Providing Email Accounts

to users of your website

[roycerus]

Hello everyone,
I am considering providing email accounts to my users which will be intergrated to their logins. Has anyone ever done this? I want to give them email ids like [e-mail] and a decent user friendly client to send emails with an address book and stuff. Is there any service I can use which will provide me a package to create this section.
Looking forward to any replies.

Regards,
R

[leadegroot]

Easy - there are lots of webmail packages.
Check freshmeat to see what the latest are.
Squirrelmail is quite well thought of.
You host might be the first place to ask as they may have preferred and banned packages.

[phoenix_fly]

Hello Roycerus,

Wich cgi language are you familiar with? If it is Perl, post your question at perlmonks.com, they´ll probably know of any good webmail client.

By the way, I am also in need of one...

phoenix_fly

[Shak]

is there really any need for offering email to users

surely in 2005 most people have more than their fair share of email accounts and are consolidating rather than expanding

just my 2 cents

Shak

[microcars]

I've offered registered users a custom :
[e-mail]
to use as they see fit.

I have the email address forward to whatever account they want. If they want to configure their email client to have that as a "reply to" they can, but they don't get any other services, POP, SMTP or IMAP or webmail.

The sole purpose is to provide them with a "vanity" email they can give out on cards or in person when someone asks what their email address is.
Sure beats something like
"My email address is [e-mail]"

It keeps the brand name (such as it is) out there.

Its not really a high-demand item but those that take advantage of it like it.

[phoenix_fly]

That´s a great point, microcars.

In fact we can´t beat in storage space big players like gmail - and I heard that in afew days also hotmail - who offer 1Gb/2Gb. But we sure can offer what they´ll never be able to: availability of usernames!

[rayateveryone]

<snip>

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 10:18 pm (utc) on June 8, 2005]
[edit reason] no promotions or sales pitches please. [/edit]

[roycerus]

Well actually its more for the brand name. Its a community website and the members like it a lot so I was thinking that they would really like having their email ids on the domain.
Thanks everyone for helping me out. It has definitely given me a start.
Regards,
R

[figment88]

For one of my sites, I'm thinking of offering my users email forwarding for anonymity and disposability. I think these are the main benefits of the user emails on Craigslist.

For classified ads and some other activities, people need to contact strangers for a specific purpose for a limited period of time. After they finish the job, they don't want the strangers bothering them anymore.