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Hey, I need abit of advice from anyone who has ever set up / run an online free email service. I need to provide a service similar to what Yahoomail and Gmail provide to a client that has several hundred thousand clients.

Some Backstory
I provide web design services, nothing fancy, just customized Wordpress designs and online marketing services. One client I've done work for sits on the board of a large company with operations in several countries. The company he is on the board of has a customer base of several hundred thousand clients and they would like to provide an email service (similar to what Gmail, Yahoo provide) as a value added service. My client approached me and asked if I would be interested in getting this email service up and running.

I said HELL YES. However, having never set up an email service on a mass scale
I have to admit that I'm abit out of my depth here. So I went straight to Google and started doing abit of research and a few solutions stood out - Socketmail, @mail, Roundcube.

Does anyone have any experience setting up an Email Service on a mass scale? Do you have any advice on how best to get started?

There are a lot of requirements, conditions and HEADACHES in running a large-scale email provider... You are, however, talking about ENTERPRISE level hosting, which I... I don't want to think about dealing with lol. Honestly, i would join a referral/partner program with an established provider (cloud or otherwise) and save yourself the ongoing barrage of problems (both internal and external - SMTP hosting is a tough racket) and headaches. You'd basically be dealing with this full-time at this scale if you do it on your own.
Check out https://www.hostway.com/partner-programs...ogram.html - For one, I've used them to provide hybrid-cloud services at (close to) enterprise levels, and they are solid as can be, great support (important when YOU are the support to clients - supporting support is key lol), and two, I know their partner/referral programs pay pretty well by industry standards (no personal experience, just word of mouth).

If you're hellbent on doing this yourself, you need the proper hosting (AWS/hostway/azure, depending upon your volume and software requirements) and, more importantly, the software to support that scale. Again, no personal experience self-hosting a shit ton of clients, but PowerMTA (port25.com) is supposed to be the shit. You'll also need a front-end, and if this customer is offering that large of a client-base to an individual, they probably won't mind ponying up the dough for a custom solution. Failing that, there are several great front-end email scripts that would work - I prefer roundcube with the open source route, but that's largely a personal choice and/or a decision made based on corporate policy and needs.

Again, strongly suggest you take the easier route and save yourself the endless bullshit, headaches and general horse-cockery that comes with large-scale SMTP hosting and broker the deal through a cloud provider that has a referral/partner program. Rake in the commission without the work? Yes plx.

One more idea - I may get some crap for this, but everyone's thinking it - Google App Hosting for Businesses - definitely a sell-out move, but it'd work, it would just be painfully obvious, and i have no idea how much (if any) kind of referral commissions you'd see.

Good luck either way, and gratz on landing such a large client, sounds like things are going well.

Hey Jethroucc, I really appreciate the detailed response. Unfortunately I'm on the verge of declining the project. Looking at all the requirements for a project of this size I get major headaches and realize I'm abit too far out of my depth. The CEO of this particular company has also been in a couple of financial newspapers in my country a few times and seems to have a reputation for being a bit quick on the litigation trigger when things don't go well.

I've also been going through tons of Freelancer proposals and I'm just not that comfortable working with people on the other side of the planet for a project of this size plus I doubt my client would be too impressed with me if I tell them I plan to outsource a large portion of this project. I've also looked at forming partnerships with other web solution providers locally but they seem to want my lead before shaking hands that they won't screw me over when I introduce them to my client.

I think my only plan of action if I hope to actually get something out of this is to go with the referral route you mentioned. I'm all for the Richard Branson 'Screw it just do it' school of thought and that's worked with other large projects I've taken on without necessarily having the required skillset needed to do the job when I initially started on it. However, I think this particular project is a bit too far out of my area of expertise to just 'wing it' and learn as I go. However, I'm gonna keep making phone calls, sending emails to people who I think can help me out and see where that gets me.