Reselling with Premium Plus
Branded access
By default, "mail.postale.io" is used as DNS MX record and SMTP/POP/IMAP hostname in mail client settings. Similarly, the webmail is accessed from https://postale.io/webmail. Let's rebrand these!
Branding applies per domain, so that different customers can have different brandings if desired. Or you could have all customers access the service from your own brand, it's up to you.
Add a CNAME record to the domain DNS as instructed here. Monitor DNS propagation from the admin panel > thedomain.com > Edit branding > Server names.
And "voilà!", your customers can now:
- Use mail.thedomain.com as SMTP/POP/IMAP hostname in email client settings.
- Access the webmail from https://mail.thedomain.com.
- Use mail.thedomain.com as MX record and in autoconfiguration records.
Neat, right? Oh, and everything still works over SSL/TLS of course. We handle all the heavy lifting of managing certificates for you. 👌
Branded appearance
A branded access is pointless if once accessed the service's appearance doesn't reflect the brand. Let's address that. It's even easier!
Simply go to the admin panel > thedomain.com > Edit branding > Appearance. There you'll see options for changing the logos, brand name, support URL and so on, that are used in both the webmail and the admin panel.
Save your changes, and the new look applies instantly for people using the branded access of that domain.
Flexible storage allocation
This is another big one. Being a reseller or a company, you'll want the freedom to allocate different storage sizes to different mailboxes, depending on your pricing and your users' needs.
Premium Plus plans have that ability. Instead of a fixed per mailbox storage, these plans offer a total storage amount, which you can distribute at will between mailboxes, up to a limit of 20 GB per mailbox.
You can do that when you create a new mailbox or on existing mailboxes, it's just a click in both cases. The change is instantaneous and doesn't impact anything else.
Limit mailbox storage per domain
With Premium Plus, you benefit from the flexible storage feature, allowing admins to allocate from 1 to 20 GB to each mailbox independently.
If you also provided a domain admin access to your customer, you may want to set a reduced limit on how many GB they can allocate to their mailboxes.
Go to your customer's domain settings on the admin panel. You'll find an option to set the maximum storage that mailboxes of the domain can have. That option is accessible only to full admins (you), not to domain admins.
Limit total storage per domain
Similar to the mailbox storage limit described previously, Premium Plus plans include the ability to limit the total storage a domain can allocate across all of its mailboxes.
This is most often used to prevent domain admin from allocating more GB overall than a desired value.
You'll find the option in your customer's domain settings on the admin panel, and it is again accessible only to full admins (you). Domain admins will only see how much total storage they're allowed on their domain, if you have set a limit.
Email and authentication logs
As a reseller or a company, you need a way to track what's going on, especially when a question or issue from a customer arises. We relate to that, and that's why we provide you with:
- Detailed logs on every email transactions.
- Authentication logs for all parts of the service (admin panel, SMTP, POP, IMAP).
As always, we made logs dead simple to use too. We built fast and intuitive viewers, available from the admin panel, where logs are classified by date and information is presented clearly.
For each date, quickly see how many transactions occured, from what sender to what recipient (email and IP addresses), how the transaction resulted, why it resulted the way it did (was is rejected as spam, classified as junk, was the recipient found, ...).
You can even check out the full SMTP protocol log of the transaction if needed, shown in a unusually clear way. And you can search in logs too! By email address, IP address, message ID, ...
Trying it for yourself is better than a long explanation. You can do that for free via the demo account.
Scale up with the API
The API allows you to automate tasks and manage stuff programmatically. Here are some common use cases:
- You need to create hundreds of addresses.
- You need to monitor how many mailboxes or aliases a domain has in order to adjust billing.
- You need to set the same Sieve email filter on the thousands of mailboxes you manage.
- You need to provide an email service with a self registration system similarly to what we do.
Check out the interactive documentation. As usual, we made the feature as easy to use as possible.
Providing support to your users
As a reseller, you'll want to provide some level of support to your users. Thanks to the simple documentation and detailed logs we provide, you should be able to easily cover 90% of customers requests all by yourself.
But what happens when you can't find the answer? Well, we're here to help, always. Just drop us an email, as for any other support request. You're never left alone. 🙂
As part of the white labeling feature you can also change (or hide) the support URL shown on the webmail and admin panel, so that your customers get directed to your own support page when they ask for help.
Become a reseller
Common to all plans
Empower customers with domain admins
Sometimes customers want to be able to manage their domain email addresses by themselves. Maybe they're a large company or one with a high turnover, and they want to create and delete addresses without having to go through you every time.
This is possible with the domain admin role, which you can assign to any mailbox. While full admins (you) have access to everything (postale.io account, plan, all domains and addresses, ...), domain admins can only access their domain and email addresses of their domain.
Thus, whenever a customer wants to create/edit/delete one of their domain addresses, they can simply log in to the admin panel with their domain admin address and do it themseleves. It'll be as easy for them as it is for you, and not many of your competitors will offer this convenience!
Ideally you'll have branded the admin panel in that case, so that your customer accesses it from mail.yourorhisdomain.com/admin, and sees your/his brand there, instead of postale.io's brand.
Limit mailboxes and aliases per domain
If you've given a domain admin access to your customer, they can create more mailboxes and aliases for their domain all by themselves. What if you want to limit the number of addresses they can create?
Easy! Go to your customer's domain page on the admin panel and edit the domain settings.
There you'll have the option to set a limit on the number of mailboxes and aliases the domain can have. Of course only full admins (you) can change that limit, domain admins can't.
Billing your customers
One of the things we don't provide is an integrated billing system. This is on purpose, as resellers usually prefer the freedom of choosing their own pricing models and billing methods.
Not to mention the crucial need for security and all the guarantees that come with a reputable billing service. We are not such a service and have no desire to become one (we ourselves rely on Stripe for your payments).
If you're looking for out of the box solutions on that front, two popular services are Stripe Billing and PayPal Subscriptions. Both services make it easy to create recurring plans with ready to use subscription pages and automated renewal charges.