Ehlo
Cloud Email Hosting
I have not posted any updates for a while although I continued working on features and one of the updates worth mentioning is that email can now be imported into Iphones and desktop apps ( Windows and Mac )
The following Applications were tested:
✔️ Apple Mail ( Iphone and Mac Os )
✔️ Mozilla Thunderbird ( Windows and Mac Os )
Instructions on how to set it up as well as personalized settings per domain can be found within the account
It's been a busy month since my last post and
today I'm happy to release custom mail search solution.
From a technical perspective, the new search is
a major step forward vs. traditional ElasticSearch because:
✔️it's serverless
✔️index storage resides on S3, just like the mail storage
✔️user data isolation ( thanks to AWS Cognito's IAM superpowers )
✔️can scan through GBs of data in a sec.
Apart from the new search, it's worth mentioning
✔️signature + few templates
✔️mail subfolders
In Progress
✔️Android / iOS apps ( react native )
✔️Import messages from other email servers ( IMAP )
Every new subscription new includes 30 day trial
This should provide enough time to test the platform
( also allows me to update the subscription and include the correct sales tax 💪 )
Few more updates since last posted:
✔️sort mail folders
✔️contacts add/edit/delete and compose autocomplete
✔️group messages in threads
✔️add brand logo ( instead of the default Ehlo logo )
✔️configurable password security
✔️configurable user permissions
✔️website FAQ section
In Progress
✔️mail subfolders
✔️search index
✔️Android / iOS apps ( react native )
As of today, Us East ( N.Virginia ) region is available to use as email hosting location.
This is the second region ( after Frankfurt ) and the first in the US.
More regions will be added when possible, every region implies a base cost and initial setup can take a little bit.
With the few signups I got in the first region ( Frankfurt ) none of them were from US and I guess region is an important parameter.
Marked Done:
✔️ us-east-1 ( N.Virginia region )
✔️ email aliases (eg. deliver contact@ to your.name@ )
In Progress:
✔️ search index ( using Elastic Search as temporary solution )
✔️ Address Book
✔️ spam filter connected to Address Book
✔️ Android / iOS apps ( react native )
Thanks for reading!
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just signed up a few minutes ago looking forward to testing out
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Thanks for signing up!
Please let me know if you need any help configuring your domain for Ehlo mail and creating mailboxes, I'm avilable on Live Chat
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Looks cool. Is Ehlo live now? I actually still need to set up email hosting for Appflowz. Why would I choose Ehlo for email hosting over Google Business or Zoho Mail, etc?
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Hi Mo, fair question
Well Ehlo is very young project and most of the planned features are still on paper!
At this point I'm focusing on getting first users and collecting feedback;
Later on I'm prepairing some features never seen elsewhere
but for now if your business heavily depends on email than I do not recommend going for ehlo-
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Thanks for your honesty. My email needs are actually pretty basic at the moment. But I am curious what was the problem you intended to solve when you started building Ehlo?
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Main paths I'm trying to follow are:
- seamless email encryption between Ehlo users
- in-organisation features like teams and shared email folders
- document handling ( viewing / editing - inline )
Hopefully Ehlo can become a tool and not just an email provider
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Until I get professional help from a UI/UX designer,
you get the ugly website!
✔️ 3 in-house drawings, minimal text
✔️ quick crafted logo
✔️ support script ( drift.com or tawk.to )
✔️ Stripe payment page ( redirect, not collecting card info 👍 )
✔️ Google Analytics ( website only, no tracking in webmail )
Still figuring out sales tax chaos, as a B2C US company need to collect sales tax from US persons based on their zip code and need to register to EU VAT MOSS and collect VAT for EU based citizens all this just to cover the 2 regions served at the moment.
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At first glance: The landing page looks not so good when the browser's window takes half of FullHD screen. Not sure if such layout is common, but it's rare that landings looks bad for me.
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It;s now fixed also for lower resolutions.
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I see. You just scale it down. Looks good.
For mobile it's unreadable, though (I use Firefox dev tools).-
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Seems ok for me in FF and Chrome dev tools, also with the lowest 360x640 resolution, I don't think any lower resolution should matter nowadays, as for the text size indeed, I'll make some adjustmets as it;s difficult to read, Thanks!
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BTW, it's cool you show the map with the hosting. I'd never use such service if it's hosted in US if I live in EU, and vice versa.
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Thanks Dmitry, same issue also when accessing from mobile, does not show well on low res, thanks for pointing it out, I'll have it fixed 🛠️
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Good reading, imho: https://uxengineer.com/good-ux-boring-ui/
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Thanks I'll go over it
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More: too many shadows of blue which don't match each other.
I mean you shouldn't be pro in design, just take a simple guide and follow it. Webmail is all about UX/UI isn't it?-
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Well I hope webmail will be more about features, features that are only on paper now, and catch up with design too, multiple themes, multiple layouts at some point
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fun1
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Congratulations!
Quick thought : What about a preview for each email from inbox ( when you put your mouse over the email ) ? :D
Thank you! :D
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Thanks for signing up,
By preview do you mean message snippets or like a screenshot of the body of the message ?
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Yes, like a "screenshot" of the body of the message shown when you just move your mouse over the email
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I think that pre-creating screenshots serverside for every email as they reach the inbox would add a lot to the storage, also rendering remote images into the screenshot would let the sender know mail was "seen"
rendering screenshots on mouse over instead would be very slow, most likely a bad user experience
I agree this can be useful feature, just need to deep dive for a good technical implementation.
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Agree!
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Appreciate it Adrian
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Thanks for stopping by
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Congrats!
Quick feedback: may be adding a "how it works" or small FAQ would help. There are some important questions I'd like to know as a client before registering, like:
- Can I create catch-all emails?
- Can I create redirects? And if so, how are the billed?
- Can I import/export my emails? And if so, how?
Regards
Antonio-
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Thanks for your feedback Antonio
I am currently taking notes from all sources and will soon display a Q&A section and more info on how it works
Can I create catch-all emails?
It's on the todo list for laterCan I create redirects? And if so, how are the billed?
By redirects I'm assuming you mean email aliases, aliases will be enabled in the following week as they are in development right now.
Can I import/export my emails? And if so, how?
Import is not available yet although there is the coding that is still premature and was never tested with large mailboxes.
Export is not available as there is no IMAP at all and emails can only be exported one by one as eml from the webmail interface.
During the last 2 years, I also took 12 months of contractor work building 2 marketing platforms, one for linkedin outreach and another one for email marketing, despite the fact that I totaly dislike spam, notifications, red notification badges or any modern way companies bump into you when they want to sell you something 😖 It helped me strengthen my email related skills and saves for cofee ☕
MVP pre-pre-pre-alpha:
✔️ modern webmail
✔️ incoming mail server
✔️ outgoing mail server ( trough webmail only )
✔️ dkim signing, rotate keys, SPF
✔️ auto SSL for mail.yourdomain.com ( thanks Let's Encrypt )
✔️ basic spam filter doing SPF, DKIM and multi RBL check
✔️ eu-central-1 ( Frankfurt ) region as the first available region
✔️ domain verification and one time setup of domain CNAMEs
In progress
✔️ us-east-1 ( N.Virginia region )
✔️ search index ( using Elastic Search as temporary solution )
✔️ email aliases
✔️ addressbook
Later:
🚫 Android and iOS Apps ( probably using React Native )
🚫 custom built reverted index search server
🚫 advanced spam filter
🚫 email filters
🚫 antivirus scan ( with opt out ) - might use virustotal.com
🚫 migration between regions
🚫 transfer domains between accounts
🚫 catchall
🚫 smtp access
🚫 IMAP
🚫 mini web drive
🚫 apps to preview common file types
While scrolling trough neverending RFC docs to code for a SMTP server, intriguing word pops out, EHLO 😮
The word Ehlo comes from "Extended HELO" as found in Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.
Quick whois search: ehlo.io available, quick ebanking check: there are funds, click click boom
Years ago I developed a webmail (script) that connected to IMAP and imported all emails into a database.
This turned out to be a nightmare offering support for multiple versions and upgrades 🥴.
The next logical step was to turn it into a SaaS product, opt for AWS as cloud provider and take advantage of the cloud pros:
✔️ inexpensive storage
✔️ high ( 99.99% for S3 Standard ) availability 💪
✔️ constant performance
✔️ pay per use and guaranteed resources of serverless computing
✔️ predictable cost per user
✔️ multi-region, let users choose their closest location 🗺️
✔️ tenant isolation using fine granted roles 🛡️
As a managed solution I could offer:
✔️ transparent updates 🍪
✔️ one time setup of domain's dns configurations,
almost plug and play 😬
✔️ unified spam filter for incoming mail
✔️ best practices for outgoing emails, managed spf and dkim
✔️ managed security, Oauth login, two factor authentication
✔️ extend functionality with optional plugins
( eg. edit PDFs inside the platform before attaching )
The 20 of March 2019, my first commit to this new project, thanks Github for keeping track
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