We admit it - both Horde and Squirrelmail leave a lot to be desired. Most people are looking for alternatives when it comes to email residing on your computer alone for many reasons, not the least of which is the security aspect. Benefits to using webmail over a client email account is, again, security (nothing to download that may automatically launch), an ability to get your email from any computer anywhere in the world by logging in, and an archive of mail that’s apart from your computer in case of a computer failure (because, let’s face it, no one backs up as much as they should).

Despite really not being a huge fan of Webmail (especially Horde and Squirrelmail), I found myself looking for an alternative in February after a nasty virus made it through my plethora of security and infected my Windows Machine. Thanks to a Linux Mint CD, I was able to immediately get back up and running as far as accessing DrakNet and working, but my personal email was separated between an infected WindowsXP installation, and newer mail that I could grab in Horde. It was not a pleasant situation.

I began investigating alternatives, and my husband had been using Gmail for a while (which I had essentially sneered at). Using a “free” service went totally and completely against every instinct I had as someone who made their living selling commercial internet services - and I had used Yahoo! back in the day and still shuddered at the memory. Advertising all over my emails was just… um, no. Just no. He was so pleased with it (and I so couldn’t stand Horde) that I decided to try it out as a stop-gap measure, anyway.

And, well, I haven’t left.

It may seem odd for the owner of a web hosting company to be speaking against one of the offerings we have, but the webmail that we offer is included in cPanel, and we don’t really have a choice about what to offer, just whether to offer it. If people wish to use it, if they like it, more power to them - I don’t particularly find it a “selling point” because the software choices seem to be bloated and clunky, or un-bloated but bare. cPanel is a great software package, and I certainly like its platform more than anything else we’ve been on, but waiting for newer, better features at times can resemble Waiting for Godot.

Pulling your mail into GMail, however, gets you several benefits aside from the ones outlined above.

First, you can save your account’s disk space. We’ve seen people lose mail because they set their email account quota to 20 megabytes and never noticed that they hit it. We’ve seen email accounts with 1 Gigabyte of mail stored on the server, eating into the space you could be using to put up really cute videos of your cat. Popping email into Gmail allows you to use free storage on their dime, and free up storage that you’re paying for.

Second, Gmail now allows you to respond from your domain name email account at no charge to you, so you can send out email from there with the from: and reply-to: email address that you’re used to.

Third, triple spam filtering. When an email hits our server, it only makes it in if the sending server isn’t on an RBL. Then your MailScanner settings take over and based on your chosen settings, it scrubs it some more. If you pop your mail into Gmail, Gmail further identifies even more spam, and puts it in a spam folder for you to peruse. This triple-scrub dramatically cuts down on the spam in your inbox.

Speed - Gmail’s servers are optimized for handling mail, and that’s all they do. As a result, webmail is faster when you’re navigating around Gmail then it could be on our servers, especially when you have thousands of emails, because our servers are serving web pages, processing databases, serving and parsing PHP, and so on. We’re fast, but the more mail you have in your webmail, the slower Horde becomes - that “hording” of email becomes a non-existent speed factor on Gmail.

Of course, using the infamous Google search algorithm on your email is just incredibly cool, and Gmail does not put advertisements or tags on YOUR email like… ahem… some other free email services. The ads within Gmail itself are, frankly, quite easily ignored and sometimes even good for a laugh depending on the email it’s using to target them.

Gmail has directions on how to use Mail Fetcher located here. If you need an invitation for a Gmail invite code, drop us a line at the support desk and we’ll send you one.

DrakNet’s gotten a lot of compliments over the years on our support, and we have a lot of options for you to get support. We wanted to go over some of the ways, and some of the reasons behind the ways, that we recommend that you get support through us.

Live Chat

There is a live chat button on every single page of the site, as well as within your cPanel. For general questions, this is a great method to immediately get someone on the line to answer your questions, and have a record emailed to you of what took place in the chat so you have a reference for it later. If you access it from the main DrakNet site, there’s going to be some things we can do and some things we can’t - anyone could say they’re you, and while we can go through a bunch of things to qualify you as you, we find it much simpler to have you log in from the chat module in your cPanel so we can see instantly that you are who you say you are since we’re given your location automatically.

Ticketing System

The ticketing system is another great way to get support, as there is a record that can be associated with your account that you can pull up at any time to revisit old ticket issues. You can email the ticket, submit one from your billing area and your cPanel, and if no one is on chat, you can submit one from there, too.

Telephone Technical Support

And now we come to the ulterior motive for this message.

For several years, it has been posted that only Whistles accounts and above (which include Resellers) have access to telephone technical support. While many people have no problem working within the confines of those account specifications, there have been quite a number that ignore them completely. It puts us in a very difficult position when we have someone who has an Intro account repeatedly call the toll free number, so much so that by month 3, we’ve paid more in our phone bill than we made on their account all year - with no signs of stopping.

If your account doesn’t include telephone technical support, and you choose to call, we are now treating this as a consultation, charged at the rate of $30 an hour (charged at $.50 per minute - which is, frankly, $45 less an hour than we charge anyone else!). We have formalized this in the TOS, the support policies, and there is now a disclaimer on the telephone message when you call reminding you at the time, before it connects, just who’s covered by free support and who’s not.

Telephone technical support is, in our opinion, not as efficient. It’s very difficult to troubleshoot a problem while someone waits on the phone for us to get familiar with the issue. We are sprung into a situation that we are unfamiliar with, and it takes more time to look into things while carrying on a conversation with someone expecting an immediate answer than it would if we were able to fully focus on the problem with no distractions. There are many hosting companies that have moved away from telephone technical support as a method of support, and while we realize there are times that people want to have someone on the phone, some people seem to have some trouble discerning when it really is needed and appropriate.

If we call you because we determine that you’re not understanding us on a ticket (and we do often), you will not be charged regardless of your account level. If you call us and you have an Intro account because you want a password reset done over the phone, your account will now be charged $.50 per minute if you choose to do so.

We hope that by implementing this, it will have a two-fold effect. One, it will hopefully urge people to follow the support dictates of their account level so that we’re not put in a position of having to “turn people away” or lose money on their account because we don’t want to be rude. Two, it will compensate us for the lower level accounts that inevitable choose to repeatedly utilize phone support despite the fact that after 15 minutes, we’re now in the negative.

Again, if we call you because we feel you need it, we won’t charge you a dime. If you choose to use the tech support line when your account doesn’t cover it, you will need to pay the fees incurred to cover those costs.

Speaking of fees…

We also want to remind folks that if you don’t have a card on file, you are breaking the Terms of Your Service with us. We have required, since 2005, a credit card on file that is valid for charges. Some folks have found various ways to get around this, or have just flatly refused to follow it at all. Due to that, and due to the extra work that goes into servicing these accounts, we have instituted a fee of $1.50 per payment term per package for accounts that are in violation of this contractual provision.

Frankly, 2.5 years of asking hasn’t worked, and so we felt we needed to take the next step and try and enforce it. We wish we didn’t have to, but it’s quite frustrating to just mantra the rules and have them be ignored, and our choice was this or simply terminate the accounts. We have chosen this.

We do realize, and have sympathy for, the multitude of reasons that people have for not placing a card on file - however, we’re sure that almost anyone that breaks terms can find a reason for why they did it because, after all, no one does anything without a reason. The underlying fact is these are the terms of having service with us, and we need those terms to be followed.

We want to thank everyone for their understanding, and hope everyone has a good holiday weekend, whichever one of the March holidays you celebrate this year!