Is this even possible?

jesusphreak

I was thinking about the possibility of making an e-mail service that was a lot like Gmail or Hotmail or such.

It would be your usual e-mail service, except you'd get a nice AJAXy interface like Google and you'd get a decent amount of storage.

The only difference is, instead of using the website name of the service, (like hotmail.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc), anyone who owned a website could allow others to use their domains....so for example, mark could submit his domain and then those who got an invite could use a getvanilla.com address, or I could submit my website, and those who got an invite could use a richeswillrust.com address.

Is this even possible? I'm trying to figure out why it hasn't already been done...it seems to be a pretty decent idea.

Bergamot

An even better idea would be a nice web-based imap or pop3 client, that would use the email server you already have.

jesusphreak

Actually, that would be an option, but I think it would also be smart to have it hosted so that those without a server could use it. You know, you could just register a domain and use it without worrying about getting a server.

But I was mainly wondering if it is even possible to do this. I mean, if I have my own domain hosted on another server, can I actually be sending and receiving e-mail through that domain on another totally seperate server?

gabe

gmail already offers 2.6+ gigs of storage and you can use your own domain with it. and as far as a good interface for an imap server, try http://www.roundcube.net/

jesusphreak

Wow, you can use your own domain with g-mail? I had no idea. How?

Minisweeper

I must admit i never knew that. I was gonna say that it wouldnt be easy since your domain has mx records to point to a particular server - in which case it wouldnt be possible for someone to submit their domain for general use *and* use it for their own email on their own server at the same time. If *they* were also gonna use your service then yeah that'd work just as easily as any other online email service.

timberford

go into your account settings and add another email address. make sure your language settings are set to 'english - us' though!

Minisweeper

I just installed that redcube thing on my server and i must say its rather tasty. I cant wait for some further development (and hopefully some personalised css coming my way)

Felipe

I wouldn't allow anybody except friends or relatives (or employees, students, etc) to use a domain name I "own" for legal problems and the very bad reputation that could be associated to my site if they began to go wild (spam, rude speaking and so on)