Controlling Mailbox Sizes and Growth - Some Getting Large

[Vibe]

Hi everyone,

Like most others in the forum we offer standard POP and IMAP email services. In the past POP was usually the way our clients would connect, however, things are changing.

One trend we are starting to notice is that many of our business users are switching to IMAP due the convenience of connecting with multiple devices (Outlook/Entourage/Thunderbird + Webmail + iPhone, iPad, mobile phones etc.) - Kind of like a "poor-man's" Exchange platform, Dovecot works very well in this fashion. However, user mailboxes are starting to grow in size - which can eventually lead to overall slowdowns (e.g. Squirrelmail) and backups. Some of our clients have 2-3GB mailboxes - and they continue to grow.

While we would prefer to NOT place limitations on mailbox sizes, I can see where there may be a definite benefit to do so. People are rather accustomed to the storage available with Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail - and expect the same to a degree from their web host. Today the majority of our user's disk storage is taken up by email - not website files or databases.

This being the case - we are contemplating placing a hard limit on the total size for individual mail boxes. While we can provide say 5-10GB of total storage for a hosting account, we can see where quite easily this can be filled with 9.9GB of email and 10MB for website files.

How are you handling email capacity?

Does anyone place hard limits on mailbox sizes?

If so, what is your approach?

(e.g. Dovecot quota plugin + Exim configurations found in the forum)

By providing an "all inclusive" chunk of storage users - to utilize as they see fit, we are quickly seeing email storage as being a potential performance/backup issue.

Does anyone experience similar issues?

Thanks for any comments you provide!

 

[NoBaloney2]

How are you handling email capacity?

What we'd like to do and what we can do on a shared hosting server are two very different things. The reason is that in a shared hosting environment the mailboxes are owned by the user, so mailboxes and site space both come out of the same pool. And then there's the issue of what the competition is doing. It's hard to offer 10 mailboxes at say 2 GB each when the competition is offering unlimited space. We're looking into offering a separate premium email product, what you might call a poor man's Exchange platform. If we do, it will be on a separate platform.

Does anyone place hard limits on mailbox sizes?

We don't. We offer a fixed amount of space and let our users use it anyway they wish.

If so, what is your approach?

(e.g. Dovecot quota plugin + Exim configurations found in the forum)

DirectAdmin let's you set a per mailbox quota.

By providing an "all inclusive" chunk of storage users - to utilize as they see fit, we are quickly seeing email storage as being a potential performance/backup issue.

We've never guaranteed email backup but I understand what you mean. To make sure you have enough space to back your users, you need twice as much free space in /home as the total space used in /home by your largest user. If you offer 50 GB of space to a user you either need to watch your users carefully, or leave 100 GB of free space. Even on today's drives, that's a lot of space.

Ideally I'd like to see home contain only the hosting stuff, so it would fall under the quota set for the site, and mailboxes on a separate partition. Two good reasons: one would be that you could use a file system which would be more efficient at storing many extremely small files, and two would be that you could get away without a quota (or with a separate quota) per mailbox or per user. I don't think that's easily implemented in DirectAdmin.

Jeff

 

[Vibe]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks so much for your insightful comments - they're always appreciated for sure.

The more I think about it I tend to agree with you regarding not setting limits - this may potentially sour a client's opinion of the service overall. It's a great selling point to give users the opportunity to use their storage allotment as they please - Most of our clients have expressed their satisfaction with the concept.

Whenever I see the "unlimited" offerings I cringe - I have had many conversations with potential clients explaining the realities of these claims, yet unfortunately some do not see the "light." However, for what it's worth, from a price point it is sure hard to beat.

I do like your idea regarding either a separate partition for hosting stuff vs. email - I definitely see the merit with your idea.

We too have been exploring an E-mail only service - and have investigated many of the white branded Exchange solutions. We are first and foremost an IT shop, and are expanding our hosting services (much smaller than the pros in this forum). With this in mind most of our users are very accustomed to (and dependent on) the traditional Exchange/Outlook platform. We have looked at Zimbra as a possibility - but the licensing is pretty hefty for all the features that would be needed for our client base. Another idea we may investigate would be an Exchange platform build on Amazon EC2 instances. This would be interesting for sure.

I also agree regarding backups - we don't offer any guarantee for data security/integrity. However, I have seen larger (e.g. the "unlimited" providers) not offering automatic backup when storage reaches a certain size. I believe some limit this because of the issues you mention.

Thanks again for your sharing your ideas - and good luck with your premium email service!

 

[NoBaloney2]

Thanks again for your sharing your ideas - and good luck with your premium email service!

And thanks for your thoughtful reply. Actually we're considering building our own platform based on a php front end, a standard (though not necessarily free) webmail package (perhaps horde, because of the other available features), and using exim, because I like it and know it. If you'd like to discuss this further please feel free to call or write me; my contact information is below in my siglines.

Jeff

 

[gwennie]

can't delete messages from inbox coz they are not showing

Dear All,

I am having problems with the email account, it is sending a full inbox msg to my customers and i would like to delete some messages but it does not show my messages in inbox. What can I do?

 

[nobaloney]

I'm not sure where you're looking, or to what message you're referring, as you didn't tell us, so the only point I can make is that email can be stored in lots of other places besides the inbox and DirectAdmin will still still find them and count them against the user's account limit. Give more details and we can probably help you further.

Jeff