need more mail space

[loco007]

I think there should be more mail space based upon what plan you are on. You get basically more or less of basically everything else based upon your plan, why not email space. Just seems to make sense.

[theduke]

Because everyone has different email needs, regardless of the plan their on, I don't think it makes too much sense for semi dedicated users to automatically get more email space than shared users.  Particularily with semi dedicated, those users are primarily looking for more memory and CPU resources to be available to their websites ... which has nothing really to do with email.

That's a pretty broad blanket statement that is not necessarily so. Yes, the site did need more memory and resources, because the site that is semi-dedicated is for a larger organization and thus they have larger e-mail needs. Most of my shared plans have 2-12 e-mail users. The larger site for a larger organization has 60+ users and growing.

[Ben Amada]

Because everyone has different email needs, regardless of the plan their on, I don't think it makes too much sense for semi dedicated users to automatically get more email space than shared users.  Particularily with semi dedicated, those users are primarily looking for more memory and CPU resources to be available to their websites ... which has nothing really to do with email.

That's a pretty broad blanket statement that is not necessarily so. Yes, the site did need more memory and resources, because the site that is semi-dedicated is for a larger organization and thus they have larger e-mail needs. Most of my shared plans have 2-12 e-mail users. The larger site for a larger organization has 60+ users and growing.

Hi.  I agree that semi-dedicated sites are generally for larger organizations, but not always so.  Some small organizations made up of just a handful of employees might still have a resource intensive website without being heavy email users.  And the same can be easily true where a large organization may have a simple website setup for informational purposes but are heavy email users and need more storage space.

I think loco007 is correct in that to be consistent with the way the plans are setup now, the larger plans should get more storage space.  I just think some sort of add-on option available to all plans to get even more space would be nice for organizations that rely heavily on email.

The sites I have at CT are not email intensive sites ... so we're not running into any problems with the current limitations (FYI).

[loco007]

I dont use it all anyway either, but today got an email about being about half full. I saw what it costs if you are over... $5.00 per 50MB ... seems a little crazy. If it was maybe $5 per 500mb or something would seem a little more sensible. Its like saying the amount you get with a low plan is $200 worth of email space. Just seems weird.

[theduke]

I dont use it all anyway either, but today got an email about being about half full. I saw what it costs if you are over... $5.00 per 50MB ... seems a little crazy. If it was maybe $5 per 500mb or something would seem a little more sensible. Its like saying the amount you get with a low plan is $200 worth of email space. Just seems weird.

I was told by Sales that mail allotment is FIXED and while you can get more web server space, if your mail server hits it's max you are s out of luck, and mails will get bounced. This happened to one of my accounts when they had the mail threshold incorrectly set and I got this message:

"The domain size limit of 1024 MB for 'domain.com' has been exceeded.  Incoming mail is currently being rejected."

Note: This happened on a Sunday, and only by chance I happened to be working that day. Had I not, my client who gets heavy mail volume on weekends from propective clients would not have been too pleased to say the least.

Note to self: check all accounts and make sure that CT has set the correct mailbox capacity and set threshold notices.

Note to CT: even my lowly .Mac account gives me 10gb of disk space and lets me allocate the space anyway that i wish. Cost of .Mac account $100/year. Cost of semi-dedicated plan (6GB web, 2GB mail) $1,444.00/year

Seems like this is a major flaw in the system that similar to bandwidth overages it doesn't just rollover to allocate more disk space as needed and charge the customer accordingly.

[KentAZ]

I love Crystal Tech. The people and support have always been top notch. But if I had to pick one thing, the email is the weak link for me. I've never been a big fan of SmarterMail. Receiving an email is slow, and the web based Smartermail interface is slow too. It's probably as good as it gets for email on a shared hosting account. So maybe I'm just spoiled. But it does seem my Yahoo email account runs faster.

I've been lucky so far. Most of my clients stay within the email space included in the shared web hosting plans. I occasionally have to remind certain users to clean out their email boxes. I've had full email usage on a few occasions, always with the same clients.

So, for two of my clients that need bigger and more functional email accounts, I am currently looking at MS Exchange 2007 Hosting. $9-12 per user per month. The typical account seems to be 2 Gigs per user.

I'm looking at:
http://www.mailstreet.com/exchange/pricing.asp

http://www.intermedia.net/exchange-hosting/small-business-exchange-hosting/plans/3-plan.asp

I like what I've read about Exchange 2007. Also, the new Outlook Web Access 2007 looks cool. http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/code/OWA/index.html
Also, I'm looking at the mobile device capabilities.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not mentioning other email hosts as a stomp my feet, hold my breath threat. Just throwing out ideas for people who need more robust email accounts. If Crystal Tech had separate email hosting, that was competitive to others, I'd sign up for it with CT in a heart beat. 

Maybe Exchange hosting would be a huge and difficult addition for CTech from a business stand point. But if they could do it, and provide the same awesome customer service as they do for web hosting, I'd be happy to give CT my email business too.

So my two cents would be: don't change the shared web hosting plans email alotment i fit means increasing the pricing on shared plans. Just add Exchange 2007 (or similar) email hosting plans for those who need super big email accounts and features.

Also when you guys have the time, I want:
CT Fax (fax number with email to PDF. I currently use MyFax.com)
CT Wireless Broadband
CT HDTV
CT Health Care
CT Residential Solar Power Network
CT Airlines
CT Home Improvement... 

[brianc]

agree with everything except the smartermail comments...   I was always down on SM but not because it was slow instead it was ui functionality.   However, SM4 solved my complaints..  and not one of my 30 customers have said the interface is slow at all.   I find it extremely fast actually and I have a lot of email.  Just my .02.

[DSNSecurity]

So its been a while since any posts on this thread. Can someone from CT step in and let us know what the status is (ie. we are considering adding more space, we aren't etc..)?

[Chandi [CT]]

We understand your request for more mail space and I can assure you we are currently discussing how we can accomplish this without raising prices. In our shared hosting structure, we host your site, mail, and database on separate servers and, as a result, we issue separate allocations for each. We do this for a number of reasons. 

Because we try to stay consistent across the board, we have kept the overage charges the same for site, mail, and database disk space, at $5/50MB.  Due to our shared hosting structure, we are currently going over every possible option to offer more mail space without creating a more costly pricing structure for our overall hosting plans.

Please continue to work with the current allocations and,rest assure, we are working to bring new options to the table for this and appreciate your patience.

[KentAZ]

agree with everything except the smartermail comments...   I was always down on SM but not because it was slow instead it was ui functionality.   However, SM4 solved my complaints..  and not one of my 30 customers have said the interface is slow at all.   I find it extremely fast actually and I have a lot of email.  Just my .02.

That shows there is performance differences between individual mail servers at CT. Mine has never performed well. In fact it gets worse with time. (And, Yes I've cleaned out my folders and done any fixes/tricks I could find on the forums here.) I also get error messages from Smartermail 4.3 interface when using web mail. Logs me off in the middle of writing new messages. I know I'm in a shared server environment, but Smartermail has always been the weak link for me.

[brianc]

really..  last I looked you can't get more mail space

pricing for overages for messages is not realistic and not mentioned in your post

We really don't need a sales/marketing speech..  we need a solution.  I do appreciate your feedback but yes we realize we have to work with what we have.. but that is not working.

Some of our questions are not related to pricing at all but the fact there is no offering

We understand your request for more mail space and I can assure you we are currently discussing how we can accomplish this without raising prices. In our shared hosting structure, we host your site, mail, and database on separate servers and, as a result, we issue separate allocations for each. We do this for a number of reasons. 

Because we try to stay consistent across the board, we have kept the overage charges the same for site, mail, and database disk space, at $5/50MB.  Due to our shared hosting structure, we are currently going over every possible option to offer more mail space without creating a more costly pricing structure for our overall hosting plans.

Please continue to work with the current allocations and,rest assure, we are working to bring new options to the table for this and appreciate your patience.

[brianc]

Part of the problem is all plans are the same...   

Messages have nothing to do with space..  and you already get a bandwidth limit, why not remove the messages limit?

http://www.crystaltech.com/popups/mailboxes.htm

Your plan's mail storage allocation is separate from your website and database storage so it does not affect any of the website's disk space limits. In addition, if you go over your allocation of mail space, bandwidth or messages, you will be charged $5/50MB for space overages (with a maximum allowable size for all email accounts of 2 GB), $4/GB for bandwidth overages and $5 for an additional 10,000 messages.

Plan Type Space  Msgs Bandwidth
Personal/Business 2GB 50,000 3GB
Developer 500MB 10,000 1GB
CFMX 7 2GB 100,000 5GB 
ASP/ASP.NET 2.0 2GB 100,000 5GB 
SharePoint 2GB 100,000 5GB 
Semi-Dedicated 2GB 100,000 5GB 
Extra Domain 1GB 25,000 2GB 
 

[DSNSecurity]

Are those bandwidth limits per month?

[Will [CT]]

Are those bandwidth limits per month?

Yes. Mail bandwidth (along with website disk space & bandwidth) is calculated on a calendar month cycle; the 1st of each month your allotments will start fresh.

[MattK [CT]]

Just a quick addendum to what Will stated:

Space based measurements such as disk space usage, SQL database usage, and mail space usage are simple rolling averages.

e.g.: If on day 1 of the month you place a large 2GB file on your site which makes up 100% of the space used on the site. Then, on day 2, you place a 1GB file on your site the average disk space usage would be 2.5GB ((2GB + 3GB)/2 days = 2.5 GB). This works to your advantage for smoothing out spikes in usage.

Other overages, such as messages sent or bandwidth used are simply of the type "you have X quantity to use and you used Y".