Mailing Lists

Businesses providing a mailing list service perform at least five functions:

Automate collection and maintenance of email addresses from individual subscribers on behalf of the list owner (saving the list owner from a manual maintenance nightmare!),
Provide a simple interface to list 'owners' when they send emails to their subscriber base using the (list owner's) email address list,
Restrict access and use of the email addresses to just the list owner (for email messages / maintenance) and individual email subscribers (for maintenance / removal),
Support the list owner with list metrics (e.g. the number of customers subscribing, unsubscribing, and 'bouncing' due to 'bad' email addresses), and
Assist the list owner when companies / ISPs prevent subscriber emails from being received (i.e. filtering / bouncing emails believed to be spam).

Email lists may be one way (announcement lists from a list owner to their subscribers), or discussion groups that allow (re)broadcast of emails amongst member subscribers. New subscribers may join a customer's list without restriction, or the list owner may validate / filter / review all new subscribers to confirm that access is appropriate. List owners may be billed based on the number of emails processed per month (metered), or on a subscription basis that allows for 'up to' a specified number of emails (i.e. a recurring subscription with a capped service limit).

These providers are different to businesses who (re)sell harvested email addresses to any and all businesses (that subsequently spam the unwilling recipients with special 'offers').

An example of this business is 'mail-list.com' (used to notify the email subscribers of the purebill column!).

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Web Hosting

Web hosting allows businesses and individuals to maintain websites accessible from the internet. Web hosting businesses may provide (and bill) for a wide range of other services, including:

Additional disk space
Dedicated IP addresses
Regular backups of hosted websites
Databases to support dynamic websites (e.g. comments, registration, content)
Charges for data downloads in excess of an included limit
Email forwarding / web-based email
Dedicated hardware

Web hosting is often billed using recurring charge 'plans' that combine different combinations of products, data and services. Customers pick the appropriate combination (product version) / price point that best suits their needs.

Examples of web hosting providers include 'Laughing Squid Web Hosting' and 'Voxel Dot Net'.

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Web Email Provider

Web email providers perform email processing and storage for their customers who access their email from the internet rather than their local computer. This approach allows email to be read by customers from wherever there is a browser with internet connectivity. Email stored on the internet can also be downloaded to the customer's local computer for offline access.

Web email providers are application service providers that provide email services such as:

Virus scanning
Email forwarding
Spam identification
Notification to alternative communication channels (e.g. SMS messages)
Email storage

An example of a Web email provider is 'fastmail.fm' that offers (and bills for) a range of email 'packages' including a free service with a minimum feature set through to a premium package 'with the lot'.

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Domain Registration

Domain registration allow individuals and businesses to purchase (rent) the rights to a specific domain name such as 'purebill.com' for a specified period of time (usually measured in years). Domains can be mapped to a customer's web hosting provider, or 'parked' at the domain registration company's website.

There are few additional services billed by these businesses. Individual domain registrations can last for many years. Payment is usually by credit card with minimal ongoing contact between the registrar and customer until it is time to renew the customer's registration.

An example of a domain registrar is 'namecheap.com'.

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Website Monitoring

A target website has an image, link and/or javascript code included in its HTML linking back to the monitoring business so that it can make notes as each web page is accessed (loaded). By collecting these statistics together and using cookies to associate the web pages browsed by each individual, a target website's owner can uncover details about what their browsing users are interested in.

Details such as the number of pages viewed, unique visitors, country of origin (based on their IP addresses), and referring weblinks can be noted and totalled. Examples include StatCounter and Site Meter.

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Comments welcome: stephenjones(at)purebill.com