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We are primarily a web design and web development (Australian-based) agency. We currently have a great server manager who we want to stick with for all our web hosting. We have around 400 client accounts.

However, our server manager is not keen to run email systems for us. So we are looking for alternative email infrastructure for at least 100 clients (all on their own custom domains) and possibly up to 500, with up to 2,000 individual email accounts.

Around 10% of our clients are running Google G-Suite or Office365 but many don't want to pay extra for this. We're happy to pay a biggish monthly cost but we don't want to pay a huge amount per domain or the costs will be too high.

We are slowly moving a lot of our clients to alternative outgoing systems such as AmazonSES and the awesome PostMark, but it feels like a point-in-time where we need to look for an alternative email infrastructure to offer as resellers, for both incoming and outgoing.

We want to manage the email accounts via a simple system (something like the mail system on cPanel) but we don't really know what's out there, or the right questions to ask. Hence this annoyingly-amorphous question!

So, can anyone please point me in the right direction for who to use, but perhaps more importantly for what to ask for when looking to be email server managers ourselves to some extent?

We would prefer to use Australian servers.

Monkey Puzzle
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  • Requests for product, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic because they attract low quality, opinionated and spam answers, and the answers become obsolete quickly. – digijay Sep 07 '20 at 06:31
  • Thanks. As mentioned, I'm not looking so much for company/service recommendations, but the types of **questions** I should be asking - what to look for? What to ask for? What might work in general? Rather than who specifically. I'm happy to edit the question if it helps. – Monkey Puzzle Sep 07 '20 at 06:40
  • I run an Australian based (Mandurah in WA) hosting service, including mail server from my spare bedroom (terribly professional). Your questions should focus on security and implementing methods for preventing spam etc. Arm yourself with information such as DMARC, SPF, DKIM. SSL and TLS. I am not an expert but have fumbled my way through. It probably wouldn't be difficult for you to run a mail server in-house for your clients. That's my two cents worth. – Admiral Noisy Bottom Sep 07 '20 at 06:52
  • Nice, thanks. Yes I do know those bits and pieces from running AmazonSES but that's great starting info. I'm familiar with the cPanel setup but I'm not sure if I should demand that or go for something equivalent (or easier?) for email only systems? – Monkey Puzzle Sep 07 '20 at 07:09
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    @MonkeyPuzzle There are various control panels which can be installed onto a fresh copy of Linux (Centos is my choice) with zero setup costs. That would at least allow you to experiment in-house, for example Centos Web Panel (http://centos-webpanel.com/) or Webmin (http://webmin.com). Again, I'm no expert and any input I offer here is not the be-all-and-end-all. I'm likely to be of little help but wanted to offer my opinions. :) – Admiral Noisy Bottom Sep 07 '20 at 08:18
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    I _am_ an expert and I run my own email server for my own personal domains. It's a bloody nightmare just trying to get plain ordinary email delivered. Go with a hosted service, especially if you don't have in-house expertise in email. – Michael Hampton Sep 07 '20 at 14:51
  • @MichaelHampton It can be frustrating and cause many hours of pulling your own hair out. :) – Admiral Noisy Bottom Sep 07 '20 at 21:58
  • @MichaelHampton can you hit me with a few names for hosted services? Do you mean ZohoMail, Office365 and G-Suite type systems, or are there heaps of others who I should be investigating? I don't need specific recommendations (although of course I'd love one!) but just general 'who's even out there?' Thanks very much. – Monkey Puzzle Sep 08 '20 at 03:53

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