trouble with the email systems

[mcsolas]

Ive had a reseller plan for about half a year now.. its going ok, but I am having to cancel some accounts. Hosting is no problem. I get complaint after complaint about webmail / email issues.

The show stopper for the domain I just removed was that my clients ip seems to have gotten on a blacklist somewhere. support says to contact our isp, which is a gov't monopoly and .. well they just arent going to do anything for us. So the client could send email, just *not* from his home or office.

I asked several times.. no way to override this, so I was left with no choice but to setup a different hosting account. I was never much of a fan of smartermail, but after seeing the installs we have offered of horde/squirrelmail .. I love smartermail in comparison. I get complaints galore about those clients.

Interested to see how others are faring with the email systems. I am having no such luck.

[RobbieLePommie]

It gets mixed. I lost one client through "e-mail never arriving" - but issues that were never demonstrated to me. On the other hand I have had e-mail never arrive on a couple of occations - but always where there had been an identifiable issue with the server. I don't consider receiving a problem.

As for sending, ther are two options: route through my ISP, or route through HostNexus server. Risk of going through HostNexus server is that you can be banned because of your originating IP (even though that could be forged in the forwarding SMTP server) of because of the HostNexus mail IP is on a blacklist. If I send mail to videotron.ca (which I do regularly) I havea 50/50 chance of it getting through via my ISP, but practicaly 100% is I route through HostNexus (even originating IP from here!). AOL/Hotmail, however, are the other way round.

At my previous job, mail regularly failed to arrive without any explanation. Not sure where the block was, although our IT department were not exactly hot (and I've now left there). But they had their own SMTP and IP for sending mail. They also got blacklisted - and they are not an organisation to send spam. It's a joke - any not totally their fault.

It's really is swings and roundabouts. I don't think there is any "luck" until e-mail protocols are improved such that spammers can be more easily tracked and stopped. And that's going to take a major shift.

Dedicated e-mail servers (such as gmail / hotmail) etc are always going to have the most reliability in receiving and sending as that's what they do. But even if you run your own SMTP server, expect it blocked, or so overwhelmed with SPAM that you filter legit e-mails by mistake.