How's the market for a new Email/DNS provider?

Otus9051 · January 28

This is a serious thread, please do not joke around.

I am currently running a "market survey" for starting a new Email/DNS Provider. (Well not exactly me but someone I know.)

We have planned to roll out the Email first and then start the DNS service. I know of the complications in hosting one (we want to not be another reseller) but I need to check with the market before thinking of starting it.

Any suggestions/information about it?

lapua · January 28

mxroute

root · January 28

One of the most known email providers is MXRoute. There is a lot of room for competition.

For DNS, I don't know.

COLBYLICIOUS · January 28

For email I think it is but for DNS, I wouldn't go for it tbh.

bikegremlin · January 28

My thinking out loud:

DNS

Cloudflare is hard to beat for DNS.
Hurricane Electric DNS is also a decent option.

Both of those are free and quite reliable. So, I can not think of a reason that would justify paying for DNS.

Emails

MXroute is very cheap and very reliable. Hard to beat.
Would I risk testing an alternative?
Perhaps, if it looked promising enough, just for the sake of knowing of a tried&teste alternative in case of any problems with MXroute (wars, disasters, corporate buyouts or, worst of all, the owner going vegan).

Having said that, mass-mailing services (for mailing lists, marketing mailing lists and similar) is a bit more tricky.
Mail Baby looked promising in terms of LESbian feedback and prices, but their insisting on adding the sending hosting server's IP address to the SPF DNS reccord was a no-go for me (for as long as there are email services that don't require exposing that).
MailChimp, on the other hand, is quite expensive.

Chievo · January 28

@Otus9051 said:
This is a serious thread, please do not joke around.

I am currently running a "market survey" for starting a new Email/DNS Provider. (Well not exactly me but someone I know.)

We have planned to roll out the Email first and then start the DNS service. I know of the complications in hosting one (we want to not be another reseller) but I need to check with the market before thinking of starting it.

Any suggestions/information about it?

Like anothers have said you are late to the party.

Otus9051 · January 28

What about anything other than Email/DNS? I am not aiming for VPS and stuff as the market does seem pretty saturated for me.

lapua · January 28

what do you think of becoming an arms dealer. certainly a good business in these times and certainly easier to organise in the usa than in europe.

bikegremlin · January 28

@Otus9051 said:
What about anything other than Email/DNS? I am not aiming for VPS and stuff as the market does seem pretty saturated for me.

Figure out what you like and can do well. If that doesn’t pay well in the capitalist market, then find a job that lets you either earn a lot, or learn a lot (one not excluding the other).

Or keep doing what you love and be happy with LESs.

Otus9051 · January 28

@lapua said:
what do you think of becoming an arms dealer. certainly a good business in these times and certainly easier to organise in the usa than in europe.

We look to expand to other regions as well. What do you think about starting in Africa or Vietnam?

[For legal reasons, this is a joke.]

lapua · January 28

@Otus9051 said:

@lapua said:
what do you think of becoming an arms dealer. certainly a good business in these times and certainly easier to organise in the usa than in europe.

We look to expand to other regions as well. What do you think about starting in Africa or Vietnam?

[For legal reasons, this is a joke.]

your aforementioned regions definitely have potential!

Otus9051 · January 28

@lapua said:

@Otus9051 said:

@lapua said:
what do you think of becoming an arms dealer. certainly a good business in these times and certainly easier to organise in the usa than in europe.

We look to expand to other regions as well. What do you think about starting in Africa or Vietnam?

[For legal reasons, this is a joke.]

your aforementioned regions definitely have potential!

Would you like to join with me in the business? Seems like you have experience.

[For legal reasons, this is a joke.]

lapua · January 28

@Otus9051 said:

@lapua said:

@Otus9051 said:

@lapua said:
what do you think of becoming an arms dealer. certainly a good business in these times and certainly easier to organise in the usa than in europe.

We look to expand to other regions as well. What do you think about starting in Africa or Vietnam?

[For legal reasons, this is a joke.]

your aforementioned regions definitely have potential!

Would you like to join with me in the business? Seems like you have experience.

[For legal reasons, this is a joke.]

no! i wouldn't bother with small arms. i'm more interested in weapons of mass destruction.

cmeerw · January 28

Personally, I think email is too important to use a single-server solution (like those that get thrown in with web hosting or mxroute). So something without a single point of failure would be an interesting feature for me (that's why I am actually doing it myself).

For DNS it's even more difficult as most users will likely not care enough, and then you will be competing with web hosters on one end and domain registrars on the other end.

Joseph · January 28

@Otus9051 said:

@lapua said:
what do you think of becoming an arms dealer. certainly a good business in these times and certainly easier to organise in the usa than in europe.

We look to expand to other regions as well. What do you think about starting in Africa or Vietnam?

[For legal reasons, this is a joke.]

The OP requested that their be no joking, please.

Joseph · January 28

@cmeerw said:
Personally, I think email is too important to use a single-server solution (like those that get thrown in with web hosting or mxroute). So something without a single point of failure would be an interesting feature for me (that's why I am actually doing it myself).

For DNS it's even more difficult as most users will likely not care enough, and then you will be competing with web hosters on one end and domain registrars on the other end.

How do you avoid a single point of failure, by doing it yourself?

Otus9051 · January 28

@Joseph said:

@Otus9051 said:

@lapua said:
what do you think of becoming an arms dealer. certainly a good business in these times and certainly easier to organise in the usa than in europe.

We look to expand to other regions as well. What do you think about starting in Africa or Vietnam?

[For legal reasons, this is a joke.]

The OP requested that their be no joking, please.

Eh, is fine. Considering I am trolling almost every post here.

ZuckZwing · January 28

Mail: Personally I'd love to see more email providers, but email is so vital that I can't see myself going with an unknown newcomer. I would definitely pay for a quality service.
DNS: I don't care about it enough to pay.

Otus9051 · January 28

@ZuckZwing said: DNS: I don't care about it enough to pay.

I think people like @tetech would maybe, because I don't want this DNS to be your normal run-off-the-mill one, this will have stuff like AXFR, GeoDNS, DNSSEC (though that is a standard for many providers now)

Joseph · January 28

@Otus9051 said:

@ZuckZwing said: DNS: I don't care about it enough to pay.

I think people like @tetech would maybe, because I don't want this DNS to be your normal run-off-the-mill one, this will have stuff like AXFR, GeoDNS, DNSSEC (though that is a standard for many providers now)

Anycast?

cmeerw · January 28

@Joseph said:

@cmeerw said:
Personally, I think email is too important to use a single-server solution (like those that get thrown in with web hosting or mxroute). So something without a single point of failure would be an interesting feature for me (that's why I am actually doing it myself).

For DNS it's even more difficult as most users will likely not care enough, and then you will be competing with web hosters on one end and domain registrars on the other end.

How do you avoid a single point of failure, by doing it yourself?

All relevant configuration (email accounts and filtering rules) is kept in LDAP (and kept in sync on all servers), so I have multiple inbound servers that can accept emails. Emails (at least important ones - those that are not filtered out as mailing list traffic or similar) then get forwarded to two completely separate mailbox servers. Usually, I just use one of the mailbox servers, but if that would suddenly fail, I can just switch to the other mailbox server. Yes, there would be a minor inconvenience that it might not be completely synced with mailbox changes I made with my email client (depending on how and how often I sync these), but nothing gets lost and I can continue working.

Otus9051 · January 28

@Joseph said:

@Otus9051 said:

@ZuckZwing said: DNS: I don't care about it enough to pay.

I think people like @tetech would maybe, because I don't want this DNS to be your normal run-off-the-mill one, this will have stuff like AXFR, GeoDNS, DNSSEC (though that is a standard for many providers now)

Anycast?

We probably wouldn't have enough budget haha, but we could.

tetech · January 29

@Otus9051 said:

@ZuckZwing said: DNS: I don't care about it enough to pay.

I think people like @tetech would maybe, because I don't want this DNS to be your normal run-off-the-mill one, this will have stuff like AXFR, GeoDNS, DNSSEC (though that is a standard for many providers now)

I'd pay a little, but I think it would be challenging to make a profitable business out of it. You'd be squeezed from the bottom by the free or free tiers, and from the top by the bigger players who offer things that come with scale (like 24/7 support).

cornercase · January 29

1984.hosting is another good quality free DNS provider. But maybe you can offer things (some of) the others don't like dynamic DNS?

yoursunny · January 29

I will use OtusDNS if it has GeoDNS on anycast nameservers.
Budget is $7/year for one NS delegation including 9051 monthly queries.

The push-up delivery network operates 10~30 routers around the world that can accept requests over UDP.
Currently the client device must make HTTP request to find the IP addresses of nearby UDP capable routers.
I'd like to replace this with a DNS lookup.
We are developing an ESP32 based hardware device that allows viewers to watch push-ups 24x7 on its OLED screen.
Between video codec and UDP transport, there's no room in the firmware for the TCP+TLS+HTTP stack anymore.
Having GeoDNS would enable us to release this product.

VinnyReo · January 29

@Otus9051 said:
We probably wouldn't have enough budget haha, but we could.

If you’re considering running an email provider, it’s crucial to ensure you have a **sufficient ** budget. Do you have your own Autonomous System Number (ASN) and a few blocks of IP addresses? Have you thought about securing a reliable data center, primary and backup servers, as well as offsite backup solutions? While it may seem straightforward, they involve complex processes and infrastructure. I do wish you the best of luck.

yoursunny · January 29

@VinnyReo said:
Do you have your own Autonomous System Number (ASN) and a few blocks of IP addresses?

OtusASN has been online since last year.
https://199693.xyz/
There's one POP with one /40 prefix.

If you are MXroute customer and cannot receive email from OtusMail, blame @jarland for not having IPv6 on the incoming servers.

xvps · January 29

@VinnyReo said:

@Otus9051 said:
We probably wouldn't have enough budget haha, but we could.

If you’re considering running an email provider, it’s crucial to ensure you have a **sufficient ** budget. Do you have your own Autonomous System Number (ASN) and a few blocks of IP addresses? Have you thought about securing a reliable data center, primary and backup servers, as well as offsite backup solutions? While it may seem straightforward, they involve complex processes and infrastructure. I do wish you the best of luck.

otusmail.rip

AaronSS · January 29

@bikegremlin said:

Mail Baby looked promising in terms of LESbian feedback and prices, but their insisting on adding the sending hosting server's IP address to the SPF DNS record was a no-go for me (for as long as there are email services that don't require exposing that).
MailChimp, on the other hand, is quite expensive.

Did you check with them on this? I'm sending from many different servers and none of them are in my SPF record.

bikegremlin · January 29

@AaronSS said:

@bikegremlin said:

Mail Baby looked promising in terms of LESbian feedback and prices, but their insisting on adding the sending hosting server's IP address to the SPF DNS record was a no-go for me (for as long as there are email services that don't require exposing that).
MailChimp, on the other hand, is quite expensive.

Did you check with them on this? I'm sending from many different servers and none of them are in my SPF record.

Yup. First hand info from the company. Too bad.

Scaleblade · January 29

DNS is difficult to compete with. Most people just use their domain registrar, others just use Cloudflare. The only exception I usually see to this is providers who use their own or people using their providers due to specific filtering or custom use-cases they need. There is definitely little to no money in this unless you’re planning on running this at a huge scale.

Email is too important to fuck up these days. I exclusively use Google for my email. I’d rather pay the extra to know I’m somewhat looked after. Others I know use Azure for similar reasons.

If you’re looking for service delivery mail then Amazon SES is a no brainer for me. Great delivery rates and you have to send ludicrous amounts of mail to even rack up a bill above $10/mo.

DNS and mail is a super competitive and OLD market. Unless you have something super innovative you can bring to the table and maintain a high service reliability you’re going to struggle imo.

How's the market for a new Email/DNS provider?

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