How Do cPanel Hosts Prevent Email Churn to Office 365 (and Google Workspace)?
cPanel’s email based on IMAP works well for small businesses, typically with 1 to 5 people. However, as these businesses grow or become more tech-savvy, they require better cloud software that enables easier collaboration.
The primary churn we experience is towards Office 365. Microsoft appears to have a monopoly on calendar and contact sharing, and many users are deeply attached to Outlook. It seems Microsoft anticipated this shift years ago and strategically discontinued making ActiveSync widely available. Like true monopolists, they also removed the ability to easily access iCal with Outlook, ensuring that calendar and contact sharing only auto-configures if you’re using their backend.
This is what we frequently hear from our clients:
“We love your service, and your pricing is excellent for email, but we need calendar and contact sharing.”
So we’re canceling.
Even cPanel appears to be a victim of the Z-Push mess, along with changes to how their calendar “server” functions—or fails to function—on newer cPanel versions. Any administrator can attest that manually setting up individual iCal feeds on iPhones, Androids, Macs, and PCs is a nightmare if the client is using more than one device. Finding a third-party plugin for phones and Outlook that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and works intuitively is nearly impossible. Auto-configuration simply doesn’t exist unless you find a way to leverage the mostly-abandoned ActiveSync protocol.
For a few years, we worked around this problem by upselling clients to Kopano. Unfortunately, the team at Kopano went rogue on the open-source version of their software, leading to significant dissatisfaction and forced migrations to retain customers.
A colleague suggested Grommunio—does anyone have experience with it?
Are there any other viable solutions? What about Open-Xchange? Is it any good? Zimbra, perhaps?
The Ideal Product:
✅ Contact and calendar sharing with auto-configuration
✅ A WHMCS plugin would be a big plus
-
> Auto-configuration simply doesn’t exist unless you find a way to leverage the mostly-abandoned ActiveSync protocol.
cPanel does support the AutoConfig/Autodiscover options https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/360052706413-How-to-enable-autodiscover-and-autoconfig-for-your-cPanel-server : is it turned on on your server?
0 -
> is it turned on on your server?
> The AutoConfigure (AutoConfig) and Autodiscover services quickly and easily configure a user’s mail client to receive their cPanel email.
Yes, it's on and email configures automatically. But that doesn't help people who want to share calendars and contacts.
The point of this forum post is to understand how cPanel clients do calendar and contact sharing and how to avoid churn.
0 -
Sorry, I must be misunderstanding something. When I log into cPanel itself, under the "Email" tab, I can see "Calendars and Contacts Configuration" showing the CalDev and CardDev URLs for the main account (with a pointer to https://docs.cpanel.net/knowledge-base/webmail/how-to-set-up-calendars-and-contacts/ ) and when I log into Webmail for an individual user I can see similar settings. On the Webmail page for an individual user, I also see a "Set up email on your device...Select user... Select the configurations that you would like to setup [Email] [Calendar] [Contacts]".
Within RoundCube (webmail), I can select the Calendar there, create an invite and send it to my personal Gmail account where I can then accept/decline the invitation with the standard Gmail "Yes/Maybe/No" prompt boxes at the top.
0 -
Calendar sharing is when you are able to open someone else's calendar. This is useful for receptionists, personal assistants, or anyone that wants to see anyone else's calendar. It's also used to share central resources such as a boardroom. Law firms particularly need this, but it's a universal requirement in collaborative environments and larger companies.
Contact sharing is when there is a central directory to which all users can contribute new contact information, and/or see existing ones. For example, if you have 100 people in your company and you need to look up someone in the maintenance department.
This post is about cPanel that used to have a calendar server but doesn't anymore. About ActiveSync which uses z-push behind the scenes.
The auto configuration is a separate issue and apologies if this is confusing the thread's purpose.
I'm fishing for better ways to handle my corporate clients and hopefully keep on using cPanel. Or finding an alternative that works out cost effectively. The public cloud is around $7 per mailbox and no profit for us.
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
4 comments