Email Outgoing Rejected!-URGENT

[ramjet]

i'll throw in my vote for stable email, whatever it takes.
I figure its easy to explain to a customer how to do something differently, but really difficult to explain why they lost that contract etc due to their email disappearing.
The way i figure it is reliable website uptime, reliable email, good web statistics that is the core of what any customer wants- the rest is just extra-delicious icing.
Which is why i harp on about good stats a lot.

[admin]

Here is the issues with setting you guys on mail limits..

Cypher Plan it has a limit set as Mailbox quota 250 but no limit and no charges at this time. If I set the limit to price at even 0.01 right now some of these guys would have HUGE bills. because they went in and setup email account with like 500MB of space, heck I saw one the other day set to 32,000MB's..

You can see your mail space for your plan under Reseller Prices in your admin panel if you don't know where it is.

Thats how much comes with each plan, but becase of a bug H-Sphere had on billing users we just said the heck with it. Now from what I have seen this bug is now fixed.. But I can bet a lot of you guys will not like this options..

thecomputerpro, you have a great idea and that is how CPanel does it but H-Sphere splits it all up.. Here is the big downer for this.. Cypher Plan has 250MB of mail space the smallest mail box you can make is 1MB sinze its based on what you give out that means you could only have 250 1MB boxs or 125 2MB mailboxes but I think you see my point here..

I am open for ideas but the ideas also have to be able to work. I will be happy to tell you what will not work and what will work but at this time this is the best thing I can come up with unless you guys want to pay the piper.

[Brangwyn]

But I can bet a lot of you guys will not like this options..

Comes down to expectations, you've set one and can't blame us for that, regardless of the situation whats done is done, nowhere on your plan advertising pages does it state that the Mailbox quota is anything other than "unmetered". If someone purchased it then found it was 250Mb that could be cause for legal actions under false advertising.

The above is not a bitch at anyone or anything. We have an issue here and it's in everyones interest to resolve it.

Question: Brad, do you use your own mailserver for Vortech staff or is it sharing mail/mail1 as well ? I note from earlier posts that your own internal mail is perhaps close to 10,000 emails a day (I think you yourself stated you get like 5000 and I'm factoring in say a few thousand of those happen to also be copied to other Vortech staff and I've including an estimate there for trouble tickets too) could shifting this off the shared server not perhaps make some impact ? ..if I've guesstimated the figures wrong then my appologies in advance !!

edit: just thought of something else too, there may be value in you running your own Private server, many times we've discussed here about problems with emails and it not being sensible to then send an email out to all resellers advising of the problem as its just going to make matters worse (I totally agree with this) .. but if you had your own private server then this could be possible. Certainly resellers could further add to the congestion if they then mass mail their customers, but at least the resellers get a heads up that mail isn't working and aren't on the back foot so to speak when they start gettting complaints. Moving the forums here onto this new server also would remove some congestion (99% of the time the new topic or PM emails from this forum never even get to me anyway, I can only assume it was actually even sending them out)

[gadgetgal99]

I've liked the unmetered space. I do not think to keep it is too much to put a limit on the size of a file to avoid the mail server problems.

For explaining ftp to clients, demodemo has a set of tutorials if you don't think they can do it in IE.

[thecomputerpro]

admin,

I do see your point. What I find interesting is that people actuallty set their mailboxes with those space allocations!

Question, Hsphere bills on allocation not usage?

If on allocation, then hspere should really fix that (at least from the reseller standpoint) to be actuall usage. Which I would be sooooooooo for!

Stabilaty and reliability is the bottom line for me. Those who think that a 500mb email account is reasonable (let alone 32,000mb) need to re-evaluate their understanding of email usage.

Lastly, Cypher plan is $35/month.... A heck of a deal! Especially for what you give on it. 25 10mb email accounts is worth it. I see email alone for 10mb acounts run $20 a year! which equates to $41/mo ... So I realize the position your in and it may not require the drastic measures of changing you current plans which would then charge an outragous amount to certain peolpe, however, I want to point out that the closest I could come to the prices I see at Matrix was about $75/mo for the equivalent of your Cyper plan..... Imagine what you could do with the funds generated from just doubling your price on that plan... Let me see, a clustered server for each server in the hsphere cluster? or double the email servers to satisfy the demand?
OK, maybe that was a little much (speaking for the resellers) but please finish reading this post.


My point being that us as resellers need to be more proactive in educating our customers on best practices. My theory is this, show someone why they don't need you and they realize they need you that much more! By showing them the right ways to do things and the better ways to do things, they look to you as a valued asset they want to ask more help from. It works for me I think it can work for you too...

I like the fact that I can "rent" space on Matrix Servers for as little $$ as I am and still have service and support. But unlimited does not mean "unlimited" as it does cost something somewhere. As long as us resellers understand that then so be it, if not, then I would not blame matirx for "upping the ante".

[admin]

Brangwyn, its UNMETERED, not unlimited.. There is a big difference here.. Also every one has always had a 250MB limit.. The reason that limit was lifted was due to a bug H-Sphere had.. If every one wants to bitch about the setup I have in place now the 5MB limit and the 30 day limit on emails I would be mor ethen happy to lift all limits and in force the email limits.

These limits have always been set as I said before I would just make a plan change on the site and in H-Sphere. There is no legal issues with that as our TOS does cover this already. I am trying to work with you guys but it seems every one here wants every thing for nothing.. I am sorry but I am not going to have unstable systems for a few lazy people who can't tell there client how to FTP. Whats easyer " Hey you need to use FTP" or "oh sorry we lost all of your emails" I think you will pick number one..


ALso our emails do use mail.hsphere.cc but the problem we had was on mail1.hsphere.cc not mail. The load our emails put on the system is very very little..

[Brangwyn]

If every one wants to bitch about the setup

I clearly said I wasn't having a bitch actually.

Unmetered without any qualification anywhere might as well read unlimitered Brad, where can I see (prior to purchasing an account) that theres actualy a "soft limit" of 250Mb ? .. Sorry but writing contracts for Software Support, Maintenance and Provision is something I do as part of my day to day grind, so I do tend to get rather pedantic about wording sometimes.

[admin]

I Know, just trying toi clear every thing up and find something that may work for every one..

[Brangwyn]

No wurries, I know how hard it is trying to keep the vast majority happy sometimes.

Whats your main constraint with the mail servers currently ? is it diskspace or just overall utilisation ?

[admin]

overall utilisation, its not the space or bandwidth that is the issue here.. If it was that would be an easy fix. Because of the large number of customers we have then users send these large files it tends to make things up. THat also has to do with users getting that little pop-up box for passwords.. Because if a user is send a 20mb file there going to be sending for about 10min or so even with DSL. So its just tieing things up. We are adding 2 more mail servers this week and a huge mysql xeon server to try and help things out.

[bfriended]

I have a realtor that has to send pics of homes to clients. I think that 5mb is way to low.

The problem is not that there is a bug with H-Sphere, but that it is based on allocation, not usage. Once it is based on usage, then there will be no problem. But the 30 day rule, as well as the 5MB rule is a bad business idea. I am sure you will realize that though. It is not reasonable.

And to make this "rule" during all the instability that has been happening with the control panel, etc. does not make much sense.

Just my $.02.

Brian