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Reselling Rackspace email accounts - RFC
Back in Dec, someone inquired about companies who resell Rackspace emails. I'd responded that the company I work with does resell them but we provide them as an add-on to our core business.
Anyway, Jan to Apr is usually our busiest time of the year which was why we didn't feel at that time to consider providing such a service. But the topic came up recently (and I received another PM about it a few weeks ago) so I'd like to throw out some ideas to see if there is still a demand/interest in this as a service.
What we plan to provide:
- starts at $2/month (same pricing as Rackspace) but no minimum account requirement. Discounts are available once you have more accounts, etc.
- Payment term will be at the least quarterly because CC processing fees will cost more if we start charging by the month. PS: Is there a preferred payment processor you wish to see?
- In-house built control panel to manage billing and add/edit/manage email accounts.
- Will provide importing service (from existing IMAP accounts) for additional fee.
- May be able to provide the ability to resell (using API) through us (is there a demand for this?)
- We are a Canadian business so Canadians must pay tax.
Some background about our company:
We develop and host custom web applications and/or web sites. 90% of our clients we have met face-to-face. This is possibly one of the few projects that will be a product for our own company and will be a completely online service. While we're not expecting tons of users to use this service, we are willing to explore it because we do have existing customers who can use it (who resell from us and can benefit from a having a custom portal to manage the RS accounts and users).
Any comments? Add-on ideas?
Comments
Love to be your first customer.
Before any option I have is Shovehost (you Know Who).
I'd pick 1 or 2 up myself.
I'd want to try it out as well,
I'd love to try as well
me too
I have a rackspace e-mail account and I dont think you can resell them? I only see the option to set one domain, but then again I have just the minimum number of inboxes needed.
Thanks to everyone who have replied so far. Quite a positive response ... I was actually dreading the "why pay for email?", "rackspace sucks, etc" commments.
Also noticed no one commented about the payment systems. Can I assume people are expecting Paypal? What about Stripe? I'm also curious to know what countries you are from so that we can explore different methods of billing?
@Spencer: It is a separate agreement with RS and you need to pass a minimum sales threshold to apply as a reseller.
I hope you don't take this as negative criticism, but why use this solution over perhaps Google Apps for Business or Microsoft Hosted Exchange? Besides being a bit cheaper (GApps was $50/year last time I check, Exchange is anywhere from $5/mo up)
That's all you will ever need really PayPal and direct cc processing (Stripe)
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/outlook/send-receive-from-app
I just register there and I got 50 email with unlimited storage.
PayPal is a must.
@Sperryman: I think it's sort of like getting a dedicated server when all you really need is a VPS.
Google Apps comes with all the extra tools that most of our hosted clients do not need nor care to use. With the addition of all the other "features", we have to provide support for them as well and as I mentioned before, that is not our core business.
Just to make sure: These can be used with our own domains, correct?
I'm not recommend it since I haven't try it but you can see someone who does sell it.
Hopefully you get the big picture.
See: shovehost.com/email.php
If Rackspace added a conversation view to it's webmail client, I might consider it. Otherwise, I'm quite happy with Google Apps or a custom solution with RoundCube for a webmail client.
@Chronic: Correct.
@Noerman: Competition is good
Count me in
I tried before from laughingsquid.us and it's good. I might want to use it again.
I'd certainly be interested in giving this a go.
Some of you mentioned Google Apps what about hotmail/outlook .com
https://domains.live.com/
Not sure if its reseller worthy but it's free.
Live.com doesn't have decent desktop sync functionality (except for windows)
Yes, see below
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/outlook/send-receive-from-app
submit support and they will up the amount...
@Noerman overlooked that one!
Yep, paypal works for me. Maybe something like Moneybookers (they provide local payment gateways, dutch iDeal for example), I didn't like stripe, it only provide CC. Keep in mind that not all countries have CC by default. In the Netherlands most people have a debit card...