

Ask YC: Small Business Email  - iamdave

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.<p>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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>Thoughts?
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brk
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.

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iamdave
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.

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brk
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.

