[lionrock88]

hello all,

we've been having some issues with our business email which is causing us some serious problems.

for some reason, emails that we send to a new person falls into their junk folder. as you can imagine, this doesn't present the best first image when we have to follow up with a phone call and ask them to check their junk folder.

we just had an issue where we sent a couple of emails to a new client of ours who works in a major bank. the bank holds all junk mail centrally and users are not allowed to check their junk folders so he has not been able to receive a single email of ours.

we use Web hosting services from ICDSoft: Superior Tech Support and Super Fast Servers as our webhost and email provider.

any suggestions on how to fix this?

[lionrock88]

that is so strange. when i typed in the url of our webhost/email provider.. icdsof t.com

this automatic advertising html link comes out

[MrMoo]

Their hosting service in HK or US?

[gilleshk]

There's a good chance that your mail host has been hijacked by a spammer at some point which is causing the problem.

[hk.com]

lionrock unfortunately when you are on a budget shared hosting service the provider don't get to check or control the behaviour of other users on the same server you are on.

You are most likely sharing the server with someone who has been spamming or sending newsletters to people that didn't want them. So your server or whole IP block is probably in a blocking list or are on your customers blocking list.

For us we are selective who we host for this reason. It only takes one bad customer to get you in a mess. When a customer has done something that is out line we do issue them warnings or sometimes sometimes suspend their outbound SMTP service so that they have to use their ISPs instead of ours.

The most annoying thing is that you are probably losing a lot more email and have no clue, you assume people are not interested in what you are offering. You save money on hosting fee but it costs you and arm an a leg in business terms.

Email is getting more complex every day. It is not your fault for going with a cheap provider, it is not the providers fault that they have issues, but I do think the bank has to blame. Clearly their anti-spam system is a load of crap. They should not get false positives on and should accept real email from IP's which are even sending out 99.99% spam, like ours does.

[sales pitch following, ignore it.]

Let me know if you want a demo account on our system, I am sure we can get email to them. We have quite a few demmanding finance customers and finance head hunters and we never get any complaints.

[FilipH]

I don't know about the host you mention, but i used to buy the domainname with register.com and then use their email service to sent emails from (through outlook).

After a while, i had the same problem as you. To many emails going straight to junk and you become uncertain if the email you sent did arrive ... It's quite frustrating if you are not sure your email arrives and you can't really call your customer to ask if he got it...

My solution was simple : switch to google apps. Still buy the domainname from a register.com or godaddy for example, but use google apps to actually sent it through. (and let's not forget Google has IMAP).

Since then zero problems. It's cheaper and better for me. If you work for a big company, you probably don't have this choice but SME's should definitely check it out. Zero spam in my emailbox and what i sent out, get's in the INBOX.

That's the solution you need. And let's not forget : Free is the best price :P

[hk.com]

Filip, Before everyone would whitelist Yahoo and Google mail server IP addresses but in recent months that is changing. After the Google and Yahoo captcha where broken spammers used bots the web interfaces of to send bulk spam out from these providers. The problem is pretty serious many email providers have started to rate limiting them and also not whitelisting them as in some cases the percentage of spam per IP address is high.

So FilipH, you may be able to get emails to where you are emailing but that is not a solution that is guaranteed to work with everyone.

A possible customer was asking me to explain how our service would become inaccessible like Google's paid customers service which they are using.

The only way we found that works to ensure message delivery is moving good volumes of email so you get the scores and then policing the server and educating customers to not send their newsletters and crap through us.

As for your 'free is the best price', yes costs you little until it stops working and you are with a company that you can't do anything about. That is when free costs you a fortune in lost business and cost of lost opportunity.

FYI. we have done IMAP for the past 8 years.

[FilipH]

Hk.com,

With all do respect, but i was directing my experiences to Lionrock88 who had the same problem that i have. It might help him, it might not. It is just some advice based on my experience.

There is no need to counter argue my points. If you have something to sell him, i would prefer you leave me out of it.

[hk.com]

Just because I have something to sell it does not take my right away to state that I think you are wrong and misinformed.

[gilleshk]

I agree with FilipH here, I'm afraid that your pitch and counterarguments sound more like a hard sell than an exchange of information. On a personal note, it put me off enough to never make business with you...