Dreamhost Announce List vs Ezine

[bodgey]

Some people in this thread http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=5660 are getting their ezine newsletters blocked by hotmail, which made think about why people pay for newsletter services. I read before that the main reason was so you don't have to worry about being blacklisted but it seems to be happening anyway. Are there still reasons why I should use ezine or ymlp instead of (for example) the dreamhost announce list, which is already set up on their servers and seems really easy to use?

Bojan

[svero]

Well so long as it's from a separate server. Otherwise your regular email could get blacklisted as well, should you run into trouble. But then there's the hassle of setting up white lists, arguing blacklists etc.. It's slightly annoying to deal with that stuff. Presumably thats what ezine would be doing for you.

[bodgey]

Well so long as it's from a separate server. Otherwise your regular email could get blacklisted as well, should you run into trouble.
Good point, I only have one server so I guess I don't have much of a choice.

Thanks,
Bojan

[svero]

well the choice is .. get a 2nd server for the mailing list. But thats probably more expensive than using ezine for the moment.

[revve]

The main reason why you should use a reputable third party service is that they actively work with other companies to ensure their servers aren't blacklisted.

I'll use aweber (http://www.aweber.com) as an example (I'm a customer). They put strict measures into place to ensure they aren't used as a spam source. They actively communicate with the hotmail people, the gmail people, etc to do what they can to get their servers listed on whitelists (and where nessecary removed from any blacklists). The e-mail providers knows that this company doesn't send spam and that all messages are only opt-in and will usually work with the company to ensure their e-mail reaches the end-user. This is also why aweber is considered to have one of the highest delivery rates in the industry. The drawback? They are a tad expensive, but you get an army or people working for you, ensuring that your message gets heard. YMLP and others will also do this up to a point, you get what you pay for.

One other nice thing that aweber will run your e-mail through a spamassassin filter while you write it. This isn't to filter the message, but rather to highlight words and phrases that can cause other people's filters to stop your e-mail from being delivered. You can then make changes, to ensure your message will have a low spam score so it isn't blocked accidentally.

PS. I'm just a normal customer of theirs - I get nothing from advertising their great service.

[James C. Smith]

I read before that the main reason was so you don't have to worry about being blacklisted but it seems to be happening anyway. Are there still reasons why I should use ezine ...


Let me reparse what svero already said to make sure everyone understand. (and then let me stay it three different ways as I tend to do with everything)

The fear is that ALL your e-mail could get blacklisted because of your newsletter. Sending your newsletter though a 3rd party may or may not affect if newsletter gets blacklisted. But it absolutely will help make sure your other e-mail doesn’t get blacklisted. The worst case scenario is your customer support e-mails and your purchases receipts with reg codes or download links could get blacklisted. You don’t want to risk having your newsletter cause your download links or reg codes to be black listed. Sending your newsletter though a 3rd party will help protect your receipts from getting blacklisted. And it may or may not help protect your newsletter itself from getting blacklisted.

The main reason why you should use a reputable third party service is that they actively work with other companies to ensure their servers aren't blacklisted.


That may be true for some people. But I think the main reason for most people is to keep the newsletter separate from the other e-mail in case it does get blacklisted. And for other people, the main reason may just be that is it simpler because the service has good bulk e-mailing and list management tools.

[DFG]

I second Aweber - great service and I highly recommend it.

[arcadetown]

Very correct, never run your newsletter off same ip as your mail server.

One thing I've noticed is a lot of newsletters from the bigger guys don't use email services and are run from their own servers. Easily determined by viewing email headers and a lookup in arin.net. We run ours off our secondary servers but have to throttle delivery rate way back otherwise get greylisted for x period of time. Greylisting happens when you send more than X emails in Y period of time to yahoo, hotmail, etc. Anyone know how others get past the delivery rate greylisting problems?

[svero]

Well I think once your list gets past a certain size it just becomes too costly to use most services vs. the price of maintaining and running a server.

[bodgey]

Well I think once your list gets past a certain size it just becomes too costly to use most services vs. the price of maintaining and running a server.
Do you need a dedicated server for this? Would two shared accounts on Dreamhost work? (Different domain name and IP but maybe hosted on the same box)

Bojan

[revve]

Do you need a dedicated server for this? Would two shared accounts on Dreamhost work? (Different domain name and IP but maybe hosted on the same box)

Bojan

Just to get a functional list, you don't need one, BUT it is a very good idea, because if your list is blacklisted, if it's hosted on the same server as your own domain, your own mail will also get blacklisted.

I would personally recommend a cheap VPS (virtual dedicated server) for your mailing list. A lot cheaper than a normal server, but with all the advantages of a separate server.

[bodgey]

Just to get a functional list, you don't need one, BUT it is a very good idea, because if your list is blacklisted, if it's hosted on the same server as your own domain, your own mail will also get blacklisted.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I was wondering if one account on a shared box got blacklisted does it blacklist the other account as well? If so does that mean that if someone else on the box gets blacklisted then all ~200 domains on that box get blacklisted as well?

Bojan

[Red Marble Games]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I was wondering if one account on a shared box got blacklisted does it blacklist the other account as well? If so does that mean that if someone else on the box gets blacklisted then all ~200 domains on that box get blacklisted as well?

Bojan

Yep, as just happened to me with DreamHost. Even if you pay for a separate IP address, I have learned, email is still routed through a single IP for all of the accounts on the server that you share (at least that's the way it works at DreamHost, and I'll bet other shared services work similarly). So someone else got all of us blacklisted recently (I use YMLP for my newsletter emailing). Thankfully the customer support people took care of it instantaneously, but if you're going to roll your own I'd suggest using a different ISP.

[revve]

Yep, as just happened to me with DreamHost. Even if you pay for a separate IP address, I have learned, email is still routed through a single IP for all of the accounts on the server that you share (at least that's the way it works at DreamHost, and I'll bet other shared services work similarly). So someone else got all of us blacklisted recently (I use YMLP for my newsletter emailing). Thankfully the customer support people took care of it instantaneously, but if you're going to roll your own I'd suggest using a different ISP.

As Mark mentioned - on any shared server, the mail server will always only run on one IP, even if your account has a separate IP (the only time this is usefull is if you need SSL or if the IP was blacklisted because a porn site or similar is also run off the same shared IP)

Something else you could try if you want to avoid paying a lot of a mailing list is to get a separate cheap shared hosting account. Just make sure the mailing list feature that comes with the control panel isn't disabled. You can get a cheap share account from $2 up these days. Only use it for your mailing list and back the list up on a daily basis. Most shared hosts don't like people using the mailing list functionality.

[Midnight Synergy]

Are there actually methods to find out if your server has been blacklisted anywhere? (i.e. I don't know of a specific site that has blacklisted mine, but I wouldn't mind knowing if there is one)

[revve]

Are there actually methods to find out if your server has been blacklisted anywhere? (i.e. I don't know of a specific site that has blacklisted mine, but I wouldn't mind knowing if there is one)

I found this one ( http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx ) to be very helpful. I normally just used to test on a few blacklist sites, but this one came up when I did a search to get urls to paste here. Seems to do it all in one.