This one's for people who know about how to host websites etc. I need a change.
For www.ePatientDave.com I'm using an inexpensive hosting company, GoDaddy, that has great customer service. I'm not thrilled by their using Danica Patrick as their spokesperson in a cheesy way, but I can tolerate it. They've got really good customer service: competent people on the phone with little or no hold time. Their technical web interface is a mess in my view, but they're willing to do everything for you over the phone.
I've registered my domain name with them, and my website lives on their computers. Other users have mentioned that their sites have gone down occasionally but it's working fine for me.
What's not working fine is the other service I buy from them: email hosting. The way they do it, my genuine emails look like spam or phishing to some filters - and that keeps me from reaching clients. Like, when I try to email anyone at the Mayo Clinic it gets rejected.
Another client, potentially my biggest ever, thought I had no interest. They called before giving up, and we discovered all 5 of my responses had gone into their spam folder for the same reason.
Here's the corker: when I called in to ask Godaddy about it, the well-meaning guy on the phone was naive enough to say, "Well, your email is legitimate - can't you tell the Mayo Clinic to change their security settings?"
Right. Uh-huh. No, I think it's time to get rid of you, Godaddy, and find a provider who understands email security issues.
Suggestions, anyone?
I'm willing to consider Gmail, but I don't know if it's industrial strength. Ideally I'd like a provider that lets me store virtually unlimited emails on the Web, so my staff can access them - but it's vital that I have a copy on my computer too, so I can read them offline.
Friday, July 2, 2010
I need a new email hosting company. Suggestions?
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Hey Dave:
ReplyDeleteI re-sell GoDaddy services via http://domscape.com and provide additional, i.e., personal, support to my clients who elect service. They have access to all GoDaddy services including online customer service.
You might consider transferring your domains to domscape.com and setting up your email via Google Apps. A fairly easy solution to implement, if I get your issue correctly.
Gregg
Hey Gregg! Are you saying yes I can do what I want using gmail, through Google Apps?
ReplyDeleteI just renewed my domains last week. But that's a trivial amount of money compared to the importance of the mail issue.
Email me if you want to discuss more.
p.s. As you probably figuredd out, the issue is that my mail client (Outlook Express) sends from secureserver.net, which doesn't match the FROM address (epatientdave.com), which causes some security filters to cry foul.
ReplyDeleteYeppers. Can do. Will email you l8tr.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI know exactly your pain Dave.
We help medical practices send out patient newsletters (patient information that absolutely needs to get to the patients' inbox and not spam folder), so we know exactly how to set up the email technology so that it will not get filtered by certain enterprise software used.
We manually set up strict settings for SPD and DomainKeys, both technologies that help to authenticate your email. Another point is that our cloud computing servers does not get blacklisted as low cost hosting providers often do.
Get your email provider to set up strict rules using these technologies:
SPD
SPF will specify which machines are authorized to send email from your domain(s). This means that only mail sent through this server will appear as valid mail from your domain(s) when the SPF records are checked.
DomainKeys
DomainKeys is an e-mail authentication system that allows for incoming mail to be checked against the server it was sent from to verify that the mail has not been modified. This ensures that messages are actually coming from the listed sender and allows abusive messages to be tracked with more ease.
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys
All the best,
Audun
www.foxepractice.com
With Google Apps Premier Edition you can get the secure Postini services. I'm wondering if they are HIPAA compliant? On the other hand, I think Google Sites look crappy, see my preliminary site http://goo.gl/tHix
ReplyDeleteMaybe you can only forward the mail in the Total DNS of Godaddy? I think you'll love GMail. I think they also provide IMAP which might work with Outlook Express?
Google Apps is officially not HIPAA compliant, Google have chosen not to make that assertion. However, that doesn't mean that they are not compliant (they probably are), they just don't want to commit.
ReplyDeleteAudun, congratulations, your suggestions on authentication are terrific.
ReplyDeleteAll, thanks for all your offers; friend Tom Iglehart of www.CareCommons.org has volunteered to help me stumble through the transition, perhaps even including the SPF and DomainKeys stuff.
Awesome help, folks. Thanks!
Glad to help!
ReplyDeleteIt can be quite tricky sometimes. Different hosting companies use different email systems.
Let me know if you run into any problems, perhaps I can at least answer some questions.
Audun