The EmailStore project was first conceived in July 2007. The purpose of the project was to develop the EmailStore.com web site that was to sell email address services to customers. Initially EmailStore was going to offer email services using the domains @my-iphone.com, @my-iphone.co.uk, @f1mail.com and @wizzmail.com and was going to add additional domains as and when suitable names became available.

Where e-mail services such as yahoo, hotmail and gmail are the market leaders, it is now pretty much impossible to obtain the e-mail address of your choice. EmailStore was going to launch a service where customer could have a great email address at a low cost.

The email service was have the ability for customers to be able to set up their mobile phone’s email client, including the Apple iPhone (or other email enabled phone/device) to receive and send email messages.

From any computer in the world, customers would able to access the web-based EmailStore email service.

Customer would also be able to set up their own email client e.g. Microsoft Outlook or Apple’s mail application to receive and send email from their EmailStore email address. en put into action at once.

There would be two main elements to the EmailStore service, with both working as one. The first element would be the creation and management of the email addresses and subscription services.

Customers would visit www.emailstore.com to search for their ideal email address from one of the emailstore domains, initially @my-iphone.co.uk, @my-iphone.com, @f1mail.com or @wizzmail.com.

If the email address were available the customer would enter their payment and subscription options and would select to purchase extra email storage if required.

The second part was the actual email service. Once an account and email address became ‘active’ customers would be able to any of three methods to access their email.

1) On a mobile handset Access email from a mobile phone or other mobile device that supported POP3 for incoming and SMTP for outgoing email.

2) Using Webmail Via the EmailStore web site – a link to ‘log on to your email account’ would be provided from the web site Using any computer with internet access customers could log directly onto the webmail service.

3) Using an Email Client: Customers would be able to set up and access their EmailStore email with all popular email software including Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail. stream.

Once up and running the emailStore web site would offer domain hosting. Customers would be able to point their email domains to the EmailStore email server and would be able to have their own addresses with their own domain name.

Customer would be required to change their domain MX Record so that it pointed to the EmailStore email server, but once set up the service would work in a very similar way to the existing site.

Initially a solution was sought that was off the shelf, however no such solution seems to be available.

The developement of the required email solution is outside the scope of the GlowRed.com web developers due to the sophisticated integration between the email platform and web site, and so a specialist developer was sought.

A detailed specification was sent to a number of web design and solution providers. After evaluating the responses only two compaines seemed be in a position to provide the required email solution, however the initial investment required to set up the solution would mean that the return on investment would take some time to recover.

The EmailStore project is ongoing with solutions being tested using services such as Google Apps. The initial launch of a service will most likly be a basic offering that will be developed further as the service expands and becomes self funding.