Godaddy pissing me off-any advice?

[Mbira]

I'm a bit confused here...

I have had Yahoo webhosting and domain managing for many years, but recently I started comparing prices and after seeing a few fishy things yahoo did (they canceled a friends hosting plan, erased ALL her email, address book, etc, said she violated terms of service, and wouldn't even tell her what she had done wrong!!!) One thing great was that my main email is with yahoo, and these other websites I could just check in my yahoo account.

So I switched to godaddy mainly because it is 1/4th the price. Hosting has been fine for me-few problems even though there are some stupid and nagging things I can't do (can't have a folder that a friend can get in with FTP in the windows hosting, so I switched to linux hosting and now I can't view directories in linux hosting).

But the big problem is this:
I have my email address from the websites they are hosting forwarded to the yahoo account-cool. But godaddy's "spam" filtering is AWFUL!!! It filters WAY TOO much! I have had clubs tell me that they have sent me email and I just never receive them-they don't get bounce backs. every day, I work in email and many, many of emails sent to me just don't make it. I have lost lots of business. Even email I send to my wife don't make it to her!

So, HERE'S the question:

Is the email determined by the domain host, or the website host? I'm pretty sure that it is the domain host, so I can keep godaddy for the webhosting and just switch to a different domain host, right? Who can you recommend that does NOT filter incoming and outgoing emails-or at least lets me adjust it? I can adjust in yahoo.

Thanks for reading the long post!

:guinness:

 

[Mailliw]

Howdy!

It's the web host that does all the email related stuff.

Have you tried turning Go Daddy's email filtering off completely? Then you could let Yahoo do the filtering instead. Or you could forward ALL your mail (unfiltered) to a Gmail account and use their filter.

 

[pucho812]

It's always better to be pissed off then to be pissed on :green:

 

[PRR]

> Is the email determined by the domain host, or the website host?

By you. You can have your email any place which will have you. There is NO reason you have to use the FREE (and worth the price) mailbox they throw in with webhosting.

gMail is pretty good, and free. Open an account, and change all your links to point directly to it (not via that Godaddy mailbox).

Of course gMail is Google and Google's 'bots will soon know more about each of us than we do. HotMail and AOL are popular but also likely to be mechanically skimming your mail to push ads in your face. I have had a school account so long that I dunno what's good in the real world. I suspect a really good email box is worth several dollars a month.

> domain host

What is a domain host? I think the way ISP/Hosting outfits bundle things is confusing you.

You need to register a domain, such as "example.com", with ICANN. Since they are snoots, you do this through an agent. GoDaddy is one of the biggest.

You need a DNS server which will translate "example.com" to an IP number such as 123.234.321.12. And very preferably a backup DNS in another location. It is silly and inefficient to set up a DNS server and backup for one or a dozen hosts, you get this from a DNS host service. Godaddy has this.

You need a webserver. For the site linked below your message, a hot 486 machine would be ample, but it needs a reliable connection to the whole world. Outside universities and mega-corporations, you rent hardware in a hosting facility. Godaddy has server farms and rents anywhere from a row of racks to a 1/8th slice of a low-buck Pentium. You rent the brainpower, the storage, and the bytes/day.

That's a website. But many customers want extras. email. email with the same domain as the website. Control panels, dummy upload interfaces, forms handlers.

So someone like you with modest needs and experience will usually pick one of the $10, $25, or $99 packages pre-bundled with frills you may or may not need or like. For $10 you can have one domain-name owned by Godaddy (which means if you want to move to another host, they have you by the short-hairs), with DNS service and a thin slice of a Pentium, 100MB of storage, 100MB per day, one mailbox. $25 may allow several domain-names and more storage and mailboxes; geeks often get this deal and resell small sites to clients.

So you "get FREE email", but you don't have to use it. If you want to be "boss {at} mhumhirecords {dot} org", it would be easy to set up on your FREE email, but that does not mean it is good email. If your vanity will allow being "joellav {at} gmail {dot} com", and you don't mind that email address showing on your mhumhirecords.org pages, do it that way. For this specific case, I'm sure your mhumhirecords customers and chums will understand why you do mhumhirecords business without a vanity mhumhirecords email address.

 

[zebra50]

Just wanted to endorse the gmail suggestion - it has some cool features and the spam filter seems sensible.

 

[Mbira]

I'll offer more clarity. I've got :
joel (at) rattletree.com and a host of other xxx (at) rattletree.com

These need to stay. They have been propagated all over the friggin place not just in the ether world but the real world too. I need to keep those emails.

Currently I have ALL xxx(at)rattletree.com emails forwarded through godaddy-I do not use their mail box-only their forwarding service. Still I am losing tons of email (or am I?!?). There is no filter adjustment for forwarding on godaddy. I have called them and they tell me it is a system wide setting and can't be changed. They also told me that email is a service of the Registrar not host.

I checked this in yahoo where I still have a separate domain of another startup that never started up. I was able to go in there (yahoo) and set up a [email protected] and have it forwarded to yahoo with no problem. So it looks to me like email forwarding is a product of the registrar not the host.
I'd just switch my domain registrar back to yahoo and keep godaddy as the host, but it doesn't look like yahoo does just domains anymore.

Joel

 

[Ptownkid]

If you ever feel like switching, I'm with www.siteground.com and they are the best I've ever dealt with.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Unless you are willing to roll your own server you at the mercy of the mail server at the ISP where you park your domain.

If you want to keep your email addresses but get different mail servers you can move your domain to another host.

spam filtering is a double edged problem.. not enough is also a huge burden.

It seems we could pretty much kill spam by charging postage for emails. You want to send me an email, OK but it'll cost you 1/1000th of a cent... that should be enough to upset the economic viability of mass spams. Individuals could get a credit for receiving emails that would offset their cost of sending emails. Only operations pushing a lot of email would notice the cost.

JR

 

[Mbira]

So then the question remains:

Who can you recommend that does NOT filter incoming and outgoing emails
when forwarding-or at least lets me adjust it? I can adjust in yahoo.

:guinness:

 

[Ptownkid]

I think the only way that you can find this out is by contacting some hosting companies and asking.

 

[Mbira]

I don't trust any of these companies enough to call them on the phone and ask "hey do you have the best email situation for my needs?" I much more trust the good folks in the real world.

Gmail and Yahoo both seem good at what they do-the free email thing. I like gmail and yahoo both, but that really doesn't answer my question. What I am needing to know is those of you with xxx (at) yourwebsite (dot) com-who is your domain registrar, are you doing forwarding to your free email account, and how is it working out for you?

Godaddy seems to block entire subnet ranges from other ISP's. Do a google search for "godaddy email problems"

Best regards,
Joel

 

[PRR]

If I send mail to rattletree.com, my mail machine does a DNS look-up for the "A record" of that host-name. I have access to a unix box with good (and unbiased) DNS look-up:

> host -v rattletree.com
rattletree.com 3600 IN A 208.109.181.92
For authoritative answers, see:
rattletree.com 3600 IN NS ns43.domaincontrol.com
rattletree.com 3600 IN NS ns44.domaincontrol.com


So my mail machine will contact 208.109.181.92, who is that?


> host -v 208.109.181.92
92.181.109.208.IN-ADDR.ARPA 3600 IN PTR p3slh147.shr.phx3.secureserver.net


Some mystery-number box, probably in an ISP server farm.

SamSpade.org pulls different data:


SamSpade.org:
rattletree.com = [ 208.109.181.92 ]
(Asked whois.godaddy.com:43 about rattletree.com)
Registrant:
Joel L____________
Registered through: GoDaddy.com Inc. http://www.godaddy.com
Domain Name: RATTLETREE.COM

Also try SamSpade.org with www.mhumhirecords.org

www.mhumhirecords.org = [ 208.109.181.229 ]

(Asked whois.pir.org:43 about mhumhirecords.org)
Domain Name: MHUMHIRECORDS.ORG
Sponsoring Registrar: GoDaddy.com Inc. (R91-LROR)
Registrant Name: Joel L__________
Registrant Organization: Joel L_________
Registrant Street1: 2433 L_________
Registrant State/Province: New Mexico


Since both hostnames resolve to very similar IPs, odds are they are the same owner/operator. It appears that secureserver and WWDomains are fronts for GoDaddy.

BTW: forwarding all mail is usually "bad". Most mail is spam. Automatic forwarding of spam looks like spam, and the source will soon get blocked. My school discourages all-forwarding, and does spam-filter such actions. You "should" be able to read your mail directly on rattletree.com, after you turn off forwarding. GoDaddy should tell you how to do this. They may have a web interface, or you may need an email client such as Thunderbird. Yes, it is an extra step and not so convenient as getting all your mail in one place.

Another trick, though I have not got this working for me: turn off forwarding, use a gMail account to POP the rattletree.com mailbox to a gMail account. POP is user-deliberate and does not count as spam even if the mails being POP-ed are mostly spam.

The other way is to find a good email host who will allow you to part rattletree.com on their machine. The problem is that it appears rattletree.com is "owned" by GoDaddy, and you can not directly get the "A record" changed to point to another machine. This is part of the racket. I hope someone else here knows more about wrestling domains away from greedy domain agents.

 

[Ptownkid]

Do you know everything about everything? Also, will you adopt me?

 

[Mbira]

Wrestling the domain away from Godaddy is a simple process of choosing a different registrar I believe. rattletree.com and mhumhirecords.com both started life being registered through yahoo who went through some other service (I forget who now-but not godaddy).

Problem with using godaddy is their mailbox is a ridiculous 2 Meg. I get back in town tomorrow, and I have already set up a gmail account, and I like it so far. They let you do POP as PRR said and yahoo doesn't let you do that. So I will try and set up a POP account through godaddy and see if that helps. From what i have researched about godaddy blocking entire subnet ranges from ISPs. Godaddy has also told me that many times if a website address is written in an email or a link, they will block it. The filter is just too much. So I don't know if the messages are just not even getting through that or being scrutinized more in Yahoo since being forwarded as PRR mentioned.

Best,
Joel