BLACKSBURG -- Say goodbye to Webmail.us and hello to Mailtrust.

Less than a year after the Blacksburg-based e-mail hosting company got both new business partners and new digs, it has launched a new brand and with it, a new name, new Web site and new product.

President Pat Matthews said the brand -- Mailtrust, Business Grade Email -- is the work of about a year's worth of internal meetings that aimed to answer three questions: Who are we? What sets us apart in the market? And what kind of identity do we want to have?

"We believe that one of our biggest differentiating factors when we look at our competition is the fact that we're a mail specialist," Matthews said. "We kind of want the name to reflect that."

And, Matthews noted, Webmail.us just wasn't cutting it.

"Our current name is just littered with problems," he said.

Among them, the ".us" instead of ".com" extension and the confusion caused by people's generic use of the term "webmail."

"When we say, 'We work for Webmail' or, 'We work for Webmail.us,' no matter where I am, all the time, people will say, 'Oh, we use you guys,' and they really don't," Matthews said. And "there's nothing worse in marketing than confusion."

So Mailtrust?

"It's not the most fun-sounding name in the world," Matthews acknowledged, "but that's what we want, actually. We want to be looked at as kind of the straight-edge company that you can trust.

"We've taken a little bit of criticism from some people who have heard the name because they think that we're kind of cornering ourselves a little bit too much," he added.

But "I see it as really showing and demonstrating our commitment to the business that we're in."

In addition to the Mailtrust name, the company is launching a new Web site at www.mailtrust.com, as well as a new offering: hosted Microsoft Exchange.

"As a company, we've probably turned away at least half of the potential business that knocks on our door because we haven't been able to offer Microsoft Exchange," Matthews said.

Rackspace Managed Hosting, the San Antonio-based business that acquired Webmail in October, already sold Microsoft Exchange, and Matthews said the brand launch offered the opportunity to sell both companies' e-mail services under a unified brand.

And to increase awareness of that brand, Matthews said Mailtrust could end up spending "millions of dollars in marketing" the next few years.

"In the past, we didn't really have the financial resources that it takes to go out and actually focus on building a brand," he said.

But "we want to be the leader in our category, and part of being that leader is going to be becoming part of the conversation."

Mailtrust, a division of Rackspace, has a total of 120 employees, 75 of them in Blacksburg.