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1. TRACING - Most email problems
or abuse/spam complaints are tracked by the IP address it originated
from (ie the header information of the email), and only your local
ISP will be able to link the end users IP address to a user as they
operate the radius server which allocates the IP address when they
connect to the internet. Although the mail server that sent the
email is also included this information is not always forwarded
and can be disguised/spoofed.
2.
DEPLOYMENT - The easiest and most reliable way
to limit which users can send email from your servers is to add
to your outgoing mail server the complete IP ranges that you own.
This means that only your own users (which you can control) and
not spammers can send email and you do not need to set up each and
every account manually (ie using smtp auth which is a user/password
for each user instead). Once set up new users can come and go and
no further work is needed each time.
3.
PERFORMANCE/RELIABILITY/SCALING - Very small providers
sometimes have the same users domain for sending and receiving as
they use something called 'SMTP after pop3' which means that if
you can collect you can also send however this is a very bad way
of doing it for a number of reasons.
'Firstly'
it can be harder to tell who is abusing a mail server if this happens
and 'Secondly' only very small operators would consider using the
same mail server for sending as receiving partly as separating the
processes increases reliability and partly due to the sheer volume
as larger operators (such as ourselves) not only use separate servers
but also multiple servers for each operation (for example the servers
you connect to for webmail/IMAP are not the same ones as the pop3
collection servers) and 'Thirdly' with clever spoofing you can spoof
the pop3 command and then still send mail/spam via the mail server
(not good!).
4.
EFFICIENCY (This is an important one)
When looking at sending data for efficiency and also reliability
it is much better to take the shortest route possible.
When
you send via your ISP:
Your mail goes from our own machine to the ISPs gateway and SMTP
server and straight from there to the recipient.
When
you send via your hosting company:
The email still goes to your own ISP's gateway, then into the hosting
companies gateway, then into the smtp mail server then back out
of the mail server then back out though the hosting companies SMTP
gateway then out through the hosting companies main gateway and
then onto the end user.
Which
when you think about it is a crazy way of sending email (a bit like
traveling from London to Bristol via Manchester!).
5.
Exceptions
There are however exceptions. For example roaming users that connect
via laptop and do not send large volumes of email may prefer to
pay a company to offer a single mail gateway that they can authenticate
to via a user/password (smtp auth).
Some
users may also wish to pay a premium to be able to use their own
dedicated IP address (ie they can only be black listed by their
own use) and also be able to create sub accounts for individual
users that can report or cap usage based on messages and/or bandwidth.
We offer a corporate account that can do this. However normally
we would recommend that you always send via your ISP.
Current
prices are as follows;
User
plans:
1 – SMTP Lite Gateway account (ie roaming
laptop user)
500 messages per month and 2GB of data transfer. £2.50 per
month + vat.
2 –
SMTP Standard Gateway account (ie broadband or office based
user)
1500 messages per month and 4GB of data transfer. £4.5 per
month + vat.
Corporate
plans:
1 – SMTP Corporate Gateway account
5000 messages per month 10GB of data transfer. £10 per month
+ vat.
A pack that includes
an additional 1000 messages and 2GB of data transfer can be added
to any of the above plans for £2 per month + vat.
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