Hi,

Just a few years back shared accounts could send up to 800 emails per hour then soon it was 600 then the amount has decreased over time. I want to explain why this has happened. You will likely soon discover that LP is not the only host with these limitations as a majority of hosts have the same limitations or soon to be there. Here is something to hopefully explain this issue. I can remember when the Internet was simply a bulletin board and that was the gist of it. There wasn't really spam emails or much of any exploits like there are now. You also have to remember the Internet basically was an American homegrown product that was used D.A.R.P.A. before Al Gore and John McCain passed an Internet bill in congress to where it has been lead up to it's peak now. Over time spam emails slowly introduced through adult ads, start up and over night companies trying to generate business and revenue, you can almost use the same term back in the day when you would down the street or in a business and someone hands you a flier. That is I guess putting it mildly your analog version of spam or look at the "Junk Mail" the postman brings you it is the same thing as spam email. At one point it was only about as aggravating as "Junk Mail" until "Hacking" became a more malicious intrusion on servers. These days, emails flow through with rogueware, Trojans, just about malicious exploit can be thought of or created as email is the more mainstream carrier for them. Since, the Internet is global now you face hackers in "Third World" countries as well, so you are first hand seeing a very malicious epidemic that continues to spread and breed more attacks to servers and computers around the world.

Granted your intent when mass emailing is not to spam or cause any malicious activity, but in reality this is not LP's choice to impose such restrictions. This is solely due to RBL services such as spam haus, Symantec (widely known for Norton Anti-virus) McAfee, Barracuda, and other Major spam monitoring and listing databases which these services as used by Comcast, AOL, Verizon, ATT, Yahoo, MSN/Hotmail to hardly name a few. So these rules have been literally been made by those companies in an effort to fight malicious attacks through emails, and the most recognizable form of virus attacks are through spamming. Which, brings to limiting any business, entity or person from mass emailing. Even on your own personal email account you can try to mass email but chance are you are going to have your email access shutdown by their system as their system is seeing you as a spammer and what happens is this information is shared with other RBL (spam databases) all over the world and before you know it even though you have eventually got your services turned back on for your personal email you may not be able to send emails to specific services due to the listing on the RBL databases. What you also want to take in consideration even though your personal email account is on dedicated email servers for what ever internet connection service you use they still become blacklisted. This in turn prevents other personal accounts on that server from being able to send out emails to other services. Let's say Joe is using AOL but someone spammed on the email server even though this is a dedicated server owned by AOL it will be blacklisted and blocked. Now. Joe needs to email his daughter to let her know that she needs to take leave from college due to a family emergency, well the email winds up being blocked and not reach the daughter's cell phone that she uses to keep touch via email when away from her computer. Granted it may have been possible to call his daughter but there could have been a circumstance only granting him internet access to reach his daughter. I think you get the point.

You have to look at the overall picture in regards to why these limitations are set up. Shared server hosting is cheap and inexpensive but such RBLs regard to have more tighter restrictions for domains on a shared server than a dedicated. I spent over a year researching email limitations and the rules these spam monitoring companies impose. When any company purchases a spam firewall by default it is setup to be more aggressive to  scan domains from a shared server than a dedicated server. You can download a PDF for Brightmail's administrator manual which verifies this statement as well. Brightmail is Symantec's spam firewall software. The reason is first off the shared server can only use an OPEN DNS setting meaning that not one account on the server has full ownership of the server. Dedicated servers have Closed DNS which gives only one account or entity sole ownership of the server. About the same as a shared server being an apartment complex, you have a space with bedrooms, living area and so on but you do not own it, while a dedicated server is like a house, you own it and you do not share it with other people. I can say the rule is not fair for businesses that cannot afford a dedicated server as the revenue generated for the business may not be able to consistently purchase that type of plan as revenue may fluctuate and some months may be less revenue leaving a loss of profit for the business. But using a shared hosting plan a business can have their presence on the Internet and profit from it as well so revenue can be a more stable asset.

The true issue is these services see shared servers as mostly the source of spam being sent out through the internet to make it more to the point, LP as well as other hosting companies have to impose limits due to these restrictions and prevent their servers from being blacklisted because it is has been done it can take up to 36 hours before it is whitelisted if the service that blacklisted the server decides to lift the server off the blacklist as hosting companies have to prove they have done every reasonable measure to secure the incident and add measures to prevent it happening again. This is why past the 400 limit and email service is shutdown, because it can jeopardize that servers reputation with these services, and once that server is blacklisted then all accounts suffer due to being blacklisted.

Now, if you start adding and factoring in the amount of accounts of that server then factor in how many rely on email for receiving revenue then the hosting company's loss due to upset customers leaving to find another host, the damage is utterly costly for everyone. The business world is tough and loss of revenue is frequently unforgiving as well. Of course no one is in business for their pleasure, we have to feed, clothe, shelter our families so I think in complete honesty no one intends to cause any issues and only want to market their products as it is understood that you look at a ratio of how many actual buyers per amount of emails sent you get and then the ratio on how many actually do buy as well. I can testify that LP did not have this rule make it hard on anyone, this is only due to the rules imposed as I mentioned earlier.

My intent with this post is to provide all customers of lunarpages or even customers of other hosting companies just looking through this forum a more in-depth explanation and personal insight on my knowledge on this. I personally prefer lunarpages over other hosts their tech support is more better in many ways. Imagine going elsewhere and maybe a week later you get a response and you never replied to the ticket more than once and waited on support to answer back then a week and 3 days later they only answer in a question. My nephew lost his tattoo supply business due to such. I will not name that host but I will tell you lunarpages will get back with you. Just remember wait for a reply from support before adding any further responses to the ticket, I can tell you your turn around time is faster.

Feel free to ask questions.

We'd like to set our new mailing list prog to fit well within the limits Lunarpages prefers. What are the numbers today per minute, hour, etc?

Whatever they are today, I realize they do change over time, and hope there will be some way to keep us all notified about current limitations.

Apologies is this is already prominently posted somewhere...I couldn't find it.

Thank you.

Thank you!