By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
August 11, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Having a reliable email service in place is an essential component for a company operating in just about any business to effectively maintain its day-to-day operations.
And as businesses become more distributed, Web mail provides users a convenient way to access their email, despite their location or time of the day.
As many hosting companies now include Web mail features in even their most basic packages, the service has become another commodity amid all the other features offered.
Webmail.us (webmail.us) says its unique offering is its focus solely on providing a hosting service for emailing. Designed with the small business in mind, the Blacksburg, Virginia-based email hosting provider has partnered with 50 private-label resellers to provide more than 7,000 small businesses with reliable email hosting.
Webmail.us offers all the same features of commercial email software, as well as integrated security, anti-spam and virus protection - without the need for software, hardware and security service.
All the company’s email hosting plans come fully equipped with domain-based email accounts, SSL-encrypted Web mail, POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, spam filtering, virus scanning and a choice between 100MB and 1GB mailboxes. It is also compatible with Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird, as well as Blackberry devices.
Much of Webmail.us’ email hosting platform is built on a scalable, open-source framework, providing small businesses with an email service that expands accordingly.
“Email is evolving,” says Webmail.us CEO Patrick Mathews. “Customers are demanding more; email is becoming a major burden for them. Partnering with [Webmail.us] allows them to alleviate that burden and concentrate on their core competency.”
This week, In an effort to add more value to its service, Webmail.us introduced the beta version of Webmail Lite ? a free Web-based service that enables users to set up and manage third party email accounts and RSS feeds through an extension of the company’s Web mail interface.
The service includes IMAP and POP Support for third party email accounts, an RSS reader, the ability to access all email accounts including Gmail and Yahoo!, an address book, and SSL Support for extra security. And unlike other free online services, Webmail Lite does not contain any third party advertisements.
Next week, Webmail.us will begin offering its highly anticipated RSS reader, making it one of the industry’s first email hosts to incorporate RSS into an emailing service.
While there are hundreds of RSS readers available for download, Webmail.us does not require any software or hardware. Instead, it converts RSS feeds to email messages on the back end, enabling them to be received by any POP3 or IMAP-based desktop email client.
“One of the reasons we built an RSS reader into our Web mail is because we believe a lot in the convergence of email and RSS,” says Mathews. “We also really believe in the RSS movement that’s taking place right now. Blogging is becoming very popular both for consumers and businesses.”
And while RSS, or “really simple syndication,” is far from being a household name at this point, Mathews insists that like HTML, it will soon become a common practice in the industry, even if the person is unaware he or she is using the technology.
“The one reason why RSS has not yet taken off as much as some of the other services is because people don’t understand it,” says Mathews. “We felt that we had a really unique opportunity to build an RSS reader that works just like email.”
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Since 2000, The Web Host Industry Review has made a name for itself as the foremost authority of the Web hosting industry providing reliable, insightful and comprehensive news, interviews and resources to the hosting community. TheWHIR is an iNET Interactive property. For more information on iNET Interactive, visit http://www.inetinteractive.com
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