The @Mail Forum is now available at http://forum.atmail.com/
The purpose of the forum is to allow @Mail users to communicate with one another for help on @Mail-related topics such as customization tips, non-standard installations, troubleshooting suspected bugs, and offering suggestions and feedback to our team.
For support requests, we still encourage our clients to email us at support@calacode.com or use the online support form. This is the correct method for receiving support as a registered client.
On the 22nd May, I presented for the Australian government IT-cluster in Sydney, aimed at young entrepreneurs and startup companies on how to commercialize their business to begin exporting.
The presentation is a quick summary on how to go from “Garage to Global” with your software product or idea. I have shared my ideas gained through experience, common pit-falls you can avoid and advice on how to begin exporting. I hope this can motivate and inspire others entrepreneurs to run with their idea, and remember to aim big and keep your vision alive
You can download the original slides in PDF format or read the summary in HTML below
Introduction
- Who is Calacode
- Based in Western Sydney and North-west USA
- Team of eight people
- Company founded in 2000
- What we do
- Develop Messaging solutions - @Mail
- Focus on Linux, Webmail, Email-server solutions and adopt open-source
Sales & Customers
- Company exports 97% of business overseas
- USA main market, followed by Europe
- Clients include:
- US military
- Iraqi Ministry of Foreign affairs
- Department of Energy
- IInet - Many ISP’s and hosting providers
- Universities and K12 around the world
- Approx 3,000 clients worldwide
- Millions of end user accounts using @Mail
Company Dynamic
- Leverage been small
- Fast team, can make decisions quickly
- Focus, focus, focus
- Do not be tempted to offer many products, focus on one and do it well.
- Less is more
- Focus on usability, let the product speak for itself.
- Avoid bloat - Too many features are bad
- Simple is beautiful - Take notice of Apple
Exporting
- Use Google Adwords
- Provide localized translations
- Offer discounts for customers to translate
- Setup a USA presence
- Americans love speaking to Americans
- EMDG/Austrade or local Government can assist with grants
- Hire as consultants - No company required
- Setup a company wide VOIP system
- US number / Toll-tree
- Make it easy to be contacted
- Remote workers are OK
- Keep focused and disciplined
- Manage expectations and maintain integrity
Exporting II
- Make it easy for people to pay
- Credit-cards, Purchase Orders, Bank-transfers
- Show product pricing upfront
- Do not hide costs or request pricing
- Resellers
- Can help expand but need support
- Attract passionate resellers, feed with resources
- Sell!
- Pay attention to marketing and let the product speak for itself
- Don’t get stuck in a product development cycle without a sales push - You can always make another version later
Tips from Experience
- Keep focused on the bigger picture
- Prune customers that are ‘leeches’
- Watch for the early signs - Do not get bogged down
- Charge more
- For a smaller company, aim for less customers that pay more
- People put more value in expensive items
- Generally, the customers who pay more have a better knowledge of product and a team behind them for support
- Each customer that purchases has a vested interest in your product to succeed - Leverage on this
Keeping ahead
- Innovate and research - R&D Grants available via government
- Lead, do not follow
- Don’t be too concerned what everyone else is doing
- Focus on your product and company mantra
- Be quick
- Small company, launch quickly, refine, launch again
- Don’t be a perfectionist
- Quick to market, then refine with feedback
- Don’t please everyone
- Make your product for a particular market
- It’s OK to say “no”
Conclusion
- Be happy
- Enjoy what you do, and the results of your work
- Keep the vision alive
- Be Passionate
- Customers will be attracted
- Employees will be enrolled
- Government can assist
- Be pro-active with grants
- Hire a consultant to help
- AIM BIG!
The development team have released a Hotfix for the PHP version of the software, now version 5.04. This is in line for keeping the PHP version of @Mail as up-to-date as possible.
Changes include more strict sanity checking from user input, more agressive URI filtering for email-messages that contains XSS attempts, and additional checks for groupware permissions. It is recommended all previous users of @Mail 5.X upgrade.
Details to install are available at: http://kb.atmail.com/view_article.php?num=1811
For customers still using the older @Mail 4.X release in Perl, we have provided the same Hotfix for the perl codebase. Versions 4.61, 4.6 and 4.51 are available, older versions will be put online soon.
We highly recommend existing @Mail 4.X customers install the Hotfix to be kept in sync.
Find details at: http://kb.atmail.com/view_article.php?num=1816
Our team are pro-active on updating @Mail, if any other issues arise we will release patches accordingly.
The latest revision of @Mail 5 in PHP is now available. The latest version 5.03 includes optimizations to the IMAP functions of @Mail for performance, various user-interface enhancements, improved Spamassassin performance, improved data migration scripts and various bug-fixes and suggestions included from customers.
Test drive the latest release via the online demo at: http://demo.atmail.com/
The latest demo version is available to download for Linux platforms, and existing customers can obtain the new patch via the client login page. See the online knowledge base article for how to upgrade an existing system.
We appreciate all the feedback from clients with the new @Mail release in PHP, and endeavor to create @Mail as one of the best commercial Webmail clients on the market, with a solid mail-server backend.
The product roadmap for @Mail in the next three months includes:
- Improving the current release with client feedback and suggestions
- Creating a new unified “Advanced” interface of @Mail for IE/Firefox based on a new framework, CSS rewrite, and using an Ajax frontend
- Adding support for the Websync utility to run under the latest Outlook 2007
- Porting the Windows version of @Mail to the 5.X branch in PHP
- Adding a new cache function for IMAP/POP3 accounts when viewing messages in a folder
- Webmail interface for delegating public folders
The longer term development plan for @Mail in 2007 include:
- Improved Groupware functionality
- Support for SyncML and iCal support, allowing the Calendar & Addressbook to be shared with other applications
- Improved SaaS features for ISP’s to resell to end customers
- New multi-server administration via the @Mail Webadmin for statistics and maintenance
- Automatic patch utility via the Webadmin to simplify upgrades
- Improved data migration scripts for Exchange and other mail-servers
- Building on the API of @Mail for developers to interface with the software
- Adding support for @Mail plugins, allowing developers to extend the software with new features using a modular API
- Base the Webmail interface on an improved theme layout, allowing easier rebranding, redesign and provide theme downloads to customize @Mail
Keep tuned on the @Mail blog as we post screenshots of the new features in development for @Mail. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the latest 5.03 release!
Forum Launch
