Email and Web Hosting
I hope this isn't too far off topic for this list. We acquired a small ISP a couple years ago that has its roots in the "local ISPs" of the 90s. This ISP is still hosting email and web services for customers both on company domains as well as customer domains. There is some decent revenue coming from these services, but cost of maintenance is becoming a challenge. We are looking at migrating to another platform or completely discontinuing those services. I'm wondering if others here have gone through that process and have any advice as to how to go about it. -- Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com <http://www.ideatek.com/> This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
Two decent options, one on prem and the other fully hosted. Tucows/OpenSRS has a fully hosted email offering that was built for ISPs to resell. (They also have domain registration and some other ISP focused services.) https://opensrs.com/services/hosted-email/ MagicMail is an email (including webmail) suite that you run on prem. It is comparatively inexpensive but also fully supported. It's built largely on qmail, but they replaced some of the components to deal with spam and virus filtering more efficiently. https://www.magicmail.com/ I have direct experience with both and have used them both for ISPs specifically. Scott Helms On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 10:44 AM Steve Saner <ssaner@ideatek.com> wrote:
I hope this isn't too far off topic for this list.
We acquired a small ISP a couple years ago that has its roots in the "local ISPs" of the 90s. This ISP is still hosting email and web services for customers both on company domains as well as customer domains. There is some decent revenue coming from these services, but cost of maintenance is becoming a challenge. We are looking at migrating to another platform or completely discontinuing those services.
I'm wondering if others here have gone through that process and have any advice as to how to go about it.
--
Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer
ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL
Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com <http://www.ideatek.com/>
This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
Tucows/OpenSRS works well for “ISP email” From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+ryan.finnesey=conovence.com@nanog.org> On Behalf Of K. Scott Helms Sent: Tuesday, July 6, 2021 11:14 AM To: Steve Saner <ssaner@ideatek.com> Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: Email and Web Hosting Two decent options, one on prem and the other fully hosted. Tucows/OpenSRS has a fully hosted email offering that was built for ISPs to resell. (They also have domain registration and some other ISP focused services.) https://opensrs.com/services/hosted-email/ MagicMail is an email (including webmail) suite that you run on prem. It is comparatively inexpensive but also fully supported. It's built largely on qmail, but they replaced some of the components to deal with spam and virus filtering more efficiently. https://www.magicmail.com/ I have direct experience with both and have used them both for ISPs specifically. Scott Helms On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 10:44 AM Steve Saner <ssaner@ideatek.com<mailto:ssaner@ideatek.com>> wrote: I hope this isn't too far off topic for this list. We acquired a small ISP a couple years ago that has its roots in the "local ISPs" of the 90s. This ISP is still hosting email and web services for customers both on company domains as well as customer domains. There is some decent revenue coming from these services, but cost of maintenance is becoming a challenge. We are looking at migrating to another platform or completely discontinuing those services. I'm wondering if others here have gone through that process and have any advice as to how to go about it. -- Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com<http://www.ideatek.com/> This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
On 7/6/21 10:41 AM, Steve Saner wrote:
I hope this isn't too far off topic for this list.
We acquired a small ISP a couple years ago that has its roots in the "local ISPs" of the 90s. This ISP is still hosting email and web services for customers both on company domains as well as customer domains. There is some decent revenue coming from these services, but cost of maintenance is becoming a challenge. We are looking at migrating to another platform or completely discontinuing those services.
Question, what platform(s) are you running now? What must you provide for email, SMTP, IMAP, webmail, groupware, etc? Do you have any intention of growing this? For the websites, what do they need? Are you running any old PHP 3/4 stuff? You can setup a control panel, but if you're not running one now, and you're not going to expand it, why not just cap it until it becomes unprofitable? I'm a proponent of hosting my own email, it's not that hard and any ISP should be able to do it. -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net
The current platform is a custom collection of open source software, smtp, imap, pop, webmail. Web hosting is a basic LAMP stack all php 5.2 or greater. There is no interest in growing these services. On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 11:02 AM Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:
On 7/6/21 10:41 AM, Steve Saner wrote:
I hope this isn't too far off topic for this list.
We acquired a small ISP a couple years ago that has its roots in the "local ISPs" of the 90s. This ISP is still hosting email and web services for customers both on company domains as well as customer domains. There is some decent revenue coming from these services, but cost of maintenance is becoming a challenge. We are looking at migrating to another platform or completely discontinuing those services.
Question, what platform(s) are you running now? What must you provide for email, SMTP, IMAP, webmail, groupware, etc? Do you have any intention of growing this?
For the websites, what do they need? Are you running any old PHP 3/4 stuff? You can setup a control panel, but if you're not running one now, and you're not going to expand it, why not just cap it until it becomes unprofitable?
I'm a proponent of hosting my own email, it's not that hard and any ISP should be able to do it.
-- Bryan Fields
727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net
-- Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com <http://www.ideatek.com/> This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
Why not migrate them to a cpanel instance? Thanks Travis From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+tgarrison=netviscom.com@nanog.org> On Behalf Of Steve Saner Sent: Tuesday, July 6, 2021 2:27 PM To: Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Email and Web Hosting The current platform is a custom collection of open source software, smtp, imap, pop, webmail. Web hosting is a basic LAMP stack all php 5.2 or greater. There is no interest in growing these services. On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 11:02 AM Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net<mailto:Bryan@bryanfields.net>> wrote: On 7/6/21 10:41 AM, Steve Saner wrote:
I hope this isn't too far off topic for this list.
We acquired a small ISP a couple years ago that has its roots in the "local ISPs" of the 90s. This ISP is still hosting email and web services for customers both on company domains as well as customer domains. There is some decent revenue coming from these services, but cost of maintenance is becoming a challenge. We are looking at migrating to another platform or completely discontinuing those services.
Question, what platform(s) are you running now? What must you provide for email, SMTP, IMAP, webmail, groupware, etc? Do you have any intention of growing this? For the websites, what do they need? Are you running any old PHP 3/4 stuff? You can setup a control panel, but if you're not running one now, and you're not going to expand it, why not just cap it until it becomes unprofitable? I'm a proponent of hosting my own email, it's not that hard and any ISP should be able to do it. -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net -- Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com<http://www.ideatek.com/> This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
Or Virtualmin, in a docker instance per Customer... (If you are in the virtualization business) I think Bryan just don't want to deal with emails since ("support costs" + "headaches") > "income" at his volume. So better find a bulk service IMHO... ----- Alain Hebert ahebert@pubnix.net PubNIX Inc. 50 boul. St-Charles P.O. Box 26770 Beaconsfield, Quebec H9W 6G7 Tel: 514-990-5911 http://www.pubnix.net Fax: 514-990-9443 On 7/6/21 4:05 PM, Travis Garrison wrote:
Why not migrate them to a cpanel instance?
Thanks
Travis
*From:* NANOG <nanog-bounces+tgarrison=netviscom.com@nanog.org> *On Behalf Of *Steve Saner *Sent:* Tuesday, July 6, 2021 2:27 PM *To:* Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> *Cc:* nanog@nanog.org *Subject:* Re: Email and Web Hosting
The current platform is a custom collection of open source software, smtp, imap, pop, webmail. Web hosting is a basic LAMP stack all php 5.2 or greater. There is no interest in growing these services.
On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 11:02 AM Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net <mailto:Bryan@bryanfields.net>> wrote:
On 7/6/21 10:41 AM, Steve Saner wrote: > I hope this isn't too far off topic for this list. > > We acquired a small ISP a couple years ago that has its roots in the "local > ISPs" of the 90s. This ISP is still hosting email and web services for > customers both on company domains as well as customer domains. There is > some decent revenue coming from these services, but cost of maintenance is > becoming a challenge. We are looking at migrating to another platform or > completely discontinuing those services.
Question, what platform(s) are you running now? What must you provide for email, SMTP, IMAP, webmail, groupware, etc? Do you have any intention of growing this?
For the websites, what do they need? Are you running any old PHP 3/4 stuff? You can setup a control panel, but if you're not running one now, and you're not going to expand it, why not just cap it until it becomes unprofitable?
I'm a proponent of hosting my own email, it's not that hard and any ISP should be able to do it.
-- Bryan Fields
727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net <http://bryanfields.net>
--
*Steve Saner *| Senior Network Engineer
ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL
Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522| ideatek.com <http://www.ideatek.com/>
This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
On 7/6/21 3:26 PM, Steve Saner wrote:
The current platform is a custom collection of open source software, smtp, imap, pop, webmail. Web hosting is a basic LAMP stack all php 5.2 or greater. There is no interest in growing these services.
Ok, so this really doesn't say much in terms of software in use. Almost all SMTP/IMAP/POP servers are open source, and could be anything from sendmail 8 to postfix. If you're capping it, just run what's in place and learn it, I'd think most people in networking have configured apache once or twice before. -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net
The issue is not an understanding of how to run the system. The issue is that it isn't our core business and we want to minimize/eliminate the money and time needed to maintain the infrastructure and support the services. On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 3:54 PM Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:
On 7/6/21 3:26 PM, Steve Saner wrote:
The current platform is a custom collection of open source software, smtp, imap, pop, webmail. Web hosting is a basic LAMP stack all php 5.2 or greater. There is no interest in growing these services.
Ok, so this really doesn't say much in terms of software in use. Almost all SMTP/IMAP/POP servers are open source, and could be anything from sendmail 8 to postfix. If you're capping it, just run what's in place and learn it, I'd think most people in networking have configured apache once or twice before.
-- Bryan Fields
727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net
-- Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com <http://www.ideatek.com/> This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
Sounds like you already know what the decision is. If you can justify it, no need to second guess. If my ISP stopped providing email services I wouldn’t even know. [ may even check if i get bored ] Hope that helps. YMMV, -M< On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 5:22 PM Steve Saner <ssaner@ideatek.com> wrote:
The issue is not an understanding of how to run the system. The issue is that it isn't our core business and we want to minimize/eliminate the money and time needed to maintain the infrastructure and support the services.
On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 3:54 PM Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:
On 7/6/21 3:26 PM, Steve Saner wrote:
The current platform is a custom collection of open source software, smtp, imap, pop, webmail. Web hosting is a basic LAMP stack all php 5.2 or greater. There is no interest in growing these services.
Ok, so this really doesn't say much in terms of software in use. Almost all SMTP/IMAP/POP servers are open source, and could be anything from sendmail 8 to postfix. If you're capping it, just run what's in place and learn it, I'd think most people in networking have configured apache once or twice before.
-- Bryan Fields
727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net
--
Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer
ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL
Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com <http://www.ideatek.com/>
This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
It appears that Steve Saner <ssaner@ideatek.com> said:
-=-=-=-=-=-
The issue is not an understanding of how to run the system. The issue is that it isn't our core business and we want to minimize/eliminate the money and time needed to maintain the infrastructure and support the services.
I agree that Tucows' white label service is a good choice. I've been using it for some of my customers for years. -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
This is good to know. I have also considered it for a number of things. Glad to know that it works. On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 10:30 AM John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
It appears that Steve Saner <ssaner@ideatek.com> said:
-=-=-=-=-=-
The issue is not an understanding of how to run the system. The issue is that it isn't our core business and we want to minimize/eliminate the money and time needed to maintain the infrastructure and support the services.
I agree that Tucows' white label service is a good choice. I've been using it for some of my customers for years.
-- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
-- Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com <http://www.ideatek.com/> This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
If the client base wants to stick with basic IMAP/POP3 email Tucows/OpenSRS has a good platform. Also a few years ago my company migrated business email accounts and domains from an ISP and moved them to Office 365 and did a revenue share with the ISP. They where happy still got a bit of revenue but did not have to support it. Ryan From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+ryan.finnesey=conovence.com@nanog.org> On Behalf Of Steve Saner Sent: Tuesday, July 6, 2021 10:42 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Email and Web Hosting I hope this isn't too far off topic for this list. We acquired a small ISP a couple years ago that has its roots in the "local ISPs" of the 90s. This ISP is still hosting email and web services for customers both on company domains as well as customer domains. There is some decent revenue coming from these services, but cost of maintenance is becoming a challenge. We are looking at migrating to another platform or completely discontinuing those services. I'm wondering if others here have gone through that process and have any advice as to how to go about it. -- Steve Saner | Senior Network Engineer ideatek INTERNET FREEDOM FOR ALL Cell: 620-860-9433 | 111 Old Mill Lane, Buhler, KS 67522 | ideatek.com<http://www.ideatek.com/> This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain confidential information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not or believe you may not be the intended recipient, please advise the sender immediately by return email or by calling 620.543.5026. Then, please take all steps necessary to permanently delete the email and all attachments from your computer system. No trees were affected by this transmission – though a few billion photons were mildly inconvenienced.
participants (8)
-
Alain Hebert -
Bryan Fields -
John Levine -
K. Scott Helms -
Martin Hannigan -
Ryan Finnesey -
Steve Saner -
Travis Garrison