Problems with hostel business email

[HostelTraveler]

Do you have problems receiving important email for your business? You need to carefully evaluate the email service you are using. Here's why you should never use free email services for your business or even important personal transactions. Read more here:

Email Do's and Don'ts for your business

How come I don't receive confirmation emails

[ifij775]

Captain Obvious called and left you a message.

[hosteltrail.com]

Just out of interest, has anyone been experiencing any problems getting messages through to Hotmail these days?

I've been managing a large number of domains for hostel managers - some of the domains are set up as mailboxes, others have email forwarding.

The email forwarding in particular is not getting through eg. yourname@yourdomain.com is set to forward to anothername@hotmail.com but it simply doesn't arrive. Worrying still is the fact that no "Mailer-daemon" arrives in the domain and so you would assume that it has arrived...it just kinda disappears.

On another occasion last week, one of our clients who also has forwarding told us that when people try to send a mail to his company@domain.com, a reply comes back from hotmail saying the ISP has a bad reputation and can't allow the message through.?!!?

Yet another reason to switch to Gmail's domain management.

[Hostels]

Email can get blocked for a variety of reasons. If the mail server is on shared hosting and another customer is spamming, all the customers on that IP address are flagged as spam...

IMHO, Hotmail is not a good choice for email. I've had that blocking problem a couple of times where I couldn't send any email to people who used Hotmail. Better to use the hosting company's IMAP server and download email with Thunderbird...

[Tinker's Station]

Originally Posted by ifij775

Captain Obvious called and left you a message.

My thoughts exactly. Why anybody would use someone other than the hosting company for their website (which often offers e-mail plans for free with hosting) is beyond me.

[mlit]

logon to you registrar (where you registered your domain. i.e: godaddy.com).
setup e-mail forwards there to gmail.com accounts. gmail handles spam very well, and it's easy to setup filters aswell. then setup your e-mail client (thunderbird, outlook or whatever client you use) to fetch your forwarded mail from gmail.com

[HostelTraveler]

The problem with this approach (forwarding to GMAIL) is when you want to reply to a customer or supplier email. Do you really want your customers to be receiving email from you from GMAIL? You then have the problem of the customer's spam filters blocking that email.

The best solution is always to use your own domain name and email from that domain.

Note for those using shared hosting !!! Even when you have your own domain name, and use email with your own domain name, your hosting company's mail is probably run on a separate server, along with a multitude of other email domains on the same IP address. This can still result in problems getting your mail if there are other spammers on the same domain.

Some might argue that the only solution is a dedicated server, with mail run on a dedicated IP with reverse DNS properly set up. Admittedly, this is not a cheap solution. For all other solutions, problems with sending and receiving mail will no doubt be a problem for years to come.

We have dealt with this problem for years. If anyone has questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Email Problems - Getting Your Mail Delivered

[HostelTraveler]

Originally Posted by Tinker's Station

Quote:
Originally Posted by ifij775
Captain Obvious called and left you a message.

My thoughts exactly. Why anybody would use someone other than the hosting company for their website (which often offers e-mail plans for free with hosting) is beyond me.

It may be obvious to some, but there are thousands of hostels and other small lodgings around the globe still using Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. for their businesses.

What is not obvious is that even those with their own domains, shared hosting still presents a problem to getting and receiving email. Among other reasons, this is because you cannot control your own SpamAssassin settings, RBLS, Whitelists, delivery quotas, and most importantly, the IP address your email is sent from. With shared hosting, when you send an email, it is not sent as your own domain name, but from the server's hostname and IP. Just send yourself an email, and check your headers.

These barriers are not obvious to at least 80% of hostel managers, and really can make a difference to your business.

[mlit]

Originally Posted by HostelTraveler

The problem with this approach (forwarding to GMAIL) is when you want to reply to a customer or supplier email. Do you really want your customers to be receiving email from you from GMAIL? Delivered[/URL]

ehrm ...
most e-mail clients has this neat little textbox where you put in 'mail from:' youname@yourdomain.com

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by HostelTraveler

The problem with this approach (forwarding to GMAIL) is when you want to reply to a customer or supplier email. Do you really want your customers to be receiving email from you from GMAIL? You then have the problem of the customer's spam filters blocking that email.

It's possible to use Gmail on your own domain name:
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

I don't use Gmail for my main email for privacy reasons, but you can set it up here:
http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new