I remember going to a trade show in 1999 and there was this new service called Postini, and life as an email admin got a little better. Then Google bought them. Then they shut it down. While it lasted, customers loved it, we even charged an extra $1/month for it. That's probably the last time I got anything other than hate for doing email support.
I also remember signing up for the AOL feedback loop, where if they could email your admin every time they blocked a message as spam, they wouldn't block your whole domain or mailserver. I'm not sure this still exists. It was important because so many AOL users thought the way to unsubscribe from a list (or their uncles corny jokes) was to click on "Report as Spam". At the time we hosted mail for some churches, and they would have new members and visitors sign in and provide their email address which got added to the church mailing list. Lots of those people had AOL email, and would click on "Report as Spam" when they got email from the church. So much for crowd sourcing your spam filter. Most of our email accounts were free accounts for dialup customers. When we discontinued dialup (I think that was 17 years ago) we let people keep their email addresses for free, assuming within a year or two they would migrate to a mainstream email service like Gmail or Hotmail or iCloud mail. Some of those accounts are still active. We also have some WISP customers with legacy email accounts. A couple times I've had someone call and say I had an email address with you but closed it 10 years ago but I have an online account or some software or a game that uses that email address for authentication or password recovery, so I want to activate that email account again. Nope, not gonna do that. Pretexting scam anyone? -----Original Message----- From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Monday, January 19, 2026 6:55 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Hosted emails We don't spend much time on email either, yet we have the whole stack internally. Maybe two hours? -- Mike Hammett ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Jones" <[email protected]> To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2026 8:53:00 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Hosted emails Not at all I need help - help.emailsrvr.com my mails not getting there - more than 3 seconds support - submit a ticket to rackspace im not receiving email - more than 3 seconds support - submit a ticket spam issue - our host suspended you, change your password, take your pc and phones to get checked out, 2 more times you dont have email change password - powercode reset I deal with mail less than one hour out of the whole year. I dont maintain any firewall, i dont process any update, i dont have to migrate hardware - ever On Sun, Jan 18, 2026 at 10:55 AM Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote: If you're supporting the customer, whether you host the email or it's hosted elsewhere, it's largely the same. A lot of people don't implement systems with effective SPAM filtering (inbound or outbound) or proper rate limiting to reduce the risk of issues with the big guys. You'd think the big guys whitelist each other, but spend enough time on the mailops mailing list, and there's a wealth of issues. My Office 365 email gets blocked by someone often enough and long enough that it's annoying. Also, you're going to be supporting the customer's email issues, whether you offer email or not (because GMail doesn't have support), so you might as well own the situation. -- Mike Hammett ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Hohhof" < [email protected] > To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" < [email protected] > Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2026 10:43:25 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Hosted emails I don't pretend to speak for Steve, but I assume spam is one issue, people who want to call and have you curate their whitelist and blacklist and release messages from their quarantine. Or expect you to fix a recipient's mail server blocking their messages as spam. And those who don't understand POP vs IMAP vs webmail or getting messages on multiple devices, or you have to explain why they can't send email to johnsmith@gmail they have to put in the .com. Someone already mentioned that big providers tend to whitelist each other but your server is more likely to be blocked for spam. And this will happen when one of your not-so-tech-savvy customers gets their credentials hacked (again) and since they use the same password everywhere (of course) their credentials start getting used on your email system to send spam using SMTP-AUTH. The key to offering email service (like if you're Gmail) is not to have a phone number listed anywhere for people to call for support. But if you're an ISP that also offers email, they know where you live. And you are self-selecting for high maintenance users, the ones who don't need hand holding are on Gmail. The other category would be businesses with their own domains, that is a whole other set of pros and cons, but probably more worth pursuing. -----Original Message----- From: AF < [email protected] > On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2026 9:44 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group < [email protected] > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Hosted emails "Id sooner lick a badgers left ballsac than ever host email again." Why? -- Mike Hammett ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Jones" < [email protected] > To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" < [email protected] > Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2026 10:51:49 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Hosted emails Since the great Exchange, rack space hasn't been forthright with anything. I'm actually looking forward to the call with Zoho and they were originally just a due diligence contact. Id sooner lick a badgers left ballsac than ever host email again. On Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:50 PM Dev < [email protected] > wrote: We did our own Postfix servers for years and finally moved it third party, since all it does is attract hate when an email doesn’t get delivered for any number of reasons that all become your fault. Large providers pretty much can’t block Rackspace, and it “just works” so we don’t have to sweat delivery issues. Has Rackspace said why they suddenly feel the need to ream everyone? I’ll look into Zoho as well. > On 17 Jan 2026, at 10:18 AM, Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote: > > We still use our own server on our own network. They aren't hard. Carbonio is > the mail server, going through (inbound and outbound) Proxmox Mail Gateway. > It's a really simple and reliable setup. > > -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
