Incredimail Letters branded Spam

[incred]

My site www.incredimail-letters.co.uk provided an assortment of themed incredimail letters for download, not unlike the other 50,000+ sites around the world, for anyone unfamiliar with incredimail it allows you to add images to the background of an email, its fun, harmless and with over 10 million copies of the Incredimail program sold, its also popular.


I have been creating the background images for over three years and have allowed visitors to my website to download them if they wish. On some of the letters is a small link back to my website to encourage more visitors, some of the letters has the link back to my site from the images themselves not as a text link.


This is where a problem has arisen? Hostgator in their wisdom have deemed this link back to my website as SPAM, they informed me that my site has been used for bulk e-mailing and as a result have suspended my account and informed me that they will no longer host my website.


I had no mailing list on the site, no email signup before you can download, and nowhere else visitors could leave their email apart from a contact page for questions.


I was not informed by Hostgator that their was a problem, nor was I informed by Hostgator that they had suspended my web site, it was only when i tried to login to the site myself and was unable to, after trying to speak to live support who would tell me nothing other than to contact sales. The email I received back was short and blunt "Your site keeps spamming. You will need a dedicated server for this type of activity."


I wrote again, there must be some mistake? could they send me details of the "type of activity" or details as to the "bulk e-mailing" I explained in detail as to my site, the incredimail program and more, but unfortunately the reply was just as short and blunt "You might not be spamming yourself but when they use your images it is just as if you’re spamming. I'm sorry to say we cannot host the site any longer."


And this is how it ended; I cannot see how this type of message can be construed as SPAM, just because the email is in html not plain text and has a link back to my site? Is this not the same as thousands of companies sending their own graphics and links within an email? I asked Hostgator for ftp and control panel access so that I could download my site and all relevant files, they gave me a link to a control panel backup they had generated and said that is all I need.


The outcome is I need a new hosting company that are not so blunt and have a support department that can see things in other colours than black and white! Or no hang on! I can stay with Hostgator so long as I upgrade my account to a dedicated server.


Ah, then it all comes down to money after all?

[GatorBrent]

We choose not to host the site, if you wish for it to be hosted with us it will need a dedicated due to the problems we found it to cause with system performance and issues from users spamming. Has nothing to do with money if it did we would delete this post and ban you. Negative threads lose $

[incred]

"problems we found it to cause with system performance"


Rubbish, how can a site displaying thumbnails from 1 mysql database with a download link create server performance problems?


"Has nothing to do with money if it did we would delete this post and ban you."


Now that's hardly a helpful statement for Hostgator support Brent is it? If this issue was about money instead of leaving this thread your reaction would have been to delete it and ban me from expressing my opinion!


Maybe if I had received a simple e-mail explaining what was going to happen I could have removed the site within 24hrs and left a single page explaining to visitors and members alike that I am changing servers and the site would be offline for a week or so? Instead of going about it this way.


A little courtesy still counts for something in my book.