hope your company doesn't have any trade secrets.
Or spelling nazis.
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Re:We switched to gmail. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Shunt 60% of your bandwidth to Google... (Score:2)
This is why companies never do joint ventures unless forced.
We've seen the opposite (Score:2)
I can think of many reasons for Dreamhost to do this, as providing good email service can be difficult, especially with the spammers and variou
First, do no harm (to another's marketplace) (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:First, do no harm (to another's marketplace) (Score:4, Informative)
You should read Bastiat's petition [bastiat.org] to block out the sun.
You are leaving out the benefits to the end user due to the cheap/free software. It is the classic "Seen vs Unseen".(Of course, if your point about "profiting off an unrelated industry" is true, then it is theft and hence wrong. But I don't believe that that is true.)
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.
Yes. That is a feature, not a bug.
Either the alternative brand has some value, which end users will pay for or its value is not worth anything and the end users are not willing to pay for it.
The mistake you are making is that you value competition for its own sake. Competition (and producers) exist only for the sake of the end consumer. If the consumer can obtain what he wants for a low cost or for free, then there is no need for competition or producers.
This is also the mistake people make when they argue against free-trade and monopolies.
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It is possible to badly assign dollar values to things and in so doing to create situations in which competition will kill things of value as, for example, it might be argued is occurring with things like global warming, where a competitive market is seeking various earth-unfriendly situations because the dollar value of having a world that continues to function correctly has not been appropriately assigned.
The term is 'neg
it's all about the SPAM... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dreamhost is incorrect. (Score:3, Informative)
2) I said this before in a largely-unrelated story, but I'll say it again here because its relevant: I own otakubell.com, and its primary purpose (nowadays) is email. Its my server, its my domain (registered through an independent registrar, not tied to the hosting). I don't have to worry about Yahoo or Google suffering a security breach. I don't have to worry about them mining my email for advertising data. And I certainly have a hell of a lot less spam (my Yahoo email account gets HUNDREDS of spam messages every week). If the webhost screws up, I can point my domain elsewhere (hit upon routhost a few years ago, have been quite satisfied). You, on the other hand, are stuck if Google or Yahoo screw up.
the problem is spam (Score:2)
Playing with fire (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Dreamhost (Score:2)
Here is an uptime I just did on their server -
This is quite typical for them. My web sites are on a two processor system, which means the load average shouldn't really go above 2, yet it is above 7 currently, and this is quite common. Somet
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Said it before (Score:4, Interesting)
It's basically an IT factory, providing the same service to hundreds of millions. Where smaller scale and family businesses might have performed those particular services before. Have a look at what happened during the Industrial Revolution for an example of what's coming. I'm sure there will even be some new age Luddites protesting against the changes.
It's simply the economics of increasing availabilty of bandwidth.
Re:Very unprofessional move (Score:5, Informative)
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I wonder if DreamHost will then throw its hands in the air and surrender when they do like they're doing now for email.
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Very professional move (Score:5, Informative)
The idea that I'm going to be content putting "headhoncho_acme6@gmail.com" on my business card instead is laughable.
Who said anything about gmail.com? Google also provides DOMAIN based hosting of your email. i.e. headhoncho@acme.com 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?
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Re:Very unprofessional move (Score:4, Informative)
I use this for several of my domains. The clear advantage for me is that I can use the Gmail interface which I've known and used for years now. Every hosting provider has their own brew of online mail and I've yet to find one that can compete with Gmail.
This is starting to sound like a fan boy post, but another sizable advantage of using Gmail (or hotmail or yahoo-mail etc.) is that your current ISP probably does not have global coverage. So when you move to France next year and have to use neuf.fr as your provider your old e-mail address and messages will not follow you. However you can check your hotmail / Gmail / yahoo for free, no matter where you live and no matter who your ISP is.
However, on a professional front, I personally don't think it is a good move for the simple reason that people hang on to ISPs despite better competition only because they've been "using the same [IS provided]e-mail for years now".
Just my 2 cents
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(Chuckle.) I love it when a Slashdot stereotype shatters... I mean, usually the complaint is that most companies are bland and sterile soul sucking Dilbertesque hells... And here we have a complaint because a company isn't!
Now, obviously not everyone is going to be happy with a given company - so
Re:Very unprofessional move (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Dreamhost contends that "almost nobody CHOOSES a web host based on their email features." That may be true, but that's just because a robust email service is EXPECTED. If I've spent money to pay a provider to host my "acme.com" webpage every month, I damn sure expect that I will be able to make "headhoncho@acme.com" my official email address and my business card (and get reliable service out of it). The idea that I'm going to be content putting "headhoncho_acme6@gmail.com" on my business card instead is laughable.
I know you're going to get eveleventy-billion responses pointing this out, but it needs to be said - you don't need to have an @gmail.com address to use Google's mail system. Google provides it apps for your domain. You can get mail, calendaring, chat, docs, all of it at whatever.acme.com We've got a couple clients we've set up with Google's domain apps specifically because they can offer a better service than we can.
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.
It may, or may not, be the first step in phasing out email hosting - the article reall
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...They obviously don't have the kind of professionalism that it takes to run a web hosting company (as further evidenced by making glib comments referring to "studly CEO's" in an official blog).
on the contrary; whenever there is an issue of any sort they own up to it and explain fully and publicly to their users and anyone else who cares to read the blog or the status pages.
THAT is a sign of professionalism that I don't see anywhere else and it the one of the reasons I stay there.
Open and transparent communication.
No layers of gatekeepers telling you that your call is important and they will get back to you. No cube farms of sales droids trying to upsell you with every trouble ticket or
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It's just a bonus that you have a pretty geeky, almost confessional CEO who sends out some fairly amusing newsletters - they certainly provide much better communications about exactly what
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Yeah, by and large I like Dreamhost (except they need a more robust VPS offering). Their shared hosting is priced just right as far as I'm concerned.
Most of the complaints I see about DH are from wankers trying to run a 24/7/365 uptime business on shared hosting. They're amateurs that are trying to get by without paying for an SLA, and then get pissed when their shared hosting has unexpected downtime.
Aside from those wankers, most DH users (myself included) seem quite happy.
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[...] I damn sure expect that I will be able to make "headhoncho@acme.com" my official email address and my business card (and get reliable service out of it).[...]
And what exactly does this have to do with TFA?
Smtp relay anyone?
You must be new here...
Why would you ask a RTFA question?
However, to answer, it pertains to the relevance of using gMail as an email service separate from your webHosting service... Or, to decode for you, it's a discussion as to whether or not DreamHosts email commentary is a good idea for businesses, or at all. In other words, I quite germane to TFA.
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Take that for what it's worth.
Kind Regards,