Email Server Consistently Poor Service

[twohawks]

Dear Fellow Hostgator Hosting Clients,
I am very frustrated with email mal-functioning on puma since I opened my accounts with Hostgator in August of last year. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to deal with email problems on the server(s). I am really interested in other users experiences. I am very concerned about growing my business any further with this company considering the uncertain risk posed by seemingly consistently inconsistent behavior of the email system, and the seeming inability of the support staff to resonably and professionally address the problems. Below is an accounting of my most recent experience (still unresolved).

Anyone? (Everyone, please pitch in your 2cents here...)
Thank you in advance,
Rick // Twohawks
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Posted Support Issue (subject): [#XQD-672150]: Email Problems... again...
Hi,
I think we are once again having some email problems on the server.
My clients at "xxxxxxxxxxxx.com" and "yyyyyyyyyy.com".... email being sent from either one is not appearing at the inbox of the other. We are also concerned about emails sent to some other folks that have seemingly simply disappeared without a trace. I have checked their personal systems and can find nothing wrong as far as sending or retrieving email is concerned. I can find nothing untoward via whm. Is it possible 'xxxxxxxxxxx.com' and/or 'yyyyyyyyyyyyy.com', or possibly the virtual host 'zzzzz.net' has something corrupted again on/with the server somehow?
Please look into this and let me know, and please inform me of any changes you [may] make.
I HAVE PROVIDED YOU WITH ALL RELEVANT LOGINS, USERNAMES, and PASSWORDS BELOW to Cpanels, Emails, etc.

Other notes:
- email is not being bounced, so there are no daemon messages
- no changes have been made in long weeks to account for any changes in behavior (things were okay up until between a few days and two weeks ago (about when I started hearing intermittent complaints - but now its not intermittent)
- I had a ticket on this same thing twice before, the last one being "[HGSupport #RZD-34824-131]". at that time you first reported no problems, then upon my continuing complaint of the problems persisting hostgator finally sent me confirmation that you had to make adjustments to the server (and that fixed it), ....however, when I asked what those changes were that were needed and made I never received a reply, so I have no useful information that might help this time...
******So Would you please respectfully inform me of AND explain any changes you make so I can have a record of how this might be repaired for when this happens again.... because it has happened several times now, and it was always finally something hostgator had to correct [frustrating to say the least, and unacceptable if it keeps happening].*********

Following is the information you may require to be able to investigate this fully.
If you need anything else please email me back.
Thanks, Rick D / Twohawks
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1st response: Hello, We created test@xxxxxxxxxxx.com account with password test and we are able to receive mail at test@xxxxxxxxxxx.com from yahoo.com. Please check following header
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(and I am thinking, yeah, that's pretty competent, I mean if you don't know how to read...)
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So then I write back...
Please read my complaint again... explicitly, I am sending messages back and forth between email accounts of the mentioned sites ...to each other... and "some" are disappearing without a trace.
I apreciate the test you ran, but it is not addressing the problem as described.

Would you please check the accounts settings, especially email server related settings, and report back?
As well, as mentioned, this has happened

I have run the following tests, results as indicated (Please Observe Below). About 5 of the tests were successful within 2 minutes. The rest finally succeeded after up to 45 minutes! I have had my clients complain that emails have been experiencing delays of up to a whole day.
Why is it taking so long?
<snip ---- tests not included in the post, only to mention here that I setup send and receive tests including every possible combination of x to y and back, and included outside (of hostgator) email accounts ... a total of about 12 tests...) Although I told them all (for simplicity's sake) in fact almost all finally went through within 45imns, however, I still had a couple come through only by the next day (between 12 to 24 hours late!)
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They wrote me back...
2nd Response...
Hello,
The messages you marked as failed are showing up as deliverted as per the server logs. Please check :
(List Snipped but see ***below)....
I am checking the other mail logs. In the mean while, please confirm the reciept of the above mails.
Best Regards,
(name of support tech),
Systems Administrator & Level III Support,
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*********The tests they indicated were ones marked as successful in my last email.
I wrote them back today...
The messages you indicate were marked as successful already.
It took up to a day for all emails to process through.
This is a continuing problem... please check your server and advise.
Rick
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End of example

As stated above, I am very frustrated with email mal-functioning on puma since I opened my accounts with Hostgator in August of last year. I am really interested in other users experiences. I am very concerned about growing my business any further with this company considering the uncertain risk posed by seemingly consistently inconsistent behavior of the email system.

Anyone? (Everyone, please pitch in your 2cents here...)

[chaloupe]

If you need to go bigger, get a dedicated server. You will not be able to stay on a reseller for long when you need more space or more % usage of the server and get suspended. It is not a big thing to get enought client to pay the dedicated server. First, don't sell hosting for $1.00 for 1GB lol. Open your phone book of your local region and check for companywith website and call them to offer a better deal then they have. After a while you will get enough cash to go dedicated and don't have the problem of shared server that you are on at this point as a reseller.

This is my two cents: Get a dedicated box at HG. I did and everything work find.

Best regards,

[Serra]

Originally Posted by twohawks

I am very concerned about growing my business any further with this company considering the uncertain risk posed by seemingly consistently inconsistent behavior of the email system.

So, as I tell everyone, you can't grow a business on shared hosting. Shared hosting is for noobs who don't know any better and people who never want to have a "real" hosting business.

If you are truely conserned about it, you should dump shared hosting and get a dedicated box, either here or some place else.

The amount of time and effort I was putting into keeping my shared hosting account running properly was more than offset by the cost of my dedicated box.

[chaloupe]

True Serra!

I have to put far less time in making my dedi work then when I was on the reseller servers.

[newhall]

Originally Posted by Serra

So, as I tell everyone, you can't grow a business on shared hosting. Shared hosting is for noobs who don't know any better and people who never want to have a "real" hosting business.

If you are truely conserned about it, you should dump shared hosting and get a dedicated box, either here or some place else.

The amount of time and effort I was putting into keeping my shared hosting account running properly was more than offset by the cost of my dedicated box.

I'm getting tired of the same "advice" from you! Your solution is always the same "dedicated box", and most often not feasible for most of us resellers. You sound like a broken record.

For some of us with business and common sense, a more rational and reasonable growth plan is needed BEFORE we jump to a dedicated box. Hostgator needs to address that important niche and listen to many of us long-term customers who need better reliability and stability before migrating to $175/month hosting.

[twohawks]

I am very apreciative of folks responses here. Thank you, and keep it coming.

This is a short followup..
In working with support it seems the server logs indicate receipt and delivery in short order, although I cannot access certain emails for up to as long as a day for some as yet unknown reason, seemingly only could be to do with the server. I asked them to monitor and investigate how this can be happening. I have validated that the various tools and machines I use to check the server email are not malfunctioning and there are no problems on any client machines being used.

Anyway... although I can apreciate the urgence to move to a dedicated, what erks me is that the service I am invested in, and mind you I am processing a super-light load at this juncture, isn't performing as advertised. While dedicated must logically be more reliable, if I am being sold something advertised as having 99% uptime, and then I spend a huge percentage of time dealing with mal-functioning email issues, which effectively reduces this percentage, and costs me a lot of work and even faith from my clients, then I do not feel I am being served fairly or honestly. If it were advertised as 98% uptime, with somewhere between 70% to 85% reliable uptime of the email (which seems approx more realistic), then at least when/if I choose to invest in that I would not be doing so with an unrealistic expectation.

So to tell someone they should move to another service in order to enjoy more reliable performance, and not expect so much from this type of account, I feel is sorely misplaced. I feel I am apropriately responding to what I am told I am being sold. I certainly cannot sell a customer of mine a computer and tell them it will have an uptime of 99%, and then expect them to be happy with me after they find themselves calling me constantly because of malfunctions and crashes.

Doesn't that make plain sense?

[GatorBrent]

Do you have a ticket number with the problem going on in still?


Email is always the number 1 support issue for a few reasons...

It's basically one of the only things users need to setup on their own and because of this most people have email issues due to doing something incorrectly, spam filters etc.


Sometimes a server will have a mail issue but it's extremely rare. Puma hasn't had any issues that I've heard of. I also NEVER recommend anyone turn on spam assassin this can cause all types of mail issues.

[twohawks]

Hi GB, thanks for checking in...
...the ticket is the same one initially mentioned: #XQD-672150, and it appears to still be open. I intend to run some more tests and check in with clients again as I have time in the coming week. If the ticket is held open I will report there, if not I will probably resubmit.
Just fyi, if Hostgator keeps a record of support issues by client, you should be able to easily validate what I report regarding my prior support issues. I still have the email records here...
...where I claim support made changes on the server in response to a prior submission, that would be support # RZD-34824-131 in december. Seeing as how they reported making changes, and this solved my problems at the time, this would indicate there indeed has been at least one valid issue on puma, or with my account on it, but as I said, I could not get a response concerning what those changes were.

Also, as I reported here, I have made no relevant changes to email setups in these accounts in many months (probably since december actually), everything is pretty much default, excepting to have added a user here or there to an existing account.

Last note, up to december I was really experiencing a lot of trouble with email. Since then (the fix) I had been getting sporadic reports of lost and delayed emails, but did not push toward support again until recently when it appears its happening more often now and I may be able to reproduce and track it, and find out what the heck is going on.

Cheers,
Rick / Twohawks

[TeeJa]

Originally Posted by GatorBrent

I also NEVER recommend anyone turn on spam assassin this can cause all types of mail issues.

That's interesting????

I would loose half my clients if I didn't have spam assassin on, and spam box. Clients get 10 spams a day that get through and there on the phone, or Email letting me know.
One thing they don't want or have the time is to have to sift through 1000's of emails a day. I have 2 clients that get almost 2000 spams trapped each a day, and both will check there spam box when they have time, they told me that in the last 6 months, each has found only one email that was stopped by spam assassin which was good.
I clean out the spam boxes every week, it takes me about 3 min. I have my score set at 4.5 on all my accounts.

Most of my clients have had the same email addy for the last 8 to 10 years, with hundreds of contacts for there business, and to change there addy would be a potential loss of business. Where talking about 50 to 60 heavily used pop accounts.

I do not recommend turning on "trapper". That is a business killer.

[Serra]

I'm using mail scanner and it helps a lot. 60% of the messages that come into the server are simply dropped because they are spam. Plus it really helps with trouble shooting mail issues as I can search back and find messages.