Hosted Internet Services (Email, DNS)

There was a great discussion last night on moving to managed email services. This was prompted (at least in part) by the problem of spam. Running a proper mail server today is a lot harder than it used to be (insert flash backs here of when I worked for a small ISP in the 90s). So if you don’t specialize in email, why would you want the headache?

Given the rise of spam I’ve been seeing in my personal email account, I’m giving this idea more serious consideration. The service that was specifically mentioned was Webmail.us. At $1.00/month for 1 GB per email the pricing seems reasonable. Most importantly, if they do a good job of stopping spam then it is worth the money.

The next service that makes sense to push off on someone else is DNS. I’d consider running BIND easier than dealing with email, but it is one more thing that someone else should be able to do at a reasonable cost. Does anyone have recommendations for a managed DNS service provider?

This trend is growing with more companies looking at Amazon S3 for storage and backup needs.

At this point all I really want to manage is the specific service(s) that I’m offering. Today that almost always translates to just a website with a database back end.

UPDATE 2 Dec 2006 @ 4:45pm: I should note that I wrote this with the small business or individual in mind. If you are a large company then the question of doing things in house or not has different parameters.