How is Email with hostgator? I'm very concerned!

[dave-dave]

Hello,
Our business has about eight employees who rely on email every day from 7 am to 8 pm. We send any where from 5-30 emails per hour and receive double, triple and even more emails. A server being down or, as I just found out by searching through user reviews, blacklisting could be a big problem.

I'm just wondering if you have had any good or bad experiences with email (pop3, and webmail) and really what blacklist is and how it would effect us and honestly, how much does this occur.

Do my requirements really fit a hostgator baby or hatchling plan?

Thank you very much staff and users for your comments, reviews and suggestions.

P.S. we also plan on using hostgator for an online presence (~350 page views per month), html pages and several images. Total site should not be more than 1GB emails should not take up more than 8GB tops, in one years time.

[gtgeorge]

While HG is one of the best hosts I have found, I feel strongly that if your business is email dependant, you should look into a dedicated option or a service that specializes in email. Any shared server is risky when your business depends on it.

[dave-dave]

Unfortunately, dedicated and VPS solutions are far out of the question due to the price. That would be a major step down from our previous host, prohosting which we've been happy with in every way in terms of hosting, but feel that hostgator would be a step up in quality, support, and reliability.

we're just wondering if hostgator would be right for email...

[chaloupe]

Yep, any shared server is risky when your business depends on it.

For advanced solution, you can also go for a VPS instead of a Dedicated Server if budget is critical.

HG is still the best for me!

[gtgeorge]

Originally Posted by dave-dave

Unfortunately, dedicated and VPS solutions are far out of the question due to the price. That would be a major step down from our previous host, prohosting which we've been happy with in every way in terms of hosting, but feel that hostgator would be a step up in quality, support, and reliability.

we're just wondering if hostgator would be right for email...

You could use a separate service. There are a couple users here that can recommend an alternative for email.

Edit: Forgot to add that I believe you will find HG a step up from most other services and they will at least work to keep blacklisting down and get it removed when it occurs. They are definately proactive

[slapshotw]

One thing you should consider are backup mx records. This way, if the HG server ever goes down, you won't lose email. You can get them fairly cheaply along (less than $50/year) from many providers, like easydns.com (who I use). These won't help with blacklists, which only affect outgoing mail and are much less of a problem if you use your ISP's smtp servers. They will insure the server going down doesn't mean losing email though.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by dave-dave

Hello,
Our business has about eight employees who rely on email every day from 7 am to 8 pm. We send any where from 5-30 emails per hour and receive double, triple and even more emails. A server being down or, as I just found out by searching through user reviews, blacklisting could be a big problem.

Originally Posted by dave-dave

Unfortunately, dedicated and VPS solutions are far out of the question due to the price. That would be a major step down from our previous host, prohosting which we've been happy with in every way in terms of hosting, but feel that hostgator would be a step up in quality, support, and reliability.

I'd like to politely say that several things here don't make sense.

Unless all eight employees are unpaid, the cost of a dedicated server is less per month than one 10-hr a week employee earning minimum wage.

If your business depends on email, it makes as little sense to skimp on this cost as running your business phone off a cord surreptitiously plugged into the pay phone on the corner.

As for the second statement, "step down..." "happy in every way" "step up" seem to be incongruous with each other.

[chaloupe]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

it makes as little sense to skimp on this cost as running your business phone off a cord surreptitiously plugged into the pay phone on the corner.

I really like that quote!

[slapshotw]

Seriously....could you imagine somebody arguing that their $10/month phone plan wasn't working well enough for their 8 employee office? Especially if they said they rely on it?

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by chaloupe

I really like that quote!

Originally Posted by slapshotw

Seriously....could you imagine somebody arguing that their $10/month phone plan wasn't working well enough for their 8 employee office? Especially if they said they rely on it?

I'm picturing the budget electric service--one of those really fancy extension cords plugged into a light fixture in the hallway.

A clarification might be in order, lest anybody think this is a kneejerk get-a-dedi reaction.

Lots of 8-employee businesses wouldn't need a dedi. Lots of tiny (one-person) startup businesses, even those based on IT or internet stuff, could probably improvise for a little while without a dedi.

But something is wrong somewhere for an 8-employee business open 13 hours a day that "relies on email" to even think about hitching it to a $10 shared plan.

[joemailey]

I'd agree here 8employee company should have there own server if they rely on e-mail.

And if the service your with at the min is prefect y change ?

"if it ain't broke don't fix it" - Thats what comes to mind with stuff like this.

If you rely on soomething a lot, Pay the money for it. Cheap and cheerful is not the way to go when it comes to I.T related things.

[rota919]

Come on people, Dave did not ask for an analysis of his business, he is looking answers. ;_

Originally Posted by dave-dave

I'm just wondering if you have had any good or bad experiences with email (pop3, and webmail) and really what blacklist is and how it would effect us and honestly, how much does this occur.

Email, POP or webmail on a shared plan is as good or bad as any other shared hosting plan.
With a lot of websites sharing the same server there is always a change that someone on the server will send out an email and some receiver will report the sender for spam. If reported the IP address for the sending server will be listed on a blacklist for spamming. That means the ISP that are using blacklists to filter email will filter out all mail coming from that server.

This is what make HG better than any other host, they work pro-actively on implementing solutions to prevent spam.
HG has 100's of servers and looking at the "General Announcement" forum you will see it does not happen that often. When it does happen HG work there backsides of to try and rectify the problem as soon as possible.

With all that said and done I still have to agree with the rest of the replies in that if your business rely on email you need a different solution than a shared server. No matter what hosting company you uses.

[joemailey]

I've not had any issue's yet, but i use it for personal use just, judging by what i've read the email is going down hill here. lol

not for business in my eyes which is what everyone is telling him.

[rota919]

The way I interpret the statistics, that we don't really have, is that if a hosting company have 100 servers the changes of one being blacklisted is good.

If a hosting company only have 10 servers then the changes of one being blacklisted are only 10% compared to the bigger host.

[minterest]

Hi,

I suggest you go for Google's Gmail for domain service.. its absolutely reliable and FREEE.

[chaloupe]

When I was on the reseller plans, we were using our ISP's SMTP server to send mail but receiving was never a problem as I can remember.

Best Regards,

[dave-dave]

We use email more as a casual business email. email being down for more than 30-45 minutes is bad. and we obviously don't want our email being marked as spam. you must understand that with most small businesses, money is a fragile thing. we don't have $150 dollars to toss around per month JUST for a email server to be managed. We've been with prohosting and happy with it for a while. we figured since we're getting a new website, it might be an upgrade to go with a more current webhost.

Our current host is shared and email has been fine. But support is off on the weekend, the basic plan costs $18/month and gives you 1GB of diskspace and 30gb of transfer. Since we're slowly growing, this amount is slowly being taken up. 8 employees sharing 1gb of diskspace is getting tight. We're not asking for a critique on our business or how we run it. we're asking if anyone here has had any experience (good or bad) with hostgator's email service.

[chaloupe]

Originally Posted by dave-dave

We're not asking for a critique on our business or how we run it. we're asking if anyone here has had any experience (good or bad) with hostgator's email service.

You are right about the critique. Here's my answer to your question:

We never had issue about our emails while with Hostgator.

They are also working on a solution to prevent shared servers to be on the blacklist I think by giving some IP configurations options by a mail server. Let me get this post, it is somewhere in the forums.

Best Regards,

[chaloupe]

Here you go:

http://forums.hostgator.com/showthread.php?t=21041

Best Regards,