Congratulations to Zimbra. That’s a big deal to land and clear sign of traction.

Sorry Mike, I have to disagree with your title. As I noted on my post, I have been a customer of Comcast for about 9 years and have never used their home page. And I bet at least 30-50% of their user base do not use it as well. So at best, it would be 6 million. I like Zimbra and Plaxo a lot but can you help me understand how everyone would use it? I guess as I noted they could force us to use it but I doubt that would work.

Maybe add “potential” to the title and it would work…

I guess you got a 10 minute exclusive over the rest of us?

Good news for comcast users. I wonder whether this change will result in an increase in the storage limit (25 MB currently ).
If it does , then small business users can use Comcast services to provide for their main email hosting solution.

Allen,

Sadly, your 30-50% guess is way off. You’d be shocked at how many people don’t know how to change their browsers start page, yes in this day and age. And Comcast not only brands your browser (replaces IE logo w/ Comcast logo) but they set ‘your’ home page to comcast.net.

Anon - even if I am off (which is ok) it’s not 100%. And I agree with you. The installer comes out, puts in the disk, installs whatever and you are done. The average user has no idea they can remove any/all of it.

Like the old days with AOL

Wow! That’s incredible news for Zimbra. I checked out some of their screenshots a while back, and they’re pretty snazzy–since I’ll be getting the Triple Play next month, I’ll have to see what I think.

Nice work for them, I doubt I’ll use it though. New customers maybe, and people that use the webmail, but I don’t know how many that will include.

Any which way, it’s nice for both parties, so that’s good news.

Smart move for Comcast to offer a sticky package of features to their subscribers. How much of a price advantage will a competitor have to offer to pull someone off the voicemail, email and whatever other Comcast services they have become used to? Agree it won’t be close to 100% of subs, but still…

I’m always amazed at how many people are dumb enough to use their access provider’s email service when Yahoo! and others are free, usually better, and untethered to access.

Paul - I was walking down the street the other day and saw a sign for a general contractor on a van. The van’s email address was:
xyzxyzxyz@comcast.net

So now, what happens when the contractor decides to get another service? He has to redo his van and also make sure his clients know.

I agree completely that the non-tethered services win in my book. Actually I prefer using email on a domain I own so no matter if Yahoo merges with Microsoft and the email goes away, I still have control over what I receive.

I thought the interesting part of the CNET note was that of the 6 million mailboxes zimbra hosts 1 million are for a single customer. (H&R Block or a webhost?)

The comcast deal surely won’t double their existing accounts, especially since only customers with the triple play get zimbra.

Congratulations to Zimbra!

Wow, that is great news for Zimbra. I wish my ISP would switch over. Our current webmail is absolutely god awful.

Congratulations to Zimbra!

nice work zimbraaaaaa

I have been saying Comcast needed to get their “ducks in a row” for a while. While I kind of thought they’d choose an offering from someone large (AOL or Google), this is a very nice fit. Comcast still needs to make some more moves to improve their services and get with the times, such as better integration of the triple-play with the Pivot/Sprint (MVNO) service.

@Garth, Zimbra is available to ALL Comcast customers, but the “visual voicemail” is only available to triple-play customers.

If zimbra adds 2-3M users that will be a significant addition. The question that remains is how the deal was structured. Flat fee to zimbra? Per user fee to zimbra? Other? These details would give a better idea of how this will translate to increased revenue. Is this the first step toward a comcast acquisition of zimbra?

Thanks everyone for the nice comments. To clarify, Zimbra has announced that we have 6 million paid mailboxes and we have not included any Comcast mailboxes in this number. We are excited about the Comcast partnership and we believe it will have a significant impact on this number going forward and you should expect to hear more from us later on in the year.

Ditto to #2, Allen. 12 Milliion *potential* customers.

I’m also a Comcast broadband user who never bothered about their website, or email service for that matter.

A word of caution: no matter how good your email package is (Zimbra will clearly be better than the current service) it’s never a good idea to have an ISP-specific email address. If they allow private domains, that’s a different story.. ISP’s can change, you may move ..etc, and who wants to change email addresses all the time?

Brilliant move by Comcast. They are getting one solution/offering closer to the SOHO market.
This announcement comes on the heals of the Pivot expanded offering (cellular with Sprint).

The MSO’s are just better than the Telco’s. It is that simple!