Advantages of e-mail mailboxes over forwarding addresses
One of the features of our e-mail service is the ability to create e-mail forwarding aliases to forward messages from an address at your new Web site to existing e-mail account (AOL, Hotmail etc…). This is a useful feature if you need to receive e-mail from your new Web site and need to get it going quickly.
However, in the long term it’s better to use mailboxes on our servers (referred to as “POP mailboxes” on our setup screens, although they can also be accessed by IMAP or Webmail). In fact, one of the biggest advantages of having your own Web site and domain name is that you own it and all of its e-mail addresses. From our experience this is much better than being at the whim of a company that’s almost impossible to contact if you have trouble.
In fact, even if you decide to stop using us for your e-mail and Web hosting you can take your e-mail addresses with you when you leave. Another advantage is that it gives us complete control over your mail instead of making us the “middleman”. If you have any trouble, we can track your messages in our logs and diagnose the problem. If you forward mail to another company, it’s a bit like sending it into a black hole and hoping it comes out the other end. Unfortunately if something does go wrong there’s no guarantee that we would be able to contact someone at the other end who is willing to help.
So if you haven’t done so already, try creating a mailbox! It really is quick and easy and you can even use our Webmail system to check your messages. (We also have a new Web mail system in the pipeline based on Squirrelmail — advanced users can also install their own copy of Squirrelmail right now. Keep checking our blog for updates!)
on Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 9:09 pm (Pacific) Gwen Nicodemus wrote:
That’s all true; however, I like to have all my mail filtered through gmail. They archive everything and have a crazy large space limit, so I can search through old email anywhere, anytime.
on Friday, May 11, 2007 at 12:01 pm (Pacific) Robert Mathews (Chief Tiger) wrote:
Thanks Gwen! Yep, if there’s one thing Google knows how to do, it’s provide a good search interface. If you prefer to read mail via the Web, GMail is great for that.
We have some advantages over GMail (remember that you can use all 5 GB of your disk space with us for e-mail storage if you want, and most importantly, we provide support where GMail doesn’t), but we know that improving our outdated Webmail system to have a better interface (particularly for searching) is absolutely necessary. We’re working on it, and of course we’ll always give our customers the flexibility to either use our mail interface or forward it to any service they want — you’re in control.
on Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 6:45 am (Pacific) Michael Scully wrote:
I’m glad to know that you’re working to improve the webmail interface, because I’ve found it to be rather clunky.
I prefer to route my incoming mail through an alias to my EarthLink/Mindspring account to take advantage of the EarthLink anti-spam filtering system. All incoming mail is checked against three lists: (1) your address book, a.k.a. your “whitelist” (which can include individual e-mail addresses *and* domains); (2) your blacklist (of banned domains and addresses); and (3) EarthLink’s list of known spam domains and addresses (I believe they subscribe to some service for that). If the address or domain of the incoming mail is on your whitelist, the message goes straight to your inbox. If the address or domain of the incoming mail is on your blacklist, it gets deleted. If the address or domain of the incoming mail is on the list of known spammers, it goes into the “Known Spam” folder online (or deleted automatically, if you prefer).
If the address or domain of the incoming mail is not on any of those lists, it gets routed to the “Suspect Mail” folder. You have to check that folder periodically, and add the addresses of those senders to your address list.
The system is not bulletproof, but it is very effective. I love it.
I understand that Tiger Technologies does employ anti-spam filtering, but I would strongly prefer (and would feel better with) a system substantially identical to the one that EarthLink uses, with whitelist/blacklist/suspect filtering.
Michael Scully
(former satisfied Tiger Tech webhosting client who’s looking forward to becoming a client again very soon)
on Monday, May 14, 2007 at 3:15 pm (Pacific) Robert Mathews (Chief Tiger) wrote:
Michael: Yep, we’re working on improving our user-settable blacklist and whitelist support, too (we already use global blacklists and whitelists, of course, and some whitelisting happens automatically — for example, when you send a message to a certain address, replies from that address bypass many of our spam filter checks). We know there’s room for improvement in terms of giving our customers more control over the process and seeing what’s actually happening.
on Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 6:28 am (Pacific) LUMC webmaster wrote:
The mail service with its spam filtering and antivirus is very good. The mailing list configuration of MailMan is superb. The only piece that could stand some improvement is the webmail interface and the squirrelmail option may address this. My users on webmail would prefer not to have to enter the domain name as part of the logon.
on Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 3:25 am (Pacific) web mail help wrote:
You are right, the services with spam filtering is so good. Great job dude. keep posting.