Email Policy & Limitations

[hotdog]

Down side to sending out one at a time is you use more resources, especially if the details are coming from a database, you can easily loop the results (one query) but throttling the connection (hopefully) is closed and reopened each time, if it's not then you are prime target for hack attack. You also have to worry about the script timing out

Thing that peeves me off is the fact Hostgator wont tell anyone this stuff, me posting previous post may of stopped someone being suspended.
We are told to throttle emails but not how, where, why and other stuff that could get us in trouble.
Am sure there are lots of folks here that wouldn't know what a variable is, let alone a function or class.
I'd like to suggest a write up in the FAQ section

[bug]

Allrighty, I need to lay out my situation here because I'm just flat not understanding this at all and I really don't feel like getting suspended due to my own misunderstanding...sorry.

One of my clients sites has phplist installed on it, they have a subscription base of a little over 60 people currently. However, due to the nature of the site this number will be increasing over time, my estimate is about 150-200 max.

My other clients have mailing lists as well and I'm not 100% sure as to the size of them but they are rather popular sites so the mail could very well be an issue.

Am I going to need to tell them they need to "throttle" their list(s)? And how the heck do you go about doing that?

[NetHound]

I really don't have an issue with the mail policy, but what I do have an issue with is the action that would be taken should I inadvertantly violate one of the tos... I do my best to be informed about all the necessary technical issues, I want to provide excellent service to my clients... and it's MY reputation on the line... not hostgator's. If I had the expertise to manage my own server here at my house, I wouldn't be here! If I caused a problem on a server, would it be so terrible for Hostgator to let me know so I could fix the problem? Why immediate suspension? Kill the job and then let me fix it!

I'm so nervous about selling my hosting services to anyone for fear of suspension that I'm considering only staying here as long as I absolutely need to. When I have sufficient clients, I will probably be looking for dedicated service with another host, which saddens me but I have to think about my reputation and the level of service I can offer.

Christine
Net Hound Design

[hotdog]

Originally Posted by MyCollegePost.com

If I send out an email which the recipient is a string of email addresses sperated by the colon which is say 150 email long does this count toward the 200 limit or is this one email? What is the most people you can have in your recipient list?

150 in a string is 150 of 200, this would be the worst way to do it as the server will try send all 150 at the same time (in a second or two) which will bog down the server, using a delayed loop (send, wait, send, wait ...) is the better way to do it but if you have a big list can take hours and if it hangs you wont know where in the list it screwed up.

HG reckons phplist is the way to do it, as it can be throttled and I believe it displays the results. I'm to scared to try it as my newsletter list is 300 and don't want to be suspended for a screw up on their part (the code they suggested for phplist).

[GPG]

I run message boards through Invision, and within that there is a bulk mail feature for mailing members. The default setting for that is 50 emails per cycle, with a cycle being one minute, which would mean that following the default settings I'd breach the limit in no time! Additionally, some members have PM notifications, or thread reply notifications which are outwith my control, so even if I don't try to send or receive any emails of my own, I daren't set it to anything more than 2 emails per minute, which means it's impossible to use the email system to alert members to anything in a hurry.

I love many things about Hostgator, but the very strict email limit could be the thing that makes me look elsewhere. I currently have just 400 members on my forums, but I'd like to see that number increasing. With those numbers I'm well within my bandwidth and disc-storage allowance, but at least I'd have the option of upgrading to an more generous account if that wasn't enough. Would there be any way to upgrade our email allowance?

[Serra]

Originally Posted by GPG

With those numbers I'm well within my bandwidth and disc-storage allowance, but at least I'd have the option of upgrading to an more generous account if that wasn't enough. Would there be any way to upgrade our email allowance?

I have control over my email allowance and I have it set lower than HGs. The problem is that a new account sign up can, in a few minutes, get my server blacklisted all over the place. When the server gets blacklisted, that means that ALL of my customers can't email places like AT&T, AOL and many other destinations. This really hurts me and my customers.

Given the choice of supporting an account with a board or having my server off all of the blacklists, I have to say that the good of the many out weighes the good of the one.

The ultimate solution would be to have exim allow messages from some sites, but limit others. I've never seen support for that, but if it exists, I'd use it. I have customers I trust and new sign ups I'd really want to limit.

Of course, as you said, you can excape that by going semi-dedicated, which for less than $1000.00 a year means you can do whatever you want. Seems like a deal to me.

[NextHOST]

There is a message in here from hostagtor - if you crash the server you get suspended, if you dont crash teh server we dont care - well I sent out a newsletter to 600 recipients over 2.5 hours - and 377 (or thereabouts) messages got bounced with a message similar to this:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

<addressremoved>@hotmail.com
unrouteable mail domain "hotmail.com"

------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

So - I didnt crash the server - I almost stayed in there guidelines and instead of a message saying I sent too many messages in too little time I get the above cryptic message. Baloney.

Took support over an hour to tell me that this was an issue caused by too many emails. It really is IMHO a crap system and a CRAP policy.

[TeeJa]

Originally Posted by NextHOST

There is a message in here from hostagtor - if you crash the server you get suspended, if you dont crash teh server we dont care - well I sent out a newsletter to 600 recipients over 2.5 hours - and 377 (or thereabouts) messages got bounced with a message similar to this:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

<addressremoved>@hotmail.com
unrouteable mail domain "hotmail.com"

------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

So - I didnt crash the server - I almost stayed in there guidelines and instead of a message saying I sent too many messages in too little time I get the above cryptic message. Baloney.

Took support over an hour to tell me that this was an issue caused by too many emails. It really is IMHO a crap system and a CRAP policy.

If your just having a problem with hotmail,
I am on a dedicated, and I get this all the time and I have no such limitations. You might need to check to see if you have PTR in your dns settings?

[NextHOST]

No - I got it for 377 out of 600 odd addresses.

After several back and forths with support they told me that is what they do if you exceed the email usage policy...

There were over 300 different email domains.

Damian

[lynt]

I guess we could look at a client (us) side application that can do mass mailouts, a few can source addresses from a mySQL database and send it off.

I've thougth about this for a bit and I've decided to write a php script that sends 3 per minute, slowly drip feeding my hungry clients.

Cheers.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by NextHOST

There is a message in here from hostagtor - if you crash the server you get suspended, if you dont crash teh server we dont care - well I sent out a newsletter to 600 recipients over 2.5 hours

There is an upper limit on the number of messages you can send per hour. That is also posted here as well. You are also required to throttle your emails for mailing lists, also posted here.

Because of the problem of spam reports, you need to throttle your emails to avoid being suspended for spam reports, which would be far worse than bounces.

[Hadoken]

Originally Posted by WhiteWidow

The POP lock on 60 POP checks per hour (per e-mail address)...

Hello everybody,
Just to be sure, is that quote is correct ?

Thanks and have a great day

Best Regards,
Hadoken

[chaloupe]

It should be, never heard that it has change. You can also check the mail policies at http://www.hostgator.com/mailpolicy.shtml

Best regards,

[Hadoken]

Well,
Thanks for the answer .
I read the link you gave me and I am now confused with that :

Many of our servers have a 60 pop checks per hour limit per domain.

Hmmm so it's look like it's not per email adress but per domain...

If I set 25 differents emails (same domain) for 25 persons and they check their email every 15 minutes... it will not work because 25*4 = 100 pop check. So all the pop check after the 60th one will be ignored that's right ?

Best Regards
Hadoken

[chaloupe]

the first line is a 200 hourly email limit per domain with the mailman setup(newletter sending program...).

So it's a 60 pop check per hour per domain. But check with support to make sure on the server that you are that they really have the 60 pop check per hour or the 200... Yes it is quite confusing.

But checking email every 1 minutes is not really a good thing either, at night you are not there to take your email, so maybe 15 minutes all around the clock could do it. Just make good use and sense of this situation about taking email. 60 pop check works for almost everyone. If not for you, then you need maybe a dedicated server for more power and usage issue.

Best regards,

[Serra]

Originally Posted by chaloupe

the first line is a 200 hourly email limit per domain with the mailman setup(newletter sending program...).

So it's a 60 pop check per hour per domain. But check with support to make sure on the server that you are that they really have the 60 pop check per hour or the 200... Yes it is quite confusing.

The 200 email per hour limit is per domain, so if you have 10 users, they can each send 20 emails per hour. That is actually very heavy usage.


The 60 checks per hour is per user. No single user can check mail more than 60 times in an hour. POP hits use a lot of processor juice, so they need to be limited. I check my pop ever 2 minutes, but its my server, so I don't really mind. I suggest my clients check ever 5 minutes. Keep in mind that you can avoid pop hits by using IMAP.

[chaloupe]

Thanks for correcting me on the 200 pops per hour limit Serra.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by chaloupe

Thanks for correcting me on the 200 pops per hour limit Serra.

I've also heard that the 200 limit isn't the same on all of the servers. Someone told me that it may be slightly higher on some servers. The problem is that they drop any messages above the limit (to fool spammers) so it is impossible to know exactly how many messages went.

On YOUR server, what do you have your limit set to? One of the big mistakes I made was not setting a limit and it got my server black listed when I first got it. I set the limit to 250 and haven't had any problems, except a customer has a list with about 300 on it now and I had to up my limit.

[Hadoken]

Thanks for the answers both of you.
I understand now
So if it's a 60 check per user, there will be never problem because I suggest to check every 10 min minimum.
Now, if the needs really growth, we'll take the IMAP solution. Thank you Serra about that, I didn't knew that solution could avoid the pop check limit, well I didn't knew that much about the IMAP too (google helped me )

Have a nice day everybody,
Thanks a lot.

Best Regards,
Hadoken.

[chaloupe]

Here's my info:

- The maximum each domain can send out per hour : 200
- The number of times users are allowed to check their mail using pop3 per hour. : 60

[kmaw]

Originally Posted by Serra

Keep in mind that you can avoid pop hits by using IMAP.

IMAP... live it.. love it...

[gdwoods]

I'm trying to learn more about imap. Wikipedia says:

"Disadvantages of IMAP

• IMAP is a very heavy and complicated protocol. Implementing IMAP is more difficult and error-prone than implementing POP3 for both client and server implementations. This can result in security issues which are less likely under POP3.

• IMAP generally results in higher server loads than POP3, resulting in higher costs for ISPs and end users.

• Server side searches can potentially use lots of server resources when searching massive mailboxes. "

Can anyone elaborate on this?

Thanks!

[Serra]

Originally Posted by gdwoods

• and complicated protocol. Implementing IMAP is more difficult and error-prone than implementing POP3 for both client and server implementations. This can result in security issues which are less likely under POP3.

This is true, users often have more trouble setting up IMAP than they do setup up a POP3 account. From your point of view, its already setup on the server, so no worries.

Originally Posted by gdwoods

• IMAP generally results in higher server loads than POP3, resulting in higher costs for ISPs and end users.

That could be true, but limiting the max box size of users will offset the costs. Also, I don't see IMAP on my usage graph, so it can't be taking that much resources.

Originally Posted by gdwoods

• Server side searches can potentially use lots of server resources when searching massive mailboxes. "

Again, limited by mailbox/account size. I've been using IMAP for some time, and my IMAP accounts do not have more CPU usage than my POP3 accounts.

Overall, IMAP's downside is that mail is store on the server and not locally. That cause space to be used and people can fill up two or three hunderd mg of mail fairly quickly.

[cjnoyes]

I have a suggestion that I use with IMAP vs POP3 that mitigates a lot of the issues. Only accounts that I need to access from more than one place, i.e. work and home do I keep and and access from IMAP accounts. I have filters that take stuff that are not urgent and forward them to other accounts that I only pick up with POP3 and if I have stuff that I wish to keep i.e. archival stuff, I move it to one of my local folders which minimizes the stuff that imap needs to deal with. I also think that outlook express caches imap mail locally so it doesn't download the message repeatedly

[famous58]

Let's get back on topic here shall we....

A reasonable and responsible individual will not crash the server, nor send out spam. The HG reply did not say anything about spam notifications, only crashing the server (so let's clarify, do we get suspended for spam notifications or crashing the server?).

What about this scenario:

I'm hosting someone that gets hacked, on a shared server, by a spammer. That spammer sends out a but load of emails and crashes the server. Am I now suspended? Is my client suspended?

It seems that this policy is in place to be able to suspend people for abuse, but I can't believe that HG would arbitrarily suspend someone who is a good customer with a clean track record who may get hacked or might have a problem once that could cause an issue (and if they do suspend would reinstate as soon as the problem was rectified).

If I'm wrong, however, I have a feeling that HG will lose clients over this.