EXTREMELY slow to get emails :/

So far I find the SmarterMail beyond awful - i seem to have the following issues:

1. Mail takes up to 9 hours to get into my inbox - i've tested this with numerous users. Some emails come right in, others will come in at 9pm when the email itself was sent around noon time (that's NOT a connection issue)

2. I get a lot more winmail.dats now then I ever did (the old mail servers seemed to have no issues with these)

3. My mobile phone (Helio) used to be able to download emails no problem in the past, now I get emails and the content/body will be blank - these are short plain text emails but for some odd reason, about 1/4 of my emails show no text

I use my domain for email more than anything else - and this has just become unacceptable - (esp the 1st problem) - i've had the same person send me emails back to back and the first one took hours and the second one came right in :/

I'm going to start a trouble ticket with this as well - but i wanted to pop in here and see if other people have the same problem (and so far it sounds like they do)

 

Considering we've migrated more than 20,000 accounts/domains to SmarterMail so far, I think the number of issues you see here - and thatwe see in helpdesk -is very small. Mainly we see password issues related to the POP password reset, and greylisting issues (which could have something to do with your first complaint, by the way), but overall, our users have been very positive about the change.

No change is going to please everyone, and we'll do what we can to help out with any problems that you run in to. But to characterize it as if a lot of people have issues with SmarterMail is just not accurate.







mjp
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DiscountASP.NET

 

...Wow

Very impressive...Good job guys.

 

I've turned off Greylisting and mail now comes in speed wise (granted i've gone back to about 50 spams a day) - I do freelance work and waiting 8 hours for emails was just unacceptable - a note mentioning this would have been nice, i.e. if you are experiencing a delay in receiving emails, this is why...and this is how to disable it.

Also, I'm now receiving emails that were sent over a week ago. If their mail servers resending of an e-mail waited a long enough period of time, would the greylisting feature just treat it like spam every time? (i.e. if it only tried once every other day, would SmarterMail just think it was spam every time and never come in or is it smart enough to realize it's the same email?)

I know the winmail.dat is an outlook thing - but from what i've read some mail servers/clients have a better time dealing with it - this is a minor complaint.

As for my helio, it's set to pop3.domain.com and i've tried webmail.domain.com and it has the same results - some email bodies just show empty even when there's text in there. the same person is sending me email and some of their bodies have text, some do not. i get a lot of emails from any number of users with no text in the body (of course most of these have been spam so it's not an issue, but is when i get it from people i would like to see the email). with the last mail servers, my helio didn't seem to have any problems getting any emails.

 

We do mention greylisting in the KB. It's difficult to include all the possible information aboutSmarterMail in our migration or new account emails, so we have to try to strike a balance between readability and information. That's always difficult. If an email is too long, people will not read it, that's just the way it is.

As for SmarterMail accepting a re-tried message, it is not based on spam probability, it is based on the IP address. The first time the message comes in, the IP address is logged. If the retry comes from the same IP, the message is accepted. If the IP is different, it will be deferred again (the sending server will be told, "try again"). So potentially, if the sender uses a lot of different IP addresses, the delay can be longer, though I've never seen it take a week (!).

For that reason, we do not greylist email that comes from large providers that we know have hundreds (or thousands) of outgoing servers, such as Hotmail, Gmail, etc. The retries of those messages will almost always come from a different IP.




mjp
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DiscountASP.NET

 

Just an FYI, I've changed hosting/email services to another company and they use the same mail server software but apparently they have it set up A LOT better.

I don't have greylisting turned on yet I receive about 1 junk mail per day instead of the 40 I was receiving here and without the slow down of your greylisting feature. I also have more control at 'weighing' emails (i.e. if it's from .jp it receives a rating of 30, from .ru it gets a rating of 30, and any email over a 'score' of 50 is treated as junk mail).

'We do mention greylisting in the KB.'

this is how it's mentioned:

'There is also a checkbox on this page; 'Bypass Greylisting' will disable greylisting for the account. We strongly recommend that you leave that box unchecked and do NOT bypass greylisting, as it is a very effective spam reduction tool.'

That tells me nothing of how you treated emails by blocking all incoming mail on initial delivery. You actually have to click on another link to find out this information. The first search I did for the problem led to this post:

http://community.discountasp.net/default.aspx?f=32&m=19962

Where the final comment made (by a moderator) 'Mail downloading speed is unrelated to greylisting' - I'm guessing they mean the actual time to download a message once it's in you queue, but the entire post is about the bounce back issue and this line is easily misread as saying 'if your mail isn't coming in, it's unrelated to greylisting'

I was disappointed by the mail switch over and I'm shocked more of your customers don't have the same issue I've had (maybe since I've had the same email address for over 10 years I'm on a lot more spam lists). I've changed companies but due to your lousy policy still get to pay you for the next year (BS with the Denial of Service attacks you've had which blocked my access for a few days and then these email issues).

I would hope you re-examine the way you have set up SmaterMail, there are better ways than the way you currently have it configured.

 

With your set up of SmarterMail and greylisting turned off I received approximately 40 junk emails a day. If I turned on greylisting, I would stop receive most junk mail (few would still get through) but it would take up to 6 hours to receive emails from friends/clients/co-workers.

With a different SmarterMail set up with a different provider, with greylisting turned off, I receive approximately 1 junk email a day and receive non-junk email immediately.

If you feel your system is tuned to perfection, I would tend to disagree. I've been doing web development for over 12 years and this situation was the first I heard of receiving emails six plus hours after they've been sent in a manner to combat spam. Having been with multiple providers through the years, I've never experienced this or experienced this with any clients I've dealt with. Having now switched providers who also use SmarterMail and not having the same issue, tells me you may want to check the way your system is configured. Just a note as well, the new email provider users the Professional Version (vs the Enterprise, which should have a stronger configuration but I see more options with the Professional version than the Enterprise) - so I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it.

Maybe my case is an isolated incident, a lot of my delays came from the mit.edu domain (i would assume not a very heavy source of spam), all I can do it just offer a recommendation to re-examine your mail server set up.

 

Youraccount isn't even canceled. If you want a refund you'll have to cancel.

mjp
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DiscountASP.NET