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Whose SMTP?

What happens when your dialup customer gets a webhosting account with another company, and their mail use goes up? Members of the ISP-Webhosting list discuss your options.

[October 3, 2000]

On the ISP-Webhosting list in October, MB offered the following dilemma:

"I have a dialup customer who's decided to go with a different hosting company for her web site. However, her new hosting company wants her to use my SMTP servers. Shouldn't I be able to charge her for this? What's the going rate?"

Some respondents suggested that MB really isn't in a position to charge anything:

[DB explained] "To send mail, she needs to use the SMTP servers provided by her ISP. This is standard for most web host providers, mine included. Since you should already be providing this access to your dialup accounts, there shouldn't be any fee associated. If I had a web hosting client tell me that their ISP was going to charge them for using their SMTP servers just because the POP account is on the web host, I would tell them to change their ISP."

[S agreed] "If I subscribe to your service for dial-up access and I get a POP account with that service, then I should be able to send from you. If you block your own subscribers from using SMTP with the POP, then what good is it if I can't send mail from you? It shouldn't matter if my domain is hosted with you or not."

Others contended that it's completely legitimate to charge for the service:

[R argued] "If you send and receive from the mail account that we provide with your dialup account, no problem. If you try to send a message using a reply to or from address outside our domain, won't go. Why? Spam, and all the other problems generated by those who have learned to abuse mail.

Also, will a web hosting company allow you to host more then one domain on the same account? Don't think so, not without paying for multiple domains. So why should a ISP just openly allow a dialup customer to use the ISP's SMTP server to relay mail for another domain without compensation?"

[LC offered] "If you have mail accounting in place, total the traffic per month and charge some amount per some 100 megabytes per month. You also have to figure something for mailbox space, both per-user limits and total disk allocation. As a guide, use what you charge for data volume for web hosting."

[JM countered] "Price the service per mailbox. I'd start in the range of $2 per month per box for 10 mailboxes and discount that as the number increases."

—End