I want build Email service Website Like Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo (for $500-$1000)

Just because you're not in a cubicle doesn't mean that you've escaped the Dilbert comic strip.<p>Now that the shutdown of Google Reader is in the news, about two weeks ago, someone posted an offer on Elance for a website with a few RSS feeds posted to it. When I made a proposal asking for details, I got an e-mail essentially asking for Google Reader but with a snazzier user interface. Yup, the asking price was "less than $500."<p>I sent an e-mail in reply pointing this out as diplomatically as I could. A few days later, I got an e-mail saying that the project had been canceled.<p>It saddens and enrages me to ponder how many people either have so little respect for programmers or so much ignorance of programming that they think that they can get away with this. Would these people try the same thing with lawyers? Or even plumbers?

I'm willing to pay someone up to $10-15 to rebuild the transmission on my car, but I need it by this afternoon. It also needs to be converted from manual to automatic in the process. Provide your own parts.

Why not just install Roundcube[1] on top of your preferred MTA? It's free and it's going to be more polished than any $500 bespoke project.<p>[1] <a href="http://roundcube.net/" rel="nofollow">http://roundcube.net/</a>

Setup mail server, install roundcube. Done.

1.) Set up google apps account. 2.) Turn on a custom skin. 3.) Profit?

Funny how we ridicule freelance sites like elance and their seemingly ingnorant project requests and race to the bottom pricing model yet celebrate low budget - super fast development feats of engineering like <a href="http://blog.zite.com/2013/03/14/google-reader-is-dead-so-we-rebuilt-it-for-you-in-zite-in-six-hours/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.zite.com/2013/03/14/google-reader-is-dead-so-we-...</a>

This is no exception. elance, freelancer, odesk are full of such projects. And he will get a lot of bids, someone will even be ready to do it for $100! There are lots of people out there who think building and running a web service like email or social network or even a search engine is a piece of cake!<p>With news of one year old startups getting acquired for billions Everybody wants to be a web entrepreneur. :) During my freelancing days I have seen a lot of such requests, and they never actually get awarded because someone sensible will write a comment saying you can't build such a service for that amount and that the front end they see is just the tip of the iceberg and there are costs involved in running the servers and getting users and all.<p>But there are some who go ahead and in fact at places like scriptcopy.com you will find clone scripts for almost anything - Facebook, eBay, Hotmail. I have seen someone selling Yahoo clone script for $20! Some even provide hosting. Go figure!

According to the way my boss thinks, I'm sure this wouldn't take me more than a week.

Why is this news? These kinds of postings have been on Elance / RentACoder/ Guru.com / etc since 2000, when I first started looking at those sites. Many of which are probably more outlandish than this.

For those who are now pondering a weekend project...<p><a href="http://twitter.github.com/flight/demo/" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.github.com/flight/demo/</a>

If they're going to pay $500 for it, give them $500 worth of work. Let's see, if you bill $150/hour, then that's 3 full hours. 3 full hours, assuming you type 120 wpm, with 10 minute breaks per hour, that's 18KB.<p>As stupid as what I described is, I bet it would appeal to the people who think you can clone something like that for $500. Scope is everything!

Looks ridiculous at first glance...and the more I think about it - the more ridiculous it looks to me...

Just ask this guy to send across a requirement document/ wireframes. Nip it in the bud I say :-D

Freelancer websites are full of things like this. "ebay clone with all features" etc.<p>Problem is, how does one define "all features". Does it mean all the obvious features, like the ability to list an item and have people buy/bid on it.<p>Or do they want an actual replica of ebay complete with all the anti-fraud stuff that ebay must have and all of the seller account controls etc?<p>Obviously there's a huge difference between the two, but you won't get much more detail from them than "I just want all the features, should be simple".<p>So yes, you can probably make an "ebay clone" in a day or two, but what happens if they refuse to pay because it doesn't have some advanced feature that ebay does?

See also <a href="https://www.elance.com/j/website-like-amazon/37294947/" rel="nofollow">https://www.elance.com/j/website-like-amazon/37294947/</a> ("I want a website like Amazon for $1000"), submitted to news.ycombinator on 14 Feb.

&#62;Project Will Given to who post complete structure details + resume<p>I don't know what 'complete structure details' even means but I assume it means something they could toss to another developer for the excuse of paying them less and the schmucks who apply nothing at all. I've already made the mistake of completing a "test" of putting together a couple of email templates for a job that then magically never materialized after I was "awarded" it.<p>I will point you to my github and linkedin profile, but you're not getting free work.

There are plenty of projects like these on freelance websites; They either end up being a low quality clone with fewer features than the original, or never get funded to begin with.

Is it really THAT unreasonable ? Throw some random open source mail server and web interface, customize et voilà!

To be fair, we don't know the expected use and it says to state the features to be included. If you throw in non US labor rates, you <i>might</i> get something useful. Admittedly, I'm reaching.<p>This is why I don't look for work on these sites. I'm literally better off just sitting here waiting for the phone to ring.

There's a nonzero chance that this is a honeypot designed to draw out the bots or incompetent devs.

I am reminded of the questions I see posted on Quora with some regularity - so many that show a staggering ignorance of the most basic systems fundamentals, coming from people claiming to be professionals.

Give the job to this guy: <a href="http://fiverr.com/farooqahmed/develop-website-for-you-in-htmlcss-on-your-instructions" rel="nofollow">http://fiverr.com/farooqahmed/develop-website-for-you-in-htm...</a>

How many users are you expecting?

Looks ridiculous at first glance but that's actually not unreasonable.<p>The value in Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo is first and foremost their users. Next is the technical infrastructure to support all of those users. The front-end website and basic functionality of sending and receiving emails isn't that hard of a technical problem.<p>Given the level of intelligence this guy appears to have, an Indian PHP dev on elance who charges $10 an hour could probably build something in 50-100 hours that would support far more users than this guy would ever be able to attract and they would both be happy with the transaction.