BlueTie: Another Approach to Hosted Email for MSPs

BlueTie has a similar pitch as other hosted email providers: reduce IT infrastructure costs, provide webmail, and improve efficiency with collaboration tools. But BlueTie says that their real differentiation is in the channel. The company claims margins of 50% or more plus free unlimited basic mailboxes for BlueTie partners. Here’s the scoop.

The company formed in 1999, which means that in technology terms BlueTie is an old hand in the messaging market, and claims 2 million users. BlueTie Sr. Product Marketing Manager Chris Alvaro says that while the company offers hosted Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint deployments, their main product is their proprietary BlueTie Business Email platform.

They offer resellers two ways to sell their product: for a $1500 yearly license fee, MSPs can offer customers unlimited mailboxes at no cost to themselves and mark them up as desired. And with that license fee paid, services providers can offer additional upsells on the mailbox like archiving, Outlook Sync, mobility, and more. Of course, they offer higher-tier paid mailboxes with many of those upsells included – and at estimated margins of up to 70%.

If an MSP doesn’t want to fee that license fee, they can offer those higher-tier mailboxes, but with no free tier or many of the upsell opportunities. And in timely news, BlueTie today announces the addition of “Registered Email” as an upsell, which is a delivery confirmation service powered by RPost.

As I said, there’s nothing new about hosted messaging. But by focusing on helping MSPs make margins on SaaS mailboxes, BlueTie may be on to something.

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