A warning about MyRepublic to anyone wanting to host a mail server

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › A warning about MyRepublic to anyone wanting to host a mail server

iwanttobeamole

29 posts

Geek

#192366 8-Mar-2016 15:28

I've been chasing this issue down for a while, but have not had a definitive answer from My Republic until today.

The answer is this.

No matter if you have a residential or business plan, MyRepublic will charge you an additional $20 per month to set up a PTR/Pointer/Reverse DNS record.

There is no plan that includes this, and they don't seem willing to negotiate the price.

I've requested that the person responsible for this decision call me to please explain, but I haven't heard anything yet.

Anyway, just though I'd mention this here as adding $20 a month will affect your decision to go with MR if you require a PTR.

1 | 2

5810 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#1508230 8-Mar-2016 15:48

Wow, that seems like a very disproportionate price. I could understand a one-off.

rphenix

985 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1508258 8-Mar-2016 16:01

Insane.

Lias

5589 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1508260 8-Mar-2016 16:02

A price that ridiculous can only be a "feck off we don't want to do this" type charge.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

trig42

5810 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#1508261 8-Mar-2016 16:03

Lias:

A price that ridiculous can only be a "feck off we don't want to do this" type charge.

Or, a 'We have no idea what that actually entails, so here is the price' charge.

ajobbins

5052 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1508289 8-Mar-2016 16:49

No idea why you'd want to run your own mail server these days. But a US$5 a month Digital Ocean VPS would be a better option than NZ$20 to an ISP

Twitter: ajobbins

kelots

48 posts

Geek

Trusted

Sky Broadband

#1508347 8-Mar-2016 18:05

Hi guys this is simply the way we've structured these addons

Most competitors charge for the static monthly and give the dns lookup free, where as we deliver the low one off price on static ip to consumers, bundle static on our business plans and charge the monthly on the reverse dns

The model has been added to the queue to review based on this feedback but given the low demand, and the model currently being well received I'll not commit to any time frames

HTH
Evan

Evan

Product Owner | Sky Broadband

ArcticSilver

729 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1508393 8-Mar-2016 19:13

kelots: Hi guys this is simply the way we've structured these addons

Most competitors charge for the static monthly and give the dns lookup free, where as we deliver the low one off price on static ip to consumers, bundle static on our business plans and charge the monthly on the reverse dns

The model has been added to the queue to review based on this feedback but given the low demand, and the model currently being well received I'll not commit to any time frames

HTH
Evan

From another prospective, you are charging more in 2 months of reverse DNS hosting then you are charged in NZ for a NZ domain name registration with DNS hosting in a year. This makes no sense.

You have effectively just put your prices up by $20/month for all businesses with a mail server. As this is considered best practice and IT people usually expect this for free, for a lot of people you will leave a sour taste in their mouth.

Not to mention those who will now feel trapped in a contract.

Intentional or not, it does feel very underhanded.

AliExpress

Shop now on AliExpress (affiliate link).

kelots

48 posts

Geek

Trusted

Sky Broadband

#1508407 8-Mar-2016 19:31

Interesting point, will feed that back through to the team

As a total package I feel we're still very competitive, but agree this add on could be communicated better at point of sale

I've noticed that the queries I've had on this since I came on board at Mr come via customers on our gamer/pure products - not businesses who generally would engage with our sales/presales team

Tricky to communicate to consumers without driving confusion

Will take the feedback on board though!

Evan

Product Owner | Sky Broadband

deadlyllama

1262 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1508417 8-Mar-2016 20:04

Bit of a bait and switch -- free or one-off static IP, then twice everyone else's static IP charge ($10/mo) for a PTR record? Yes, it'll be geeks running servers at home, but they're the sort of people who will get pissed off and switch and/or tell their mates to avoid MyRepublic.

(EDIT: FWIW, I'm on Gamer, with a static IP)

kelots

48 posts

Geek

Trusted

Sky Broadband

#1508429 8-Mar-2016 20:17

Gotcha, I believe it's current iteration was intended for Business use rather than the hobbyist but I can see where you're coming from.

This model has been in place since launch (or shortly after when we launched business) and this is the first time I've had this feedback - given the ratio of people after static ip vs reverse dns it's hardly surprising

From a residential perspective it's in the queue to review based on the points in this thread - but to manage expectations I've got a few things to clear out before I can review where/how it fits

Evan

Product Owner | Sky Broadband

iwanttobeamole

29 posts

Geek

#1508489 8-Mar-2016 21:04

kelots: Gotcha, I believe it's current iteration was intended for Business use rather than the hobbyist but I can see where you're coming from.

This model has been in place since launch (or shortly after when we launched business) and this is the first time I've had this feedback - given the ratio of people after static ip vs reverse dns it's hardly surprising

From a residential perspective it's in the queue to review based on the points in this thread - but to manage expectations I've got a few things to clear out before I can review where/how it fits

Thanks for the insight Kelots.

I have a couple of questions though.

Are you able to direct me to the page on the My Republic site that details the charges for having a PTR setting configured?

I'm wondering also, what ongoing input is required from My Republic once a PTR or in fact, even a static IP address has been configured? I understood these to be a setting, rather than a service, but I've never worked in the ISP industry so am no authority on the matter. Are you able to explain what's involved?

Cheers,

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79265 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#1508492 8-Mar-2016 21:07

ajobbins:

No idea why you'd want to run your own mail server these days. But a US$5 a month Digital Ocean VPS would be a better option than NZ$20 to an ISP

I used to run an Exchange Server 2003 at home. Then Microsoft BPOS came along (and its successor Microsoft Office 365) and I never looked at running my own mail server again. Switched years ago.

OP must have a very good reason to want to run infrastructure services at home, surely...

iwanttobeamole

29 posts

Geek

#1508494 8-Mar-2016 21:12

freitasm:

ajobbins:

No idea why you'd want to run your own mail server these days. But a US$5 a month Digital Ocean VPS would be a better option than NZ$20 to an ISP

I used to run an Exchange Server 2003 at home. Then Microsoft BPOS came along (and its successor Microsoft Office 365) and I never looked at running my own mail server again. Switched years ago.

OP must have a very good reason to want to run infrastructure services at home, surely...

I run a small IT support business. Part of that is running a mail scanning server. Incoming mail is no problems but if a client's IP address changes unexpectedly, or if they end up on an email blacklist, I need to send mail through my server/connection.

As I said at the beginning though, this affects their home and business plans, at least at the lower end of the scale, and there's plenty of small to medium business still running exchange/mail servers.

ArcticSilver

729 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1508495 8-Mar-2016 21:12

freitasm:

ajobbins:

No idea why you'd want to run your own mail server these days. But a US$5 a month Digital Ocean VPS would be a better option than NZ$20 to an ISP

I used to run an Exchange Server 2003 at home. Then Microsoft BPOS came along (and its successor Microsoft Office 365) and I never looked at running my own mail server again. Switched years ago.

OP must have a very good reason to want to run infrastructure services at home, surely...

There are plenty of reasons to run your own mail server over a Microsoft one. The key point being control.

That being said, I see this as more of an issue for businesses coming across to My Republic, I would struggle to recommend them based on the surcharge.

kelots

48 posts

Geek

Trusted

Sky Broadband

#1508501 8-Mar-2016 21:30

Don't think it's up on the website currently as we're having issues with our business addons page, currently things like this, CIR and static IPs over blocks of 16 are only available via our CS team/pre sales consultants

For the rest, there is a cost associated to the ISP due to limited number of IPv4 addresses in the world, so the ISPs share these amongst users through varying techniques. Allocating a static ip to a user reduces the number remaining for the ISP to rotate - bit of a weird system but a problem driven by the industry not moving to ipv6 (this is my simplified understanding and I'm happy to be corrected/expanded on)

The reverse dns lookup I'll need to get more information on, as I mentioned I've not really had much focus on it compared to the rest of our product set until today

Evan

Product Owner | Sky Broadband

1 | 2