I was talking to a customer yesterday who was looking for a solution for a problem he was having getting his campaigns out to customers. His website is hosted by Network Solutions, one of the larger domain and web hosting providers around. Recently, he has been running into problems getting his emails out to customers through his domain server at Network Solutions.
Recently, Network Solutions partnered with Cloudmark and the new antispam filters they are using is making it difficult for domain holders to both send and receive email through the Network Solutions mail server.
Not only that, but apparently, they are discouraging customers from sending business email through their server at all and actually encouraging their customers to spend money on a third party email service provider for their email communication – even though they advertise email as part of their hosting solution.
No, I’m not kidding. It’s right on their website:
“…Here are some steps you can take to help avoid getting blocked: Consider using a service like Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com) to send out your newsletters. This will help you ensure that your emails are sent out safely and that you do not end up getting blocked…”
It appears that Network Solutions is positioning themselves as a host-only solution like GoDaddy (who have a daily send limit of 250 messages per day) and telling small businesses that they should spend some more money on another mail provider if they want a reliable business email solution.
Of course, Network Solutions customers have responded with a WTF!
“…Since your new system has been put in place I cannot even receive a copy of my own email newsletter…”
“…I am so disappointed. I noticed a change in my emails and was contacted by several customers that I had not responded to their email messages. Needless to say, I lost thousands of dollars in one week. I figured out that reply emails became spam and I had no way to look at this spam to correct. I contacted Network Solutions 3 times inquiring as to what was going on and to get help. Not one time did any of the customer services technicians tell me that NS had made changes to spam filtering. Did they not know? After several days and no help form NS, I moved my email…”
“…I have missed a great number of emails from many of my major clients since the installment of new spam filter. And my emails to them never reached them either in the past ten days. Please know that we rely on Network Solutions to run a business and we simply cannot afford to have this happen and lose credibility with our clients. This is a major embarrassment and I strongly urge Network Solutions to take tremendous care and caution as you make changes to our email services…”
“…I can’t even get email from myself now! I have never had an issue with spam, b ut since these changes have taken place, I am not receiving email from several other people….who are not spammers…”
“…Since the implementation of Cloudmark by Network Solutions not only did my so called spam go down but a lot of my work related emails disappeared as well. A mailing I have been sending out every two weeks for years, all of the sudden won’t reach me if I send it to myself. Any company that responds to that email also gets killed by the spam engine. So I now find I have more time on my hands because Network Solutions/Cloudmark have in effect killed my business until I can move to a web host which is not so intent on driving their customers away…”
“…What kind of morons sat around the table at Network Solutions and decided this was good for your customer’s businesses?…”
“…My hosting services with NS are due for renewal. I plan to switch to another provider ASAP if I am not given a satisfactory response to this disaster of a change NS has foisted on us… your customers…”
People are obviously upset. The ironic thing is that this type of spam filtering doesn’t dissuade the big spammers from sending spam. Eighty percent of spam sent in the world is sent from 100 spam gangs who don’t give a hoot about new antispam filters or rules which cause disruption to the many legitimate small businesses trying to communicate with their customers via email.
The spam gangs who send 80 percent of the worlds spam will get around all of those things in time. They have the technology and the knowledge to bypass Cloudmark and other antispam agents who are making life miserable for legitimate senders. But the temporary fix that these filters provide necessitates the filtering of a lot of legitimate email from customers and making it unfairly difficult to send and receive important email.
It’s like shooting everyone in the auditorium to get the gunman to stop shooting people in the auditorium.
what is going on at netsol, phillipine customer care-less and email suppression? im going to notify all my clients about netsol and cloudfarts it just keeps getting more idiotic
Cloudmark Authority: Boom for Big Brother, Bust as Spam Filter
[Source: ldrlongdistancerider[dot]com/02 ] Euphemistically packaged and sold to the American Sheeple as a “spam filter”, Cloudmark Authority is actually the email censorship software of choice in Communist China: tinyurl[dot]com/yb3vhx7
Here in the United States, that same censorship system is installed on the email servers of many of our largest telecoms, internet service providers (ISPs), social networks and web hosting companies, including Network Solutions: cloudmark[dot]com/en/serviceproviders/
Shortly after Network Solutions implemented Cloudmark Authority in late 2009, we and other Network Solutions clients became victims of its sinister Big Brother capabilities: tinyurl[dot]com/Defy-Cloudmark-Authority
Since that time, we’ve experienced a regular pattern (see below) by which legitimate political email communications have either been blocked from being sent via SMTP, or blocked from being received via webmail or POP, or we have been blocked from receiving replies to those emails, or all of the above. In some cases, after multiple complaints, we have been able to get those blocks lifted. But in some cases, blocks that were lifted were eventually reactivated, even after we were assured by Network Solutions that such a thing “would not happen”.
Ironically, the number of unsolicited commercial emails (U.C.E. or “spam”) delivered to our inboxes by Network Solutions has increased rather than decreased since they installed Cloudmark Authority (see below). So although our 1984-ish experiences validate Cloudmark Authority as a great censorship tool for Big Brother, as a spam blocker, spam filter or weapon against “messaging abuse”, it’s a bust.
This is a huge problem! The biggest problem for me is not that I can’t send out large, mass emails (I have never sent to more than 50) – it is that I am not receiving my emails! Why bother having a website? The only way this came to my attention is through a regular customer. What about all those new customers, those for whom I have a website in hopes that they email me! There is not a spam folder which I can check to see what emails or ‘coming through’ or not. The emails go into the never-never, the client never gets a bounce-back, and there goes my revenue!
Do you have any other hosting sites that provide an email address that you can recommend me? (and if you don’t hear back from an email – assume it is because I did not receive it!)
Just a clarification Shashi – the recommendation to use a 3rd Party Email Service was not given just to the customer that I spoke to yesterday, it’s a recommendation to all Network Solutions customers posted on the NS website.
Thanks Shashi. It’s great to get feedback from your side. I think that the frustration stems from the difficulty that small businesses have with getting simple campaigns out to small lists of a few thousand (and of course receiving messages from customers).
They really shouldn’t have to pay a 3rd party Email service provider to do that and to be forced into a per email or additional monthly cost to communicate with their customers.
I completely understand that it is not the intent of Network Solutions or ISPs to make life miserable for legitimate senders, but the reality is that overly robust antispam filters and stringent limitations set by domain server hosts and ISPs are not making life easy for small businesses. At the same time, those same tactics do little to dissuade the main spam gangs from sending spam.
It’s a difficult balance for sure, but I think we should err on the side of reliability for customers rather than spam protection. Worst case scenario if some spam gets through is that recipients have to delete it. Worst case scenario in having overly robust filters to keep spam out is that small businesses lose business because their emails aren’t getting delivered or emails to them are not arriving.
As a disclaimer, I work with Infacta, developers of GroupMail, and so I am coming at this from the side of our customers who chose not to go the ESP route and are trying to manage delivery themselves. I am constantly looking for good solutions for our customers, who predominantly send to small lists of less than 10,000.
Hi Tom,
I think the advice to the customer to use a professional email marketing service was to keep their benefit in mind. We have higher levels of email capability in our solution and often customers move to a email marketing solution when their needs grow. Feedback from our customers is useful and very welcome and we have many avenues for that feedback some of which is in the posts above. We sorted out most of the hiccups with the new Cloudmark service. The Network Solutions team also monitors blogs and twitter to reach out and help customers.
Thanks,
Shashi Bellamkonda