Forum Moderators: phranque
I have had several different hosts over the past few years. All have been on a shared server and prices ranged from $8 to $25 a month.
I've been with my current host for around 6 months and i have no major complaints. However, recently my emails to people with yahoo accounts, and various others have been blocked due to spam. I have never sent spam.
My site sells download products and for customers to not receive their emails is a major problem. I was therefore thinking of switching to a dedicated server.
I've had a look around and seen prices for $80+ a month (managed - as I'm not hot on server configurations, etc). As my site doesn't have massive traffic at the moment, so I can go with the cheaper options. However, what really interests me is that i would get a dedicated IP address. This should help a great deal.
Is there anything I am overlooking? Should I just switch to another shared hosting service? Is is worth the extra money?
I would really value some input from other peoples experience with dedicated servers.
Thanks,
Tim
If I understand you, your main concern is outbound emailing via a dedicated IP. That should be possible for much less than the price of a dedicated server. Search on google for something like "SMTP relay hosting". Look for a provider that offers a dedicated outgoing IP. Some changes in your (PHP?) scripts are necessary to use the SMTP relay as a smarthost. All receivers of emails will now think that the SMTP relay is the origin of your emails and as long as this IP doesn't appear in IP blacklists, you will be fairly safe.
Another, in-between option would be to get a VPS. This gives you root access to a virtual machine. Do check on what fraction of CPU% you are getting, and if this is hard-limited. A VPS always comes with a dedicated IP address, and it is usually possible to add additional ones.
And, as mentioned above, consider outsourcing your mail to a different provider.
I think way too often, webmasters do not realize that they can get services ala-carte, and it often is advantageous to do so. You do NOT have to get your: domain registration, DNS, web hosting, email hosting, etc. etc. from the same place.
Cheers,
Tim
.... recently my emails to people with yahoo accounts, and various others have been blocked due to spam. ... I was therefore thinking of switching to a dedicated server. ....Is is worth the extra money?
One of my loyal customers has **three** dedicated servers for his site: a web server, a mysql server, and a dedicated mail server.
First, a dedicated server will do **nothing** to prevent your emails from being filtered. Although I'm no expert, there are patterns in the email and the mail's origin that kick off the filters. If your server is hosted with the same service, using the same network origin (guys what's the definition I'm grasping for here? :-) ), chances are good a dedicated server will not help you here.
I can tell you this is still a problem for him. We pore through the mail logs and guess what mail attempts fail the most? Not just Any Old Location . . .
A dedicated server is only really worth the extra cost if your site services are intense to the point that shared domain hosting interferes with your (or other hosted domains) speed or functioning. In this customer's case, he has a customer base of over 4500 members, and a valid opt-in contact base in three databases, from 400-600 thousand records each. This may not seem like much, but there are various functions - image hosting and resizing, member pages, and the biggie, large emailings, that demand too much of shared hosting.
So a dedicated server is not likely to help you much for the filters. A more effective method is awareness, inform your customers of the potential problem with their accounts and have then set their filter preferences accordingly (it's up to you to figure out how to force them to read. :-) )
Sign up for a Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL account to test your changes. 15 minutes of changes resulted in our forum registration confirmation emails getting through AOL without any further problems.
I have looked into SMTP relay hosting and it’s a cheap option. However, I’m not too sure how it would work since most of the emails I send are generated from my shopping cart script. I currently use Click Cart Pro (Perl) but may soon be switching to X Cart (PHP). I also send emails via MS Outlook, but if the relay hosting doesn’t support the shopping cart generated emails then it wouldn’t really be worth it.
Jimbeetle,
I have been in contact with my hosting support. They say they have fixed the problem with Yahoo. They said:
“The server did not know how to resolve the yahoo domain, this has now been corrected and it is sending mail to yahoo.”
“I have spoken to comcast and requested they delist our IP address, this usualy takes 27 hours”
Motorhaven,
I have no idea what an Spf DNS record is or how I can get one. But I will look into it, thanks.
It seems I was a bit quick to think about dedicated hosting. It seems my website is not the kind which requires dedicated hosting. I guess I just thought it would resolve the email issues and also speed up the website.
One thing I still am not too sure about is a dedicated IP address. I can get a dedicated IP address from my broadband provider. Would this mean the emails I send from Outlook would use that IP address, or would this be the website hosts assigned IP address? I assume it would be the hosts IP. If anyone could clear that up, I’d be grateful.
Thanks for all your help. I will be looking into all these ideas and hopefully the email situation will improve.
Cheers,
Tim
If your site is running on Windows, you can add the following line to the php.ini file. This causes PHP to connect directly to a remote relay server for sending mail. Unfortunately this option is not available on unix PHP implementations.
SMTP = smtp.example.com
One thing I still am not too sure about is a dedicated IP address. I can get a dedicated IP address from my broadband provider.
You mean the provider that brings the Internet to your home? That's not going to do you any good. First of all, many email "black lists" include the IP addresses of all major (home - not business) broadband providers. The thought is that you are provided an SMTP relay by your provider. If you aren't using it - and are sending mail directly - you must be up to no good. And that's 99% true - the SMTP relay servers have anti-spam features built-in. Spammers try to find providers that will let them send mail directly to get around this. As a result - all of Comcast's IP addresses, all of Cox's IP addresses, etc. are blocked by many.
Would this mean the emails I send from Outlook would use that IP address, or would this be the website hosts assigned IP address? I assume it would be the hosts IP.
None of the above. When you send mail from Outlook, it goes through your Internet Service Provider's SMTP relay server. This, of course, has nothing to do with your website, which is located elsewhere. Not sure why you would think mail sent from your home would go through your website.
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Depending on hwo your web host has set things up, you are likely either using an SMTP server running on the same machine as your server, or you are using an SMTP relay elsewhere at your host. There is certainly some way to designate where the mail goes, so that you can send it elsewhere, if that is the solution. I find it difficult to beleive that PHP would have this option on Windows and not on Linux. Depending on your scripts, though, that might not be the place to change it - for example, if you are using Perl scripts, this has nothing to do with PHP, and the server is probably designated in a configuration file for the script. (Which is a good place to look in any case.)
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An SPF record is an DNS record that lists the places you might send mail from. If a mail server gets mail claiming to be from you, but coming from somewhere else (not on the list), it can safely throw it away, assuming it is a forgery. If you don't HAVE an SPF record, some ISPs will discard your mail, while others will go ahead and pass it. It is obviouly safer to have an SPF record.
