Hi guys,


My partner and I thought of a good idea to start out in our country ( Dominican Republic) a Free email service provider. WE are gathering information to what we need. Our expectation on users is around 30,000 users perhaps. So any one has an idea what we need? Scripts, hosting providers o what to do with the email servers?

Can some give me a good advice.

Thanks

Juan

Don't want to demoralize you... but why another free email service? gmail / hotmail and yahoo are already fighting on providing the mail space... then why do you?

Thats correct they fight for the number one position. We are not going to compete with them because is dumb. What we want is to offer a free webbase email just for the dominican republic. So we are not looking at millions of user rather than thousands of users. Theres no local provider here so we are going to be the first one.

Its a different story for Mexico, panama, colombia they have there own so we thought on starting one.

So you have any bright ideas?

Thanks

Like said above, there are already many providers for free email. But if you are really interested in offering the services:

Start out with a decent VPS, from a good company. Once you exceed your limitations on a VPS, look into a dedicated solution.

If you actually reach your 30,000 active users mark, you'll be running a decent sized cluster of dedicated servers to be able to serve your users (mail servers, web servers, database servers, data storage servers)...

I have no idea as to what script(s) you should use though, I've never run a free email service ;) .

Hi,
Biggest Concern is Revenue. From where you are planing to get the revenue to bear the cost of of service which you are going to provide

pravz,

My partner and I thought about that... We are going to place banners and bill a decent amount for it... Also have service plans for example service A, will have calender, address book things like that ....

pravz,

My partner and I thought about that... We are going to place banners and bill a decent amount for it... Also have service plans for example service A, will have calender, address book things like that ....

Were you not interested in creating a free email service?

Good luck, I think this plan will need it. I can't think of why I would choose a small email provider with ads over one with years of experience and state-of-the-art features, but who knows.

I would have a serious think about starting this venture if I was you, before you start coughing up money for to provide a service that's seriously missed the boat by say 5 years. Your aim of 30,000 members will most likely turn out to be 300 max....and many of them will be friends, family or people you meet that are curious.

OWM

It's obvious why Microsoft, Yahoo and Gmail have free email services. But you? There's always room for innovation and all that, but... seriously... It's VERY risky.

It would be more wise to offer a specific mail service for a specific market. I'm sure there is someone that needs a special mail service out there...

Hola, I personally wouldn't offer a free email service, imagine how many spammers would sign up with you and would make your life hard... plus soon all your IP's would be blacklisted and here it comes... problems and more problems. This may sounds exaggerated but, be carefull with your decissions. Just my sincere opinion.

Saludos.

I have offered a free email service to users before mainly because i had alot of space and bandwidth that was doing nothing.

Most of the users that signed up were freinds and family.

It is a very hard "area" to get a foot into and the chance is you would not cover the costs of your hosting and advertising.

Also when there are other services such as gmail that give 2gb of fast online reliable storage, you would have to offer something very unique for people to use your email system instead of another.

Good Luck......