Case Study Q&A: wisnet.com, LLC on partnering with Mailtrust

The following is a question and answer case study with Rick Kolstad, the CEO of wisnet.com, LLC, a high performance website design & hosting company based in Wisconsin. Rick and his team joined the Mailtrust Private Label Reseller Program in October 2005.

Why did you decide to outsource your email?

Our business function has narrowed quite a bit from when we started. Our main focus was always website design, programming, and hosting. Email was a natural value-added service. But as we've grown, we have realized the need to focus on the services that we provide best—the design, programming, and great customer service. Over the last few years, email maintenance, support, and monitoring (with the growing spam and virus attacks), started to become a full time position. As a value-added service, it did not make sense to continue in that direction. It is much more beneficial for us to stay focused on our profit centers. Providing great products and customer service are very important to us—this is how we continue to grow.

Did you consider other companies for an email hosting partnership?

Yes, we considered several other companies for a similar partnership.

Why did you pick Mailtrust?

We were impressed with your mission and culture (from what we picked up in your blogs and from our sales rep), and your relationship with Rackspace helped build quite a bit of trust. It is hard to find good Internet companies that you can trust—especially when you are dealing with the trust of all our customers. I was reading through the Mailtrust Blog when we were evaluating our options. Kirk [the director of services and support at Mailtrust] had mentioned that you are always looking for customer suggestions. I had dropped him an email (figuring that I would not hear back from him), and I actually received a reply. He mentioned that they were working on a few of the ideas, and that a few others would be added to the wish list, and that the ideas may provide great benefit for your customers. He also provided a list of a few of the upcoming features—which is very valuable in our sales efforts. The quick and honest feedback from Kirk really offered a good comfort level.

What problems have been solved with our partnership?

We are currently moving through our migration, so much of my time has been working with our customer base to provide a smooth and happy migration. After this stage is complete, this move will help to keep my efforts focused on our products, services, and keeping a high level of customer service.

Were your customers unhappy with your old email service?

They were very happy with our email services; our main reasons for the move are to keep our focus, and also be able to provide a more solid and redundant service. Email services have become very important to our clients—they are needed to run their businesses.

Were you experiencing downtime or spam floods with your old email service?

Occasionally, the traffic would become pretty high, slowing down mail delivery. Downtime was very minimal, but in this industry, any downtime is not acceptable.

The mail system that we are migrating from is http://mdaemon.com. They also have a great product and development team. We were just getting to a point where we were outgrowing the capabilities of the software with the loads that our client base was applying to the system.

How has your experience been with our Customer Support team?

The support team has been great to work with—great response times.

What do you like best about the new product?

My personal favorite feature is the workload and stress-load that is being taken off my shoulders. We strive to offer the best possible services—'perfect' email service is tough to accomplish. Reliability, reduced stress, reduced spam, and a team that can take care of issues when they pop up are all very important.

Are you happy with your decision to outsource email to Mailtrust?

Yes—your sales and tech teams have been great to work with, and they seem very receptive to input that we provide for product improvements. The Mailtrust product and team are becoming a very valuable part of the wisnet.com services. We are looking forward to a strong relation as both our companies move forward.