Hi all, I am thinking about offering simple, standard web hosting for my clients. My question is, what would i need exactly so i can offer email accounts, etc. I presently have a 1meg DSL connection, so that should be ok. i am just confused on how to go about offering email accounts to the clients. For example, if a client has a domain, say xxx.com, is it as simple as creating email accounts (via an email server on my PC) using user1@xxx.com, user2@xxx.com, etc. No ISP permission or fees involved?? Are there any free (Windows) mail servers out there that are easy to run? i've found a few, but they seem rather complex. thanks guys.

I've heard a lot of good things about Gmail for your domain, but haven't used it. It's a free service offered by Google. "Computer security." — Oxymoron

Wait...didn't you already ask this question here: http://www.computing.net/webdevel/wwwboard/forum/2854.html In any event. Running a server from your home computer is great for experimentation, but not so great for a hosting business. The 1mbit connection isn't all that fast either, and depending on how many clients you have/how busy their sites are, you're going to find the 1mbit connection being saturated quite often. Bryan

yea, we read it but we (I actually :-)) don't know how to answer But let me try, in this internet where there're so many hosting services, yours (to be) is one of the not recommended ones. Even if you offer it for free, I'd rather browse free-webshost.com to read reviews about php-mysql hostings with emails without ads, etc... And if I'm looking for a HTML only hostings, I'll pick freewebs.com, for quick page I'll use pages.google.com. For quick blog I'll use worpdress.com... Those services already have their credibility. 1 Megs Let's assume you also have 1 MB/s upstream (or Mbps?), when somebody downloading a 5 MB file with full speed, then your site will be down for everyone including you cannot browse the internet (as you need upstream to do "requests") for 5 second, or 49 second if Mbps... So you need to do QoS (quality of service) in your network, to limit the access speed when there're people browsing, and give full speed when nobody browse. ISP Permission IMO, if your ISP limit your speed, then it is your right to use it to the maximum speed for 24 hours as long as you're not breaking any law. But most ISP I think will also have their own rules, or their own tricks, to not let their clients use up all the max bandwidth for 24 hour, like blocking some ports, or doing their own QoS. For example, if a client has a domain, say xxx.com, is it as simple as creating email accounts (via an email server on my PC) Yes it is... But I wouldnt want to create accounts everytime somebody asked me to. I also wouldnt want a host where I need to email the owner everytime I want to modify something :-) So you need to provide some kind of control panel for the users. As Bryan suggested above, a home-based server is good for educational purpose only. If it is for a real site, even if it's just a simple homepage or weblog, I'd rather use one of a few credible free service out there. A real server should be placed in a datacenter with a good maintenance, network scheme, security, etc., and of course the server itself should be able to handle many process on a single time. If you want to start a hosting business, I'd suggest you put your powerful PC in a datacenter, assuming you have the knowledge to work with a good-for-shared-webhosting OS. You can leave the bandwidth/network management to the datacenter people. Most datacenters also offer the hardware, OS, and cPanel (a quite known control panel for shared hosting), in a single package. So somebody who wants to start a hosting business can start selling without the need of having the "too technical" knowledge. Here's a sample --- Fubar

talk about gmail for your domain, yes it is good. All emails will be handled by google directly, it wont use your space in the server. But you need to have access to your domain's MX settings, and point it to google. And you'll have gmail as webmail interface. GMail beats all webmail I know, it probably beats all offline email clients I know too :-| --- Fubar