Using cPanel email or not for personal mailboxes of clients

[markus909]

I am not getting into an actual reselling business, but I am going to offer my web design clients hosting with me. It's just a pain if they have bad quality hosting, so this is a good approach to streamline my offer. Thus, I do have a reseller account with a hosting provider that runs on cPanel.

Usually this means, I could provide the mailbox for clients as well and not just the web hosting.
I wonder in general what you think about it. I mean, is this a good idea (even though it's included and I don't have to pay extra for it) to set up mailboxes for the client. Larger clients with many employees would anyway have their own email solution. But smaller clients with 1 to 5 employees might not have that.

I could charge the client just for hosting and web site maintenance + give them the mailbox as well from cPanel.
But that would also mean, I am tied forever - if I ever consider switching hosting I can't as their mailbox is under the same account.

I know that is not particularly a cPanel question but a general question - but I am interested to get some feedback from people who have experience with this.

Is cPanel mail in general a good or bad idea?

 

[ffeingol]

There is nothing particularly good or bad about cPanel mail. It's just basic mail that can be access via POP or IMAP. IMHO the bigger issue is the potential headaches you'll get yourself into supporting your clients devices. Setting up mail on a desktop is pretty straight forward. It's also pretty easy on phones, but there are dozens of different mail apps, issues with clients not being able to type in passwords etc. etc.

My 2 cents.

 

[ejsolutions]

I have been there, got the T-shirt, so to speak. Given the potential to have your (shared) IP blacklisted by various external mail servers, I wouldn't go down that route (again). I still have a couple of low-cost clients direct on cPanel (rather they weren't) though I have managed to move the majority onto 3rd party email providers - without making any recommendations - such as gmail and mxroute. It still doesn't stop my clients coming to me with email issues, so with the benefit of hindsight, I'd direct yours straight to a 3rd party and content yourself with updating DNS etc.
Bear in mind that if you host their email, there may also be an implied responsibility for backups too, plus the size of emails that people send these days can be horrendous - embedded photos/videos etc.

 

[markus909]

I have been there, got the T-shirt, so to speak. Given the potential to have your (shared) IP blacklisted by various external mail servers, I wouldn't go down that route (again). I still have a couple of low-cost clients direct on cPanel (rather they weren't) though I have managed to move the majority onto 3rd party email providers - without making any recommendations - such as gmail and mxroute. It still doesn't stop my clients coming to me with email issues, so with the benefit of hindsight, I'd direct yours straight to a 3rd party and content yourself with updating DNS etc.
Bear in mind that if you host their email, there may also be an implied responsibility for backups too, plus the size of emails that people send these days can be horrendous - embedded photos/videos etc.

Yes that just confirms that I should try to avoid it as much as I can. Even though it is just a click of a button in cPanel to enable it and set up and account for the client. Everything you say makes sense. Only the blacklisting, I thin that is something some hoster can do something about it, e.g. by using Mailchannels

I checked out MX Route and some others yesterday. Looks good, only thing I think unless you don't ask the client themselves to sign up for an account, it's again me who is the person to go to. Sure, I would be free to do whatever with hosting, I want to do as those are not tied anymore. With services that offer unlimited domains/user it's compelling to use one account (like with MX Route as an example) and sign up all those clients on that one account.

Everyone who is serious about their email would anyway get into their own set up, own accounts, and probably their own IT guy who does email. While I could do it, I don't want to do it. It's only those small clients, even friends that are going to ask about (included) email.

 

[markus909]

There is nothing particularly good or bad about cPanel mail. It's just basic mail that can be access via POP or IMAP. IMHO the bigger issue is the potential headaches you'll get yourself into supporting your clients devices. Setting up mail on a desktop is pretty straight forward. It's also pretty easy on phones, but there are dozens of different mail apps, issues with clients not being able to type in passwords etc. etc.

My 2 cents.

Email is also such a personal thing from my point of view. I don't want to be responsible for it. I don't want to be able to access it. Perhaps most really just don't use it. Some will not understand to have to pay 5 EUR per user for email, when it could be free as well, I think

 

[cPRex]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!