SoftCom Corporate Blog

When I ran a small business a few years ago the most important thing for me was to appear anything but small. I knew that one way my customers and suppliers validated my company was from my website, and as online searches for products and services become more common, this will increasingly be a source of business credibility.

Would you do business with a company that had a website with the contact info listed as bob@hotmail.com? That is why I am always amazed when I see someone with a website using a bulk email address like Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo on the site. These emails addresses can be obtained anoymously and as such, can’t be traced.

Well the good news is there is a simple solution:

All myhosting.com web hosting accounts include domain-based email accounts and unlimited email alias or forwarding accounts.

When I ask customers why they continue to use their bulk email address, they often say, “so many people have that address and I don’t want to lose any email.” However, there are a few simple things you can do to keep using your bulk email address and use a domain-based email address. And still only need to check all your email in one place.

The best case would be to setup an email account on your domain for each person or department like bob@youdomain.com or accounting@yourdomain.com then you can send and receive email using these addresses.

The instructions below cover creating a user on your mail server. In order to create a user, you must login to the Email Management Console. This can be done directly from your Control Panel or by logging in directly through your web browser as outlined below:

1. Open your Web browser and type the following in the address bar:

http://emailadmin.domain_name or http://emailadmin.myhosting.com/

2. Now you will need to Log in:

Type in your Admin email address for the username and your password.

3. Click Add User under the Manage Users section.
4. Enter the desired User ID. This will be the email account. Example, entering “joe” as the User ID will create the email account joe@yourdomain.com
5. Enter and Confirm the desired Password for this account.
6. You have just created an email account. On the left hand side you will see your newly created account under the Users folder.
7. Click on this User ID you have just created and you will be able to configure the following settings:

o User Profile
o Change Password
o Mail Forwarding
o Inbound Rules
o Vacation Message
o Auto Responder
o Advanced Options
o Manage Mailbox
o SMTP settings

8. Repeat the above steps to create additional email accounts for your domain.

Then simply forward your current email to that address, here are some links on how to do that:

Gmail - Hotmail - Yahoo

Another option would be to create an email alias on your domain that forwards to your bulk email address (email aliases are included free!). In that case something like info@yourdomain.com might be the most appropriate. An Alias is a reference on the server where email is sent, that will redirect email to the account or email address you specify. To create an alias for your domain, please follow the instructions below.

1. Open your Web browser and type in:

http://emailadmin.domain_name or http://emailadmin.myhosting.com/

2. Now you will need to Log in:

Type in Admin email address for the username and your password.

3. Click on the “Aliases” folder on the left side of the page
4. Click on “Add Alias”
5. Complete the fields accordingly.

New Alias Name: This is the actual alias name, and is the address to which the sender will direct mail. For example, if you wanted to receive mail sent to info@domain_name you would type ‘info’ in the field.

Resolves To: This is the e-mail address(es) or user account(s) to which any email will be routed. If the alias represents an existing user on your domain, simply type in their UserID (the part before the ‘@’ symbol in their email address). If the alias represents an email address, simply type the email address into the field. If you want an alias to resolve to more than one user, simply separate each entry on a new line.

6. Click Save.

Creating email addresses on your domain is easy and lends credibility to your organization. If you want a complete corporate email experience - one that allows you to send meeting requests to your customers, share calendars and use all the great features of Outlook 2007, including mobility - I suggest you check out our Microsoft Exchange Email offering.

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

I often get asked what I think is the most cost effective way to get mobile data. Should I get a BlackBerry or an ActiveSync supported device? (e.g. Windows Mobile, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson – look here for a complete list of supported devices)

Unfortunately there is no easy answer.  What I think is the most cost-effective relates to a combination of the device I use, my personal usage and most importantly, the data plan I subscribe to.  Data plans (GPRS) vary widely from carrier to carrier.

A lot of carriers offer great deals for data but sometimes those deals are limited to a specific device. AT&T/Cingular data plans come as low $19.99 for use with a select number of SmartPhones but to use the Samsung Blackjack you need to pay $39.99.  T-mobile offers a plan for $29.99 but neither of these include voice plans. The average cost for voice (minimum plan) + data seems to be between $60 and $80 per month.

That is if you stay within the data limits. Virgin Mobile in Australia launched a great plan, offering 300MB of data transfer per month for $10. Go over that allowance and you pay a rate of $15 per MB or almost 500 times the original rate.

So just how much data do you need to use the Internet over your mobile device? I get approximately 100 emails a day, have a massive inbox which I search regularly, have a fairly full calendar and a number of tasks I sync regularly. Using an ActiveSync device I use about 17 MB of data per month.  But because I have a very low data transfer allowance through my carrier, I avoid surfing the web unless absolutely necessary.

I have often been told that BlackBerry is much more efficient in its use of data as it relates to transmitting email, calendar data, tasks and related PIM information (most data usage, less what you use when surfing the web).  But if my usage is typical or even high, blackberries efficiencies may be irrelevant as the true cost of mobility relates to web traffic.

The true cost of ownership for a BlackBerry is really difficult to pin down:
- Are you on a personal plan or a business plan with a minimum user commitment?
- What is your contract duration?
- How much data do you want?
- How many voice minutes do you want?
- How many text messages do you need?

Almost all the carriers provide a complex pricing matrix for you to work with.  An informal poll suggests a range of $100 to $150 per month in North America and even higher in other parts of the world. Vodafone.co.uk will take you through a fairly complex wizard before letting you know you may need a 2nd mortgage to get a BlackBerry.

That said, there are a number of other reasons – outside of cost – why someone might prefer a BlackBerry or an ActiveSync-supported device. If the choice of the best device was an easy question to answer there would be a clear market leader, and that just isn’t the case. 

Only personal experience will tell which is right for you.  The good news is, with our Microsoft Exchange service you can use either technology.  ActiveSync is included free with our Exchange service and BlackBerry service is only $9.95 per month - a small price to pay once you’ve made the initial investment  into a mobile device. 

John Carthy
V.P. of Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

When looking for a good web host, there are a lot of important factors to consider. WebHosting Talk, a forum devoted to web hosting, recently published a survey indicating that reliability, security and support were considered the three most important factors – as identified by SME customers - when selecting a potential web host.

These are relatively easy things to investigate. Netcraft.com – an independent 3rd party that doesn’t provide hosting services – monitors the performance of hosting companies and makes their findings publicly available.

When investigating support, look for a 24/7 tool free telephone number on the website and make sure it’s included with the plan you want to subscribe to.

Security is a little more involved: What is their datacenter like? Have they had any major security breaches? How long have they been doing business? (this is important as companies who haven’t figured this out don’t tend to last very long).

But there are other factors that aren’t discussed as much. One of them is having something called a dedicated IP address which can have a major impact on site security.

An IP address, for those that don’t know, is the 12 digit number behind a domain name used to resolve a request. Domain names were invented because people can’t remember really long numbers so a name was essentially mapped to a number. For example if you type 168.144.1.9 into your browser you will go to http://www.softcom.biz. Either the domain name or the IP will work.

Because there is a limited number of IP addresses available, many hosting companies give their customers shared IP addresses (many domain names under one IP address) and then use programmatic methods to resolve any request for a domain name on a shared IP address. Visitors will be able to reach a website hosted on a shared IP address but there are some shortcomings.

The main shortcoming is SSL security. If you are running an eCommerce site or any type of content that requires encryption, you will want to have a dedicated IP address. Otherwise visitors will get a warning that the site name doesn’t match the name on the SSL key.

There are also SEO or search engine optimizations concerns to consider. Many people have found that sites with a dedicated IP address do mysteriously better in search engine results than those utilizing shared IPs. This isn’t proven, but why take a chance with something as important as being indexed in the major search engines.

myhosting.com was fortunate enough to get a large block of IP addresses when it was founded 10 years ago and provides a dedicated IP address with all its Windows sites. As for support and reliability – you won’t find anyone better.

John Carthy
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

I was at HostingCon in Chicago last week and I heard someone comment about whether “email was still the killer app.”

Besides being a slightly useless thing to say, it occurred to me that email never was a killer app. A text message is a message.  Rather it’s the tools used to manage messaging in combination with the protocol that makes for the better experience.

Truth is a lot of people I speak to don’t understand the difference between POP3 email, IMAP4 email and MAPI services. As a result, they don’t understand why Microsoft Exchange is so expensive (Microsoft Exchange email is based on MAPI) and so useful.

Let’s start with POP3. That’s the basic email that comes with most hosting plans or is provided by your ISP or cable company. The most important thing to understand about POP3 is that your messages are stored on the email server until you access them through a common POP3 client like Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora. 

When you connect to your POP3 email account through one of these clients, all your unread email messages are downloaded to your local machine for you to read. They are removed from the server.

The one exception is checking your POP3 accounts through the mail2web.com email retrieval application (mail2web.com). This webmail application allows you to preview your messages, on almost any remote mail server , before they’ve been downloaded. 

We get a lot of complaints from mail2web.com users who think we’ve deleted their emails. What actually happened was someone opened Outlook on their desktop and downloaded all their messages off a POP3 server.  Now those messages reside in someone’s office / home PC and can’t be easily accessed.

IMAP4 is different in that email is stored on the server. There is an added bonus of being able to create folders to manage your messages. When you connect to an IMAP4 account, the messages are not downloaded to your local computer but instead are previewed for you, recording what has been read and what hasn’t and allowing you to move messages to folders you created. 

This is important as IMAP4 accounts give you the ability to access your email from multiple locations and computers and maintain a synchronized copy.

 All the email accounts provided with hosting plans on myhosting.com are both POP3 and IMAP4 compatible. Apple’s iPhone uses the IMAP4 protocol for email syncronization which you can use with our Exchange hosting plans or our myhosting.com email acccounts.

But the killer app is Microsoft Exchange based on the MAPI protocol.  Okay,  I hate the term ‘killer app’ . . . but it’s the best messaging platform on the market.  MAPI is an ‘aware’ protocol and by that I mean it is constantly listening for changes on the server and then communicates those changes to you, however you are connected (browser, desktop, mobile device). If you are running Outlook with a full Exchange account (our Professional account) you don’t have to constantly click send and receive to see if you have new messages. Changes are pushed as they are recorded on the server.

Like IMAP4, all messages are stored on the server but Exchange also stores your calendar, contact, journal, tasks and much more. All this data is ‘aware’ of changes and communicates those changes immediately. You can also share real-time data with others in your organization and collaborate in a way you could never do with POP3 or IMAP.

Of course all this enhanced functionality requires extensive hardware to support. While diskspace costs have gone down considerable in the past 5 years, even the best SCSI drives have a maximum rate at which they can read or write data.

Exchange hits this maximum quickly with very few active users. And that’s just one of the reasons why Microsoft Exchange is so much more expensive than POP3. Microsoft’s monthly license fees - charged directly to Exchange hosters - also adds to our costs.

But it’s still much less than what your business pays for phone service and in my opinion, just as important and effective for running an efficient business.

John Carthy
V.P. of Sales and the Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Things are always changing in the web hosting industry, and it’s our job to stay on top of them. We’ve been hearing about Longhorn for years, but now we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The release of Longhorn will soon become a reality with the release of Windows Server 2008 early next year.

But what will that mean for you? Part of Windows Server 2008 is IIS7, or Internet Information Services version 7. IIS7 is the web server application that is one of the core pieces of the puzzle, at least for hosting companies and customers. And so in advance of the Windows Server 2008 release, we’ve prepared a beta program for you to try out IIS7. This beta will give you the opportunity to test the platform and give you a jump on getting ready for the official release of IIS7 and Windows Server 2008.

Here’s a brief list of just a few of the features you’ll see in IIS7:

• A Flexible and more extensible web server for developing and deploying web applications
• A fully modular architecture consisting of 40 pluggable modules, built on top of all public extensibility APIs
• Use the web framework of your choice including classic ASP and ASP.NET
• Distributed configuration system that enables settings to be stored in web.config files so applications can be easily XCopy deployed and preconfigured
• Minimize development and downtime through powerful new diagnostic capabilities including access to runtime info and automatically tracing failed requests
• More scalable web server for delivering reliable web hosting to a broader set of customers

For more information, check out IIS.net. And although it’s a bit old, this interview at the O’Reilly Windows DevCenter may also be of interest.

Initial reports indicated that FrontPage Server Extensions weren’t going to be supported under Windows Server 2008, but recently we’ve heard that there are now plans to support them. This is good news for Windows hosting users with legacy FrontPage generated content!

Of course we’ll keep you up-to-date with any further news and developments… And in the meantime you can log into your Control Panel and activate your IIS7 Beta account today.

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Today I want to tell you about a really exceptional promotion we just launched in conjunction with Microsoft. For a limited time we are bundling 1 year of SharePoint Hosting (version 3) with a full boxed copy of Office SharePoint Designer 2007. The way this has been priced, you essentially get 1 year of hosting services free with the purchase of SharePoint Designer 2007.

I’ve written about SharePoint hosting services in the past but if you want to learn more, click here. At the simplest level SharePoint is a password protected website, instantly provisioned and designed to store and manage documents. On a more complex level, SharePoint can be used as a powerful platform for developing sophisticated workflows and online applications.

SharePoint Designer 2007, however, is boxed software - the exact same boxed software you would purchase from a retail vendor. And we will ship it to your home or office at no additional charge.

The primary use for Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is to customize SharePoint sites (but not bad with basic websites either – good alternative to FrontPage for some).

SharePoint Designer 2007 gives you the powerful tools you need to:

If you want some more details about SharePoint Designer here are two good links that provide an overview:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 top 10 benefits

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 version comparison

We still offer our monthly hosting packages but if you want to get the most out of your SharePoint site take a closer look at our offer.

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Greetings,

Over the last couple years we have had a lot requests for a reseller program for our Microsoft Exchange services. We spoke to these customers to find out what features they wanted and ultimately they just wanted to be able to offer the services to their customers, allow the customer to manage some aspects of the service, and charge the customer directly what they deem is fair. Of course to do that and ‘mark up’ our prices, they need to be able to hide our brand.

Here’s what we came up with:

White-labeled control panel: A lot of our competitors use a third-party control panel, or have developed one themselves that can be branded. What we did was build the end-user controls into the OWA (Outlook Web Access). Customers use this interface already to check their account so we built in some additional, unbranded pages, that allow them to do basic functions like change their password, download Outlook 2007, get ActiveSync and email settings and more - all directly from the OWA. We also have our own control panel for direct customers and account admins that provides much more advanced functionality.

Unique OWA Login Url and design: A unique and brandable OWA login page for each Business Exchange account (based on a custom domain) can be accessed via the accounts domain (eg. owa.yourexchangedomain.com). The reseller can select from several templates or get direct access to the HTML and create a completely custom page. Further, a company logo can be uploaded to the OWA interface so that the entire experience can be branded.

White Label settings: All technical settings like the Server Name, SMTP server name or ActiveSync settings are all based on your accounts’ domain or through a generic domain, unrelated to mail2web.com. The mail2web.com url doesn’t appear in any of the end-user account settings.

Manage multiple domains through one account: Resellers can create and manage multiple domains under a single account with fully consolidated billing. The reseller can bill their customer whatever they think is fair.

Set unique privileges for each user: You can easily grant a user under the domain as a “Domain Administrator with Billing Permissions” or a “Domain Administrator without Billing Permissions”. The first allows the user to manage other users including changes that result in a billing transaction, whereas the second can only make changes that are not linked with billing.

Of course the one thing all resellers want is a volume discount. We believe our retail prices are very competitive. But if you are a large reseller, you get your own account manager. Your account manager will provide you with additional benefits like being able to provide even more competitive pricing than our posted rates, if you grow beyond 100 seats. You will also be able to pick up the phone and call your account manager to answer any questions.

We are committed to help you grow, both technically and financially.

Ultimately what we offer is reseller functionality, not a reseller program. Getting started is easy as you don’t need to sign up for a separate account specifically for resellers. If you already have an account, you can add another domain and using the above functions, sell our services to others.

If you are a value added reseller of web services you should consider adding our Exchange services to your product portfolio. If you provide additional value to your customers (eg. assisting with migrations, desktop setup, manage SPAM settings, ect. ) you will be able to resell our services at any price you wish - and think is fair - and hide the mail2web.com brand.

Thanks,
John Carthy
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Hello,

There’s a cool trick you can use to push almost any email account (POP3 or IMAP4) to a mobile device.

It’s not actually a trick but a few features we’ve put together into a 3-step process that will allow you to use a mail2web.com Personal Exchange account to handle almost any POP3 or IMAP4 account - like a gmail or yahoo email account.

By default, all our mail2web.com Exchange accounts are capable of pushing your mail2web.com email account using ActiveSync, RoadSync (good for Nokia, Motorola or Sony Ericsson users) or Blackberry.

But what if you want to push an existing email account you use to your mobile device?

All you need to do is sign up for a Personal Exchange account. You’ll get an email address under mail2web.com (eg. your_user_name@mail2web.com). Once you’ve signed up, go into the mail2web.com control panel and under ‘Manage Account’ you’ll see a link at the bottom page that says: “NEW FEATURE: use this account to handle another email address.”

This will take you through a 3-step process that doesn’t take more than 2 minutes to complete. The first step is to specify the alternate email address you want to use. We have a quick method to verify that you are the rightful owner of this email account.

The next step asks you to either forward your email to your new email account or use our email aggregator to automatically collect email from that account in regular intervals. Forwarding is a better option if your provider offers this but the email aggregator is easy to set up, free to use and works quite well.

The last step just verifies that you want to change your ‘From Address’ - the address your emails will appear to come from. Once you’ve completed these steps, all email from your original account is now directed to your mail2web.com account. Any email you send will appear to come from your original account but now you can access those through your mobile device as well as through the Outlook Web Access interface. You’ll also get the added bonus of the personal calendar, contacts and tasks that comes with our Personal Exchange account, all of which can be sync’d with your mobile device.

John Carthy
V.P. Sale and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

What is Microsoft SQL?

“A comprehensive database and analysis solution, SQL Server delivers the performance, scalability, and reliability that demanding Web and enterprise line-of-business environments require. New Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) support simplify data access and interchange, while powerful analysis capabilities enhance data value. Enhanced availability features maximize uptime, advanced management functions automate routine tasks, and improved programming tools and services speed development.”-Microsoft/SQL Server Data sheet

So What?

Well that means that with a myhosting.com hosting account and MS SQL database plans you can build a dynamic, scalable website that is reliable and affordable.

To make things ever better we now have a FREE starter plan!
For more information or to signup click here.

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

When we started back in 1997 mail2web.com was the best way to access your email from any computer anywhere, any time. Now, ten years later we still offer millions of people a safe, secure and reliable way to quickly access their email. Now we have added a new Vista Sidebar Gadget and a Google Homepage Gadget to make it even easier to access your email.

You can check them out here.

If you want to download our gadgets they can also be found here Vista Sidebar and the Google homepage.

Enjoy!

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.