Hosting Issues

[Flibnipktz]

Hi,

New to this forum, looking for input on hosting. First, the situation... We've been with our current host for about 2 years and for the most part, good service. Prompt answers to support questions and a good attitude towards the odd stupid ticket on my part. (yes, limited IT skills)

However since the end of August, a) our site went down one Sunday without warning, and b) we've been unable to send out emails twice. Explanation for the site going offline was... "It was a database table crash and I've repaired it for you. We had restarted the server due to some technical issues." I understand routine maintenance done on weekends with possible scheduled downtime. What I don't understand is routine maintenance that apparently involves an unexpected server restart... am I missing something here?

The blacklisting of our IP twice is the more irritating issue. The August block was pretty much all networks as per Spamhaus, and that one was resolved more or less within 72 hours. The recent one earlier this week was Hotmail and Att.net; Hotmail resolved within the usual 48 hours, Att.net has been blocking our IP since last Sunday. Responses to my questions are:

Also I could notice that you've a dedicated IP address here so I've changed your domain mail sending IP address to that one... it will take time to delist the Ip address from att n/w. Your account is on our shared server and a lot of clients using the email service on this server. So if you purchase a vps server here you've your own server and email service on the server only use for your accounts. We've already requested them to delist the Ip from their network region. Since you had a dedicated IP address with us, I've changed the mail server IP address for your domain to that IP address. So it will be fine now.

I feel like we're being taken for a ride. Apart from trying to decipher the above, why are we still being blocked, and should we start expecting this to be a regular semi-monthly occurrence? Can the host not shut down any client spammers that are sharing our IP, within 48 hours? Is this some hard sell for us to upgrade to a VSP? We have an average max of 50 members on the board at any one time.

Is this merely par for the course? I don't want to consider another host if this is normal, just don't like the feeling that we're being screwed. We already pay this host $50.00/month, and I have no motivation to get into VSP concerns. Again, limited IT skills.

Any thoughts welcome.

[Dave]

The fact that your IP was/has been blacklisted would be reason enough for me to move host already.

I would just move to a more reliable hosting company whenever you can, that will save yourself a lot of trouble in the future.
DigitalOcean and Linode are 2 excellent VPS hosting companies which are probably cheaper as well.

If that's really no option then there's not a lot you can do about it because you are simply bound to that hosting company.

[RichieBoy67]

Well spamhauser seems to blacklist way too many and if that is your only blackilsting I wouldn't worry about it. Hotmail though is a concern.

You can be black listed just for your email server and dns not being set up correctly according to anti spam standards.

[Flibnipktz]

I would just move to a more reliable hosting company whenever you can, that will save yourself a lot of trouble in the future.
DigitalOcean and Linode are 2 excellent VPS hosting companies which are probably cheaper as well.

Thanks for the suggestions, I may be looking at these soon.

Well spamhauser seems to blacklist way too many and if that is your only blackilsting I wouldn't worry about it.

They've happened before, and been resolved faster, and therefore I'm not counting them. It's the last couple of months that are beginning to concern me.

You can be black listed just for your email server and dns not being set up correctly according to anti spam standards.

Ok, fair enough... if it's a server issue, shouldn't the host be on top of that? Or as a client am I able to tweak this?

[Dave]

It depends.
If you have an unmanaged server then the host is not responsible for anything that's installed or misconfigured on your server. If it's a managed server however, they have a lot more responsibility.

[RichieBoy67]

Well it depends on your host really but I do not believe most will set up your dns like that.

Check using the tool here.

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx

If you see the issue then tell your host.

If you get blacklisted by Google and Microsoft then you have a bigger problem.

[Flibnipktz]

Thanks for the link to mxtoolbox. A mailserver test of our IP did in fact error:

SMTP Reverse DNS Mismatch
What you see when your domain has this problem
Reverse DNS does not contain the hostname Details area Ignore
More Information About Smtp Reverse Dns Mismatch
The forward lookup (A) of the hostname hostname did not match the reverse lookup (PTR) for the IP Address.

Example of a correctly matching pair of records:

(A) lookup for smtp.mxtoolbox.com resolves to 208.123.79.38

(PTR) lookup for 208.123.79.38 reverses to smtp.mxtoolbox.com

Additional Information

Some receiving mail servers may use this as an indication of a possible spam source in a scoring system. Most will not reject incoming mail solely on this basis. We recommend that you contact your ISP and ask them to setup a reverse record (PTR) that matches the hostname of your mail server.

Could this really be why we've been blacklisted by att.net for a week as of today? I would think the ISP would have stumbled upon this by now. Anyway, forwarding to them.

--------------- Added [DATE]1443972040[/DATE] at [TIME]1443972040[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by Dave

It depends.
If you have an unmanaged server then the host is not responsible for anything that's installed or misconfigured on your server. If it's a managed server however, they have a lot more responsibility.

I believe it's managed but would have to double check.

[RichieBoy67]

Yes, that could absolutely be the issue.

Managed just means that your host takes care of the configuration, etc. I would contact them if I was your and have them fix that.
You will need a dedicated IP though and your smtp IP must match.

If that is your only blacklist though I would not worry and if that is your only issue reported on mxtools you should be ok. Just fix the Hotmail issue by contacting them and filling out the forms, etc.

You will need a privacy page, an opt in, opt out, etc and be sure to have everything all set before you submit the form to them.

[Flibnipktz]

Will do. Thanks again for the responses, I've been trying to get a handle on how serious this situation is.

[Dave]

Besides the blacklisting issue, it's still worrying that your site was offline due to a database crash.
They also mentioned "We had restarted the server due to some technical issues.", I would always expect the host to tell me exactly what was going wrong, not a vague description.