Well you Alabanza guys may want to know what I just found out about the web mail checker they added to our boxes and doubled our prices for.

Log in to your /up and view the source.
You will find the following quoted text in a NOTE from the author;

""""There have been a few reports of WebMail Check deleting mail it shouldn't have deleted. I don't know if it's a bug in Web Reader Utility or something else. However, until I know for sure, you can't delete any email! I took out the whole message deletion thingy, so if you still loose your email, it's not WebMail Check's fault. Unfortunately I don't have time to look into this right now, so I can't guarantee when you can delete your email again. I know this cripples WebMail Check badly, but I don't want to be responsible for killing users mail.""""

A free program that they installed just cost us double money per month. WOW those programmers (well one programmer) at Alabanza are(is) really hard at work over there aren't they? I could have installed that or one better myself. One that isn't plagued with bugs !

What do you guys think?

Paul Mathews
Wise Source

If its that bad why don't you just install your own webmail. I actually like alabanzas new one better than the one I set up however.

-Brendan
brendan@hostrocket.com

I did have my own installed. I like the one they are providing to us also. I was making the point that this was a key reason why our prices went up. So they could continue to develop new software LIKE the Web mail Check...

I was pointing out that the one they installed is free and still full of bugs thats all. How much money could it have cost them to install on a couple of center cervers?

Paul Mathews
Wise Source

Allot of our clients have been using it for a week or so now, and we have not received one complaint. But we have received several messages saying how much they like and appreciate the feature. And I am sure not all the software they are loading is free, it is worth a $1.00 to our clients.

Originally posted by Dave
Allot of our clients have been using it for a week or so now, and we have not received one complaint.I used it myself. And I deleted messages; just like most webmail programs there's a checkbox to indicate which messages you want to delete, and a "delete marked messges" button. So, whether it says that in the source or not (I haven't looked) it doesn't appear to be true. Maybe somebody fixed the bug and forgot to delete the comment?

Dave you know we agree....I like it (web mail check) just fine and not having to mess with it is great. All ready to go....and a few of my clients have stated they like it also already.

It does seem to delete mail like it should. Maybe the bug has been fixed. Maybe by Alabanza's programmer guy.

I guess my point guys was to point out that if it was free at one time and they then modified it to work like it does now they could have at least removed the comments about the bugs from the main login page source code.

It is pretty obvious that they didn't spend a whole lot of resources developing their OWN web mail for us. Although they are hosting the mail checker on their center servers it appears. That is worth something.

One of my clients, a reseller was creating his own login page for the mail just like I am. He was posting the code on a custom page and that is where he saw the code and brought it to my attention. He had questions about my price increase also and wanted to know why a FREE program cost so much.

I really do care if they use all free stuff. For all we know the whole DSM may be free somewhere, What I do know is they could have cleaned it up a bit before we tried to justify our price increases with it.

Looks like we also got java servlets support and that is a different issue. Much more worth the money we are spending and credit should go to them for that.

Just being fair.....

Paul Mathews
Wise Source

Then I guess I do not understand what you are trying to accomplish by posting this here. For starters this was presented to me as a package of different upgrades which included web based email. And the web based email is the only feature that is a upgrade for every single client, who cares what Alabanza pays for it, just because they got it for free does not mean it does not have value. It is the most valuable upgrade of them all, because all can benefit from it, and without it how many end users would of been willing to pay extra for the other upgrades, that many of them will not use. And I know that many of the host knew the first day it came out that it was a free script, it has been discussed on other boards. The $1.00 helps pay for a more functional DSM which will make my job easier and will allow me more time to spend with my clients, so that is one benefit of their $1.00. And some of the other features are only going to be used by a small percentage of the clients, but will help bring in more advanced clients which will help our company grow and that is good for everyone. And there are other upgrades in the package, that will benefit all of our clients in the long run. And do you know for a fact that they did not pay for it, there are free versions and pay versions of many pieces of software

And what if the DSM is free, what if every piece of software they have is free, if you are willing to pay for it and use it what is the difference what it cost Alabanza. It works and that is what counts, not what they paid for it.

And you state that the increase doubled our bill, it may have for some, but on a $800/month server you would have to have 835 control panels for it to double your bill, unless my math is off. But I suppose you could get burnt on name servers if you have not been charging for them.

Why are you kicking up dust over this, as far as I can see having the Web Based mail up and running is the best news I have received from Alabanza in several weeks. If it was not for that, I would not of been able to get my clients to agree with the increase. But if you did present to your clients that the increase was only paying for web based email, I could see why you are upset, when they found out it was free. There are allot of end users on this board and I have heard from some that have seen this and I had to give them the explanation above. So the statement you made (A free program that they installed just cost us double money per month) has caused me nothing but aggravation, and it just is not true. Hopefully this will explain that our bills are not doubling because of one program that Alabanza may or may not of paid for.

Well Dave you read me wrong again. All I was pointing out was they could of at the very least hidden the damn BUG REPORT ALL OVER THE CODE THAT OUR CLIENTS CAN SEE!!! How would you like to go and but a new car and have a sticker on the air bag that said "This air bag was free to the dealer and may not function because of bugs in the system"?

I don't care if they pulled it out of the hat. It works and I like it ! So why don't they take the damn price tag and bug reports off of it ??!! That's all !

My point was the sloppiness in the roll out. It is a great feature. You know how many AOL clients need it for one. I am not underestimating the value...just was looking for a cleaner login screen at the very least. And only one of my resellers has pointed it out to me. I never told anyone that it was the reason for the price increase. But they assumed it because it was the only thing they see added.

There is no dust...just wanted to see what you guys thought. You know sometimes when you bring up things in here they get solved. I knew about the vDNS security problem back 13 months ago. I never posted it here. But now after someone posted it they fixed it. All I am doing is letting them know that we are watching and looking for better value. Value has been added but sloppy additions will only bring us problems.It has for me already. If one of you biggest resellers ( hit with the biggest price increase) had pointed it out to you may be you would feel the same way. You know as well as I that I am PRO-Alabanza as anyone.

But you are right..my prices didn't double. They will be about $600 per server higher. For some that may be double and maybe that was what I was thinking of. From what I understand $600 per month increase is more than what some servers cost some Alabanza clients base price. That is how much more I have to pay for a box that has an older OS , older PHP and mySQL and a smaller drive. It doesn't mater what I am paying now, only what the increase is and what the benefits are going to be. You would be complaining also if you were in my shoes.

Lets just drop it on the board...... we both made our points and now we are wasting time here when we should be working on things like the new shopping carts. Good night I am done.

Paul Mathews
Wise Source

I noticed that only after you log off the files are *really* deleted. They appear deleted when your are logged on but if you were to close your browser with out logging off the "deleted" e-mails would show up again when you log back in.

I noticed the same thing today after I tore the thing apart just knowing it was only a half finished "throw it up there" bugged example of what we have to live with for now. I didn't think that if they were slick enough to fix the bug that they would have missed removing the comment code in the login. Hell it takes 5 days to answer an emergency request and 11 to answer a regular one.

Actually one of my clients said that she kept getting the same mail over and over. I didn't know what she was talking about until I figured out what she meant. She deleted the mail in there and then later checked again and sure enough there it was again.

I know of a few very good programs that work perfectly on our systems. They are expensive but you would think that they could get one of those or at least do better than this for us for now. The bad thing is that we have no control over the thing because it is hosted on their center servers (I think). We can't fix it and it makes us look bad.

Some people just don't get it... but I am sure glad that I am not the only one that is wondering about that thing !

Paul Mathews
Wise Source