The Webmail Blog

Moving this blog to a new home

We've decided that we'd rather be using a URL that is more specific to the company. So I backed up bunch of posts and comments and put them in place at the new home for this blog:
http://webmail.typepad.com

For those of you who prefer to use an RSS aggregator, if you already had the Feedburner link, I've made the update for you and you shouldn't have to change anything to keep getting new posts. If you weren't using the Feedburner link: please switch over. Here is the Feedburner page: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWebmailBlog.

Thanks and sorry for putting you through this little change!

-Kirk

Internet Explorer on the Apple Mac

It has been almost 2 years since Microsoft stopped development of their Mac version of Internet Explorer (check out this news story). Because Microsoft isn't adding modern browser features to the Mac we have decided that we will not be able to officially support IE on the Mac platform in our future releases of Webmail.

For Windows users, that might sound worse than it really is: Safari, the Apple-made browser, is preferred by the vast majority of Mac users. Firefox is also supported on the Mac and will be supported by future versions of Webmail.

Progress
If you're a Webmail.us customer and have been with us very long you know that we like to innovate and improve our products. Some of our next round of product innovations are based on a web programming approach called AJAX. Lack of AJAX support in IE 5.2 on the Mac is one big reason why we won't be able to support Mac IE in the future.

AJAX is the technology behind really great sites like Google Maps. I don't mean great as in "gee whiz, the latest technology", I mean it as in "gee whiz, this makes the web a lot more usable!" It is absolutely the right next step for improving the interface in our existing webmail and adding the features that our customers ask for.

-Kirk

Email Infrastructure Upgrades

As I mentioned in an earlier post it’s been busy around here at Webmail.us. We’re firing on all cylinders -- hiring, growing the business, and putting a ton of resources into product R&D. But the biggest strategic initiative so far this year is one we haven’t talked much about: infrastructure improvements.

Our CTO-led engineering team has been working feverishly with our infrastructure partner, Rackspace, to deploy our next generation infrastructure platform. We’re taking our current platform and adding dozens of servers in a new configuration to improve the performance, reliability, and scalability of our system. According to Pat, our CEO, this is the biggest financial commitment we’ve ever made (he promises to blog in more detail about this soon).

Timing

The only downside to our infrastructure project has been that our timing turned out to be a couple of weeks off. The result has been less than optimal email system performance for some customers, resulting in email delivery delays during peak hours of the business day (some customers have not been affected by this but for those that have, we want you to know what we are doing behind the scenes). We’re not just working on eliminating issues with short-term fixes; we’re thinking miles down the road as we plan for the future growth of our company and achieving the highest level of email performance possible.

The Work Begins

We started bringing new servers online last week that were targeted at eliminating the bottlenecks you might have experienced at peak hours during the past week. The impact was immediate, but we still have a lot more to do. The entire infrastructure upgrade will be complete later this month and we’re committed to keeping the system’s performance as robust as possible in the meantime.

If you have experienced any type of email delays, I want to apologize on behalf of our company. Our entire senior management team and engineering staff is working together to smooth the transition to the new and improved system. If you have technical questions about the issues or our new infrastructure, drop me an email and I’ll fill you in.

-Kirk

Local Chamber Business Expo

Some people think that there is a conflict between being a global endeavor and a good local corporate citizen.  But we love being in a beautiful place near Virginia Tech.  I've read about more and more high-tech companies moving to places with better quality of living, shorter commutes, and a healthier lifestyle; as long as they can stay well-connected.

We try to support our local business friends when we can.  Today we're participating in a Business and Home Expo put on by The Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.  If you happen to be in our neck of the woods, check out the Expo at The Event Centre, 1655 Roanoke Street (between exits 118A and 118B on I-81), Christiansburg, Virginia.  It runs from noon until 7:30pm and should be a lot of fun with a lot of interesting people and displays.

-Kirk

Good News: We've Got Additional Funding

The story is over on our CEO's blog: Small Town, Big Ideas : Capital Raising: The Story Behind the Story.

We were in a local paper as well: The Roanoke Times.

And just to reiterate an important fact from both links: we have been cash flow positive for some time now and growing like mad especially for the last 18 months or so.  Unlike the dot-com-bubble days, investors are looking for actual returns on investment!

-Kirk

Welcome to The Webmail Blog!

Welcome everyone, to The Webmail Blog. Webmail.us has officially entered the blogosphere!

It’s my third week at Webmail.us as I open this blog. I have been challenged to create something both personal and professional that will give readers an open door into our offices and cubicles and to share some of our excitement and passion.

Being at a place with the right product at the right time feels fantastic! Better email - with the best webmail I've seen. Demand for spam-free and virus-free email that can be accessed anywhere is growing sharply as businesses try to be more productive in our information-driven economy.

My title is director of services and support: a position fraught with potential highs and lows. It is my belief that I was hired because of some of the work I did at Charter Communications to bring about unsolicited, proactive customer service to my part of the organization.

Webmail.us has been a place where the fertile foundation of customer service has allowed the company to grow into a vibrant and cohesive organization. Shared goals on excellent, superior, and flawless service do a lot to unify a group. I spent my first week learning the organization and my second week trying to figure out how to make happy customers even happier. Proactive support seems to be my window of opportunity and an opportunity for Webmail.us to have even more of the happiest customers on the Internet.

So this blog is a very small part of this effort to reach out, to build and connect in new ways. As an organization we believe in taking exceptional care of our customers and in making the best out of our opportunities to serve them. RSS and blogging are natural choices.

I'll be writing quite a bit about our company, especially with regards to product and service updates as well as industry news relating to email, spam, phishing, viruses, and anything else that happens to catch my eye.

Our CEO, Pat Matthews, has his own blog about his vision of the email hosting industry and leadership in general. If you’re curious, check it out.

We're on a fun ride in today’s business world and it’s only going to get more interesting with each passing day.

Again, welcome to The Webmail Blog

Kirk Averett
Webmail.us, Inc.
Director of Services and Support