Email Deliverability and Spam

May 1, 2008

 

There are a couple of trends in the management of email servers that have had a significant impact on email systems lately:

·         Spam is more prevalent than ever

·         There is a lack of technical standards in how to manage email servers and prevent spam

·         People are more and more dependent on email communication

The last issue on the list is the first I need to address. We are all more and more dependent on email. The bottom line is that our email must be reliable and available. Affinigent is dedicated to goal of providing an extremely reliable email service to our clients.

 

The increase in spam, along with an increasing demand by users that spam be eliminated has taxed many email systems. While handling the volume of spam is not a particularly challenging technical issue, dealing with the lack of standards across mail servers is becoming more difficult. There are definite email standards, but issues related to spam, spam lists, and other techniques that various email servers use to avoid spam are not standardized. As some of the large providers like Comcast, Bellsouth and others implement new anti spam techniques, specific issues tend to arise for each one of them. This is requiring increased support time on our part to keep the email flowing.

 

Our plans for email over the next 90 days include:

·         Upgrade and expand our email technology

·         Provide some enhanced anti spam options

·         Provide multiple levels of email service

·         Restructure our pricing

o   Separate email pricing from hosting pricing (if applicable)

o   Provide more choices for email levels of service

We expect to implement some of these changes as soon as June 1, 2008 and others over the summer months. You will be notified directly if there are changes that affect your account.

 

 

 

 

Don Bishop, President