Author Topic: E-mail problems / hosting  (Read 3458 times)

bigosaur

  • Citizens
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 520
  • Karma: 2
    • View Profile
    • Bigosaur
    • Awards
E-mail problems / hosting
« on: September 02, 2017, 09:05:05 AM »
I put SoaW in Updates again: http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5312

I completely missed that. I just checked, and for some reason google e-mail servers categorized the Exilian "News & June Elections" e-mail message as spam.

I checked the sending email server IP (31.170.120.50) against some spam databases and it is listed (for example in SORBS: http://www.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml). So, it's possible that e-mail doesn't go through to everyone or gets classified as spam. Did the recent webhost migration also include changing the e-mail sending servers?

Does Exilian have a dedicated server or it's using shared hosting? If it's the former, maybe something could be done to remove the IP listing.


Jubal

  • Megadux
    Executive Officer
  • Posts: 35493
  • Karma: 140
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: E-mail problems / hosting
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2017, 03:03:51 PM »
Oh dear :/ I was wondering why we were getting so little response to the mailing list, that's rather worrying. And yes, we're now sending from the VidaHost mail servers, but we're on cloud hosting so it'll all be shared unfortunately. What a pain, not sure what to do about that.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

bigosaur

  • Citizens
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 520
  • Karma: 2
    • View Profile
    • Bigosaur
    • Awards
Re: E-mail problems / hosting
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2017, 11:08:56 PM »
Oh dear :/ I was wondering why we were getting so little response to the mailing list, that's rather worrying. And yes, we're now sending from the VidaHost mail servers, but we're on cloud hosting so it'll all be shared unfortunately. What a pain, not sure what to do about that.

What are the monthly hosting costs? Perhaps renting a VPS from OVH or Hetzner would be a better idea, because Exilian would own an IP address then and it's easy to clear it from SPAM databases then because you know that you are the only one sending e-mails. OVH starts at $3.50/mo:

https://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps-ssd.xml

https://www.hetzner.com/virtual-server

I can help setting up the webserver, PHP, MySQL, etc. if needed so you get similar starting point like with shared hosting  :gandalfgrey: Of course, I don't know what all are the requirements...

Jubal

  • Megadux
    Executive Officer
  • Posts: 35493
  • Karma: 140
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: E-mail problems / hosting
« Reply #3 on: September 03, 2017, 05:43:10 PM »
We're currently paying about £4/month I think? I've been nervous about moving to a VPS mainly because I know I can't reliably solve tech problems/am not used to server-side work much. Our requirements - at the moment we need 2 or 3 MySQL databases, obviously decent uptime/bandwidth, not a huge amount of storage (under 1gb I think). Server moves are obviously quite a bit of work/need to be done very efficiently to avoid downtime, so I'm always nervous about doing them, but maybe it's something we should consider.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...

bigosaur

  • Citizens
    Voting Member
  • Posts: 520
  • Karma: 2
    • View Profile
    • Bigosaur
    • Awards
Re: E-mail problems / hosting
« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2017, 09:06:13 PM »
We're currently paying about £4/month I think? I've been nervous about moving to a VPS mainly because I know I can't reliably solve tech problems/am not used to server-side work much. Our requirements - at the moment we need 2 or 3 MySQL databases, obviously decent uptime/bandwidth, not a huge amount of storage (under 1gb I think). Server moves are obviously quite a bit of work/need to be done very efficiently to avoid downtime, so I'm always nervous about doing them, but maybe it's something we should consider.

Maybe some other alternative could be considered that would only solve the e-mail problem. Perhaps using some other way to send out e-mails? For example, you could get an account at MailChimp and use that to send out e-mails. It's completely free up to 2000 subscribers and 12000 e-mails a month and it's very reliable:

https://mailchimp.com/pricing/

You can also track stats - how many people open the e-mail and/or click some links inside.

Jubal

  • Megadux
    Executive Officer
  • Posts: 35493
  • Karma: 140
  • Awards Awarded for oustanding services to Exilian!
    • View Profile
    • Awards
Re: E-mail problems / hosting
« Reply #5 on: September 03, 2017, 09:15:02 PM »
Yeah, MailChimp is probably the best solution, I already use it for political emailing. I'll try setting an Exilian account up tomorrow.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...