My friend David is a happy GoDaddy customer. But a couple of days ago he complained that GoDaddy doesn’t offer encrypted email. Isn’t SSL encryption standard these days? How can anyone offer email services without giving customers the benefit of secure communication? David even created a pre-filled email link for his blog’s reader to send GoDaddy the following message:
“Please provide SSL encrypted emails on smtpout.secureserver.net:80 and relay-hosting.secureserver.net:25. I’m surprised you don’t offer this already. I have emails that contain important information that hackers can sniff on the network when I send and receive emails through your servers. Please integrate SSL support for your email services or I will be forced to switch hosting providers.”
The question is, where would David go, if he were to leave GoDaddy? I see no mention of email encryption at 1&1. Or iPowerWeb (though David would be able to set up 2,500 mailboxes!). Or DreamHost. Or Verio. In fact, when I search for “SSL email”, the only hosting company that comes up is WebNet77. It says on their site’s footer that “The Lord is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy” (PS 103:8). Customers, on the other hand, might not be quite as patient…
Has David identified an under-served market in our crowded hosting world? I would imagine he’s not the only customer who cares about secure communication. For instance, I was somewhat impressed to read on Mozy‘s website that my data would be encrypted during transport to their backup servers.
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