[GTALUG] looking for a secondary mx service

[Steve Petrie, P.Eng.]

Hello Dave,

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Cramer via talk" <talk at gtalug.org>
To: "GTALUG" <talk at gtalug.org>
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 8:04 PM
Subject: [GTALUG] looking for a secondary mx service


>I have 4 domains that I need a secondary mx service for.
>
> Suggestions?

Not sure what you mean by " secondary" mx service, but if you're asking 
for suggestions for a good email hosting service, I can recommend 
SiteGround  www.siteground.com

* * *
* * *

I was using AT&T for many many years for my email hosting (inherited 
them when IBM sold off their email hosting service (ibmglobal.net) to 
AT&T.

Was never happy with AT&T. Some beautiful screw-ups ... Plus absurdly 
know-nothing AT&T technical "support" people.

Wanted for a long time to switch from my apetrie at attglobal.net email 
address to my own domain name apetrie at aspetrie.net  but was intimidated 
by the amount of work this would entail.

Then AT&T did me a huge favour, by announcing many months in advance, 
the planned termination of their existing attglobal.net email hosting 
service.

* * *
* * *

The upside of using one's own email domain name, of course, is that once 
it's set up, and all the work is done of: 1. informing your list of 
recipients, and 2. updating every place on the Internet, where you are 
registered using your email address as your identifier,

is that in the future, if you are unhappy with your email hosting 
service, you can switch to a new email hosting provider without having 
to go through all the work emtailed in changing the email address. 
Because, of course, the email address stays the same. You just point 
your MX records to the new service provider, and say "bye bye" to the 
old service provider.

* * *
* * *

Once AT&T announced their planned email service shutdown, I spent a huge 
amount of time researching email hosting service providers

I tested three different email hosting services (going to the trouble of 
setting up a test domain for each, and sending and receiving test 
messages) and walked way from every one, for one reason or another. 
Most;ly because of the lack of quality technical support. It's a jungle 
out there !! But you already know that.

I actually went to live production email operation with the second of 
these three providers, and used them for my production email for a few 
months. But I decided not to stay with them, because I didn't like the 
attitude of their tech support people. They were technically very 
competent, but seemed to take a confrontational approach to clients.

So I kept searching, and after almost giving up, I settled on 
www.siteground.com Made the switchover to SG on 2 July 2015. No regrets 
yet ...

* * *
* * *

SiteGround (SG) are actually focused on website hosting, not email 
hosting. But they happen to offer email hosting (SMTP, IMAP, POP3) as 
part of their web hosting packages. I haven't set up a website at SG 
yet, but I did create an FTP account on SG for someone I'm working with. 
That works fine, too.

I have been very happy with SG. Their technical support is excellent. 
Works through a good ticketing system. The staff are very knowledgeable 
and very responsive. Very literate, too. Always (so far) giving complete 
correct answers, using connected sentences. Nailed the usual startup 
problems very quickly.

The only times I have actually had recourse to SG tech support was: 1. 
during the original switchover to SG, 2. when an email I sent was 
rejected by the SG SMTP server, because it had more than 40 recipients, 
and 3. when I upgraded the SG hosting plan so I could send an email to 
more than 40 recipients.

The SG help pages and FAQ I have found to be useful. Love the CPANEL.

And of course the main thing -- never had any email service down time 
(yet) with SG.

* * *
* * *

SG are not the cheapest provider, but I long ago stopped looking for the 
cheapest service of any kind on the Internet. I'm very focused on value 
for money. And in my opinion, SG give excellent value for the money they 
charge.

Naturally, you will need to do your own research. SG don't do short-term 
deals. And if you go with SG, your results may differ ...

Hope this helps.

Steve

apetrie at aspetrie.net
(905) 847-3253

P.S. One rule I follow with hosting services. I always use a different 
provider for DNS hosting (in my case it's Namecheap), than for the 
Internet server (e.g. website, email, ftp) hosting.

If I run into a dispute with the (e.g. website, email, ftp) server 
hosting service, I don't want them to be able to cause me grief by 
holding my DNS registration setup to ransom. This split makes it a 
little more complicated (you don't get the same slick DNS integration, 
if you e.g. upgrade your hosting service plan, and this points you to a 
server with a different IP address).

But in my opinion, the complete independence of control over the DNS 
setup is well worth the extra complication.

>
> Dave Cramer
>


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