That's all well and good, and certainly practical for the customer, but I don't see anywhere the option to specify your own eM Client reseller account anywhere. So I have no management possibility and control over the ordered licenses and then I still have to take care of support requests of the customers? Nope not like that.

Does eM Client have a reseller program?  That would be nice. We could promote it to our customers and make a little $.

Yes, eM Client has a reseller program and the product is part of our portfolio. It is annoying that SmarterTools has now integrated this directly without giving us the possibility to note our reseller account in it. I guess that SmarterTools uses their own reseller program for this. I think it's pretty blatant that a mail is automatically sent to all domain administrators of SmarterTools promoting the eM Client.

The domain needs to be set up properly so it can receive email, but as far as use of eM Client goes, it can be used for IMAP or POP if you like, there's no need for full synchronization of all features. 

If you have more questions, feel free to post them here or just hit up our sales department. 

This is awesome, we've pushed a lot of customers to eM Client, it is a very nice client, glad to see there is more integration with SM now for those clients who are not happy with Outlook or are looking for a decent client.

Hello Tim

I find your efforts and the invested effort in this product excellent and also the aspiration to push with eM Client here a reliable alternative to Outlook.

SmarterMail and eM Client are an excellent combination, which is why I like to invest my money in these solutions.

But what I find objectionable is the approach. As a service provider, I choose the solutions used and the way individual solutions are brought to the customer.

I find the integration of eM Client licensing into SmarterMail a good idea, but the implementation is not beyond reproach in my view.

Point 1. that domain administrators receive an email from SmarterMail promoting eM Client, I find it violating and questionable. Speaking from the client's point of view, in all European countries the delivery of promotional emails is only allowed with a valid opt-in procedure from the recipient, this is not taken into account here. Wouldn't it at least be more clever to send the mail from the provider organization mail, because there are also justifiable connections and also a contractual relationship here? This does not change the desired goal of SmarterMail at all. Or better, leave this notification mail.

Point 2. From the provider's point of view, I don't feel taken seriously here and somewhat ignored. As a service provider we don't have the possibility to decide if we want to offer this service via SmarterMail Webinterface or not, we are forced to pay for a third party product which is not in the portfolio of all providers and the domain administrators will fall back on our support if any questions with eM Client arise. But this is not what I pay my employees for.

To make matters worse, as a reseller of eM Client, we used to offer this to our customers and so we can also manage it in our eM Tenant, but this is now completely eliminated. I agree with you Tim when you say that only a few of your SmarterMail customers are also eM resellers. However, the margin we have on eM Client is not insignificant.

And I would like to emphasize here that I already mentioned this point in a post about 2 months ago (which, by the way, was deleted in a mysterious way, probably because it had not been intended at all that this feature was already released in this release and then withdrawn very quickly).

Point 3. I would really appreciate it if SmarterTools would enable the following to SmarterMail service providers in the upcoming version:

- General activation/deactivation of eM Client licensing via the web interface.

- Store own reseller ID information for eM Client in general settings

- never ever send a generated mail by software installation direct to customers, this is a violation of the european law and certainly not without the service provider being aware of this and being able to control it himself. This is clearly an abuse.

- We take eM Client out of our portfolio and have to drive all our marketing and other preparation work to the wall.

- We leave eM Client in our portfolio and offer support only to those customers who have purchased the license directly through us.Those who order it through the webmail should look for themselves.This will upset some customers and I can already hear the questions why we offer it via webmail. Yes, because SmarterTools dictates this and we can't do anything about it.

I hope I could show you my point of view here and I am curious what you think.

Thanks in advance and greetings

Roger

I am following the topic with interest.

My reflections

1) I am also an emclient reseller but it is a truly marginal activity

2) I believe that making free emclient licenses available for each domain is a good thing to encourage the user to abandon Outlook/TB... it has always been a struggle for us

3) In my opinion it is the method of purchasing additional licenses that is wrong. It should be flexible and settable via em-client reseller account. This is because there are two aspects.

The first is that they then ask us for assistance.

The second is that many customers want to buy from us, so we buy from em-client and then resell to the customer.

It may be left up to the server admin to decide whether the domain admin can purchase em-client himself or not. If he cannot purchase on his own, he could still put it in the cart at full price and then it is the server admin who purchases for him with his em-client reseller account and then makes the requested additional licenses available to the domain.

A solution that everyone would agree on

Imagine my surprise when I noticed that a few of my own domains were solicited with an email for EmClient, then noticing that it was also sent to all of my clients?! I think this is highly unacceptable behavior, you are using software that I pay for to solicit my clients for a service. I don't resell emclient, nor do I want to, just simply put stay in your lane. Had I been asked I don't think I would feel so abused.

Hey Sabatino

When you install the new version, every customer domain administrator will be informed by mail. Since we have each customer managing their own domain administrator, it is possibly a violation of European law.

Providing a SmarterMail client for Windows and MacOS has been a long-standing request from of our customers over the last 10 years, but developing a client from scratch would have been too expensive and time-consuming.

This partnership is not a revenue-driven decision, but a customer-centric one. We want to provide a solution that meets the needs and expectations for you and your customers.

We negotiated a deal that gives you and your customers FREE software and discounts for a fully integrated product that simplifies overall management and reduces support issues.

We acknowledge that some of you may have reservations about this partnership, but the majority of feedback we have received through customer service is positive. It seems that most of our customers understand the value and benefits it brings to SmarterMail.

We could have opted to white label eM Client and customize it further, but that would have required us to charge you and your users for the software. We wanted to give you the best possible solution and we think we achieved that.

This is a significant partnership with tremendous value and as such, we will be seen by everyone differently but to say you were caught off guard is difficult to hear.  We released this with only one FEATURE along with an Email and Blog Post so that everything would be transparent and clear.

We are doing our best to offer the most we can so that everyone we can all compete against the behemoths that are trying to lock people in to propriety solutions while harvesting you and your customers data.  

Roger S,

SmarterTools is a US baed company but operates in compliance with European regulations. eM Client is a European company and operates in compliance with European regulations.

The notification within SmarterMail is to announce new functionality available within SmarterMail. No data is shared with eM Client unless explicitly authorized or requested.

Please refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that could have serious consequences. We value your participation in the community, but we will not tolerate misinformation and will ban users accordingly. 

Tim Uzzanti,

I have the impression that you did not understand my detailed statement as I wanted to communicate it. Again, to clarify, I think the idea is excellent but not the implementation. According to my point of view, no automatic mail should be sent. According to my point of view, the service provider must be able to choose in the general settings if he wants to show this menu item to his end customers or not.

what kind of misinformation are you talking about? I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that this is e-mail advertising without prior express consent according to Article 7 paragraph 2 UWG.

In principle, therefore, the following applies: No advertising without express consent. Single-Opt-In according to european judgement of 10.02.2011 BGH I ZR 164/09.

However, the law also provides for an exception to this principle. § Section 7 (3) of the Unfair Competition Act (UWG) allows companies to send e-mail advertising without express consent under certain circumstances if the recipients of the e-mail are existing customers. The basic idea is that someone with whom a business relationship exists is presumably interested in further similar products and services and would also like to be informed about them.

The e-mail must therefore come from the service provider (me) and not from an external party.

Requirements for the fulfillment of Article 7 para 3 UWG
(1) The entrepreneur must have received the e-mail address from the customer in connection with the sale of a product or service,
(2) the business owner/entrepreneur uses the e-mail address exclusively for advertising his/her own similar goods or services,
(3) the customer must not have objected to the use of the e-mail address in advance, and
(4) the customer must be clearly informed upon collection of the e-mail address and upon each use that he/she may object to the use at any time free of charge.

Roger S,

The concerns are the legal claims you have made based on misunderstandings that could harm both SmarterTools and eM client.

We want to clarify that when we release new features in SmarterMail, we intend to make them accessible to all users. This is a common practice in the software industry and it helps users discover and enjoy the latest improvements.

SmarterMail will be following a similar model to iOS. For example, when you access the Calendar section after an update, you will see a pop-up window that highlights the new features available in that section based on the previous version you were on.

This is a result of listening to our customers who have requested more visibility and awareness of the new functionality, as not everyone reads our release notes. It does not matter whether the features are fully developed by us or partially rely on third-party solutions as long as no information is sent beyond the system unless requested by the user.

We hope this explains our approach and we ask you to reconsider your legal references to shape your narriratve or our products, as they are detrimental to all parties.

I am an emClient reseller too.

I hate this new feature of SmarterMail because, being mandatory and not deactivable, I see it as a violation of the trust I have given to SmarterTools, for 3 reasons:

1 - SmarterTools is literally "stealing" my customer base by directly selling a third-party product that I used to sell directly, and I can't stop it.

2 - my customers will be contacted commercially AGAINST MY WILL

3 - customers could report me because they might think that I do not respect Italian and European laws which prohibit sending them unsolicited commercial communications.

I believe that I WILL NOT INSTALL this update until there are further clarifications or changes to the way of managing the sale of emClient within SmarterMail.

This unhealthy idea could even lead some partners to consider abandoning SmarterMail...

Tim Uzzanti,

Yes but the end user ratio is not the same, is it? When I have an iPhone, I am the end consumer and have willingly agreed to the product. If I am given a solution by the provider, then the contractual relationship is between business and consumer and not between SmarterTools and consumer, that's what I wanted to emphasize here and I would like to emphasize once again that I find the idea excellent and I find both SmarterTools and eM Client very recommendable and I also recommend this to the customers. Better eM Client than Outlook. But a promotional email for eM Client as a sender from SmarterTools into the customer domain administrator's mailbox?

The fact that SmarterTools is a US company and eM Client is a European company and that they both adhere to the legal regulations is important for me as a provider when it comes to the cooperation between us, but my customer, sorry for the expression, doesn't give a damn because I am responsible for him as a provider and he has a contract with me. I am responsible for his mail environment and must comply with data protection and work order processing regulations. So the customer will come to me and make me a snail if he has an unsolicited mail in the admin mailbox.So the customer will come up to me and make me a snail if he sends an unsolicited mail in the Admin

Well, we obviously have different views on that.

I think the integration is nice. However, when I was reading the Blog post I had questions how this would work with our current em client partnership and had some doubts abuout the integration. It think ST could have communicated better to System Admins what happens when they install the new version and I think options to disable this would have been great. 

I'm happy that we have our own control panel and none of our customers have domain admin access. At the current implementation I think we will not even promote the free licenses. 

Would the marketing message sent to a domain admin that is a consumer (non-business) end-user outside of the organisation running the SmarterMail software be in violation of the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018?

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/direct-marketing-and-privacy-and-electronic-communications/guide-to-pecr/electronic-and-telephone-marketing/#:~:text=An%20unsolicited%20message%20is%20any,the%20marketing%20complies%20with%20PECR).

sabatino,

Only domain admin gets an email notification. But at the end this is the customer and I think even this could get me in trouble. The client does not know that the mail was sent by the server itself and not from a database as Tim mentioned. But at the end, it is a marketingmail without an opt-in from the customer. So if this will not be removed by smartertools in an upcominh release, we have to change our privacy descriptions to clarify and contract policies. That is what make me fear for existing clients

@Sabatino

What if the domain administrator is a consumer and not a business user? 

If they are a business user, you can send marketing messages if they are generic, like 'info@', or 'sales@', but if the domain admin is a person's name like 'john@', then you can't send unsolicited marketing messages.

As you know the SmarterMail architecture is hierarchal based and the domain administrator has the authority to control most features and functionality that the users of the domain can access and use. That is why we only notify the domain administrator about this new feature. The domain administrator can configure the domain and its users according to their needs and preferences.

We could consider disabling this feature by default on the server if that would address your concerns. However, this would be entirely enable or disable (no free license and no discounts to end users on the server) and we would need to consult with eM Client about this change. 

I would appreciate your feedback on this.

Hi Tim, thanks for this reply.

On my humble opinion, this could be a good solution.

Please le us know if it is feasible.

Thx again.

We run, so far, a small multitenant environment and would love the per domain control of features.

I agree with Brian Bjerring-Jensen's comments from today at 1:52 p.m. Sabatino from today at 1:59 p.m.

For me, the focus is also on making a great product and, if necessary, third-party solutions that are related to it available to the customer. because I love eM Client, even more so.

My personal recommendation:
- The provider should be able to decide whether this should be accessible to all domains or not (disabled for all or possible) as suggested by Tim
- The provider should ideally be able to set this individually for each domain, if that were possible
- The provider should ideally be able to edit the email template themselves under Settings > System Messages so that they can point out that, as a provider, they do not provide support, for example, and that the provider is also the sender of the email. As a layman, I assume that this will comply with the case law that I know of.
- Nice-to-have if the provider can enter his reseller ID. For me, this is not a mandatory criterion, as you can decide for yourself whether you can have the service activated or deactivated. As far as I'm concerned, SmarterTools should have a piece of the cake here, eM Client is just a very minor business for us that I don't necessarily have to push, it was more of a favor for our customers to show alternatives to Outlook etc.

And what I would like to make clear right away is that my intention was purely positive and supportive to protect you as a development company and also us as customers from possible problems, not to denounce you. I've been working intensively with the product for years and often provide you with input, point out bugs, translate the templates into German, etc. Annually faithful renewal of all licenses (even if it's probably a small fish for SmarterTools). So I don't think it's appropriate to simply want to denounce myself here. If it is not okay for SmarterTools that I cite my legal concerns and concrete references as a non-lawyer to applicable laws and their articles, which can ultimately affect me as a provider, then maybe next time I should at least be told Out of politeness, reply in the private message I sent you on October 13th with the ticket ID 35F-2CBAEA4A-0B22 and not refer back to the forum, then at least these concerns would have been expressed bilaterally. This is what I would have expected as a customer.

I really like the idea, that our customers can have emClient via SmarterMail. That will be a big success as long as MS Outlook will behave so badly.

Not acceptable is the fact, that the server sends without any agreement from the owner of the server mails to admin's regarding the mail client. This not legal in switzerland and i'm pretty sure, not legal in the EU.

This needs to be fixed.

Before this is not fixed, i'm not able to install this version. 

Then i want to write a invitation with my own words in my language. Not everybody does understand english and not everybody wants to read english messages.

Cheers.

Is there anyway to block this via events rules for certain client that we do not wish them to receive such email. As we have a handful of tough client to handle, if they install this emclient or even buy direct (i have no problem and no intention to sell this emclient at all), they might automatically believe we have to provide support and it is our responsibility to do so.

Just to follow up on this, we've removed the Build from the downloads page. As Tim mentioned, we've reached out to eM Client and should have a resolution for all of this for our next Build. What that resolution is, I can't say at the moment, but you've all given us some great points of discussion, so thanks. 

More on this as we get further into the work week. 

Our vote is to keep the feature WITH an Enable/Disable switch at the DOMAIN level, not a global all-or-nothing switch.  We can granularly turn protocols on/off at the per-user level, so why not let System Admins select On/Off per-domain for the eM Client promo?

We discussed this internally, and our owner likes the idea of making this offer available to CERTAIN clients, but there are strong business reasons we would NOT want to directly solicit others.  It could end up cannibalizing other software subscriptions we already have in place for certain high-touch accounts, to name one reason.

 

For myself I agree that it's not a bad feature and that it should be toggle-able, I really just don't agree with the advertisement being pushed to my clients without my choice. This is software that we are paying for, in my mind if I was using the free version then yes by all means include that solicitation in it automatically.

I would think that a few billable hours to a reputable EU law firm that specializes in GDPR issues would be able to give ST some clarity on whether or not the company has any potential liability here. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound (or a kilo in this case) of cure. Beyond that, it makes sense to give SM system admins the privileges to opt out of the eM client deal/promotion. That being said, kudos to Tim and ST for doing it; it's a great idea, overall.

No, we are still working through the process and partnership.  

I'm looking for an update on this. I am running Build 8684, and I got the email offering me a license. I went through the process (don't remember all the details) but nothing came of it. I could use en emclient license, as MicroSquash is ending their mail client and pushing people into Outlook.

You will need the latest build to have the option in your SM menu system otherwise, you won't be able to go through the process (I believe?)

You need to login as domain administrator and navigate to Domain Settings.

You should see em Client as a menu item on the left menu area.

This will then send you through the process of sending codes and email confirmations until you get the licence listed in the SM em Client page with the user allocated to that licence.

Thanks YS Tech. 

I'm running 8762 at home. I log in to a domain as either the primary or domain admin, I go to Domain Settings, and I see only a separator below "General", which is where the blog post https://www.smartertools.com/blog/2023/10/latest-smartermail-release shows the EMClient Licenses should be.

But even still, if the great partnership was announced with 8684 (which was quickly retracted), shouldn't I be entitled to the eMClient licenses without having to update, which I'm not ready to do until the issues settle down a bit.

Patrick,

I was on 8664 prior to this install, I updated and the only issue I had was the webmail domains not being available to clients (this was only because I selected an actual domain as the default address and not the standard default setting as I had previously). No issues currently as far as I can tell.

I too was reluctant but was eager to get the em client licence (i'd trialled it before the switch). So I did the change over xmas/new year hoping that it wouldn't affect clients over that time.

There wasn't the em Client option there on 8664 either, so it is just a matter of updating and it'll be there I'm sure.

Good luck with the install.

I did lots of prep before the installation, updated windows, defragged, backed up, etc...

Just updated to 8768, still no option for eMclient. Should I submit another ticket? I already have three open related to this upgrade.

Patrick,

You said you're running 8768 "at home" -- is that a paid license or is it the Free Edition? If it's the Free Edition, eM Client is not available with free versions of SmarterMail. 

Derek,

It's paid.

Definitely logged in as a domain admin?

And looking under domain settings?

Looks just like the image in the blog, without the item for eM Client Licenses.

Kyle’s on it!

Patrick,

It's possible that eM Client is not enabled for your domain. To check that, log in as the system administrator. Select the domain on the Manage > Domains page. On the Options tab, there is a toggle for eM Client on the Features tab. Make sure it is enabled then try logging in to the domain administrator account again.

Andrew, 

I’ll check that but why would it not be enabled for my domain? Is it disabled by default?

(The issue exists for all of my domains)

@Andrew Barker:

Hi Patrick,

It should have been enabled for all domains on upgrade, and you should have seen a notice of this when you logged in as a system administrator. Please do check the Options tab of your domains and make sure it's enabled on the Features tab. If it's not, you can propagate that change to all domains in Domain Defaults. 

These are the other prerequisites for eM Client Licenses:

If the feature is enabled and you meet all of these requirements, please do follow up on your support ticket with an RSAA with an administrator account (and perhaps RDP if you'll allow it), and we'll continue our review. 

Andrea,

Have a ticket. As far as I know, I meet all the reqs, and I do get the info splash when I first log in as a domain admin.

I'll post follow-up here once it's resolved.

Pat