email hosting

[dpm]

I'm tired of having to wade through spam in the email account I use for buying stuff online, and after reading posts on cheap hosting and having individual email aliases for vendors (so i can see if anyone's passing on my address, and delete that address if they do) I'm tempted to have give it a try, though I know next to nothing about it.

One question though - if I get a cheap hosting deal (like ripplehost, or addaction etc) and I set up aliases etc, like ebuyer@example.com forwarding to the main mailbox mail@example.com, could I then reply using the same (ebuyer) address?

I don't want to have seperate accounts for each shop I use, or site I sign up to, cos most of the cheap hosts only give you 5 or so accounts, but I'd definately need to be able to reply with the same address - I've had problems with vendors before that have needed long, long email exchanges to get sorted out.

(hoping this is a simple question...)
cheers,

 

[minendo]

You don't even have to create the aliases. All mail that is sent to a insertnamehere@example.com address that does not exist is automatically routed to the main account. However, you can setup email forwarding through cPanel if necessary.

 

[helloedchen]

i think you're looking for a catch-all email acct. you'll be fine with the example u stated, no need to create an alias.

 

[dpm]

Its not the receiving email but the sending of it that I'm confused about: can I set the reply mails so they appear to come from the same address as they were sent to?

eg have emails from company1@example.com and company2@example.com go to the same catch-all account (thanks, btw - i'd forgotten the term for it) and when I reply, choose to have the replies sent from company1@example.com and company2@example.com respectively?

I get the feeling I'm not very good at explaining this.....

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: dpm
Its not the receiving email but the sending of it that I'm confused about: can I set the reply mails so they appear to come from the same address as they were sent to?

eg have emails from <a href="mailto:company1@example.com">company1@example.com</A> and <a href="mailto:company2@example.com">company2@example.com</A> go to the same catch-all account (thanks, btw - i'd forgotten the term for it) and when I reply, choose to have the replies sent from <a href="mailto:company1@example.com">company1@example.com</A> and <a href="mailto:company2@example.com">company2@example.com</A> respectively?

I get the feeling I'm not very good at explaining this.....

You can set the accounts to have different Reply To addresses depending on what email client you use. However, they will all appear to have come from the main account with the exception of hitting reply will send to another account.

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: dpm
Its not the receiving email but the sending of it that I'm confused about: can I set the reply mails so they appear to come from the same address as they were sent to?

eg have emails from <a href="mailto:company1@example.com">company1@example.com</A> and <a href="mailto:company2@example.com">company2@example.com</A> go to the same catch-all account (thanks, btw - i'd forgotten the term for it) and when I reply, choose to have the replies sent from <a href="mailto:company1@example.com">company1@example.com</A> and <a href="mailto:company2@example.com">company2@example.com</A> respectively?

I get the feeling I'm not very good at explaining this.....

I think you can specify a reply to e-mail address if you're using a major email client or webmail (Neomail, Horde, Squirrelmail, etc.).

Of those two web hosts, I would go with AddAction.net

 

[spartan]

catch-all e-mail accounts don't really work in this case. What if he finds out that when he uses the e-mail ebuyer@example.com and start getting spam from the e-mail. Even if he removes that account, all the spam will still go the to catch-all account. Then he'd have to clear out the catch-all account every now and then once the available space gets used up.

The best solution (to me) is to get aliases for an e-mail account and kill the aliases once that alias gets spam sent to it. That way, at least it gets bounced back to the sender.

I am also thinking of doing that dpm wants to do but e-mail hosting is so expensive (especially with aliases). For some reason (unknown to me), they're more expensive than web hosting.

 

[dpm]

Thanks for all your ideas - I think I could be getting close to the answer.

I've been told that horde IMP lets you have multiple identities, so I could choose the right from address to an email.

However, Spartan has opened my eyes to another problem - if I do this, can I block emails based on the to address, based on the from address. It looks like I hadn't thought this through that well.

If i can find some way of doing this, and some cheapish web hosting company (cos email hosting companies do indeed seem really expensive) that either uses or will allow me to use horde, then I'm set...

 

[Placer14]

How about this....a little technique called White-listing. The human sends you an email. The email gets to the server, the server checks the whitelist, sender not on list, server sends a reply asking to verify that it came from a human. The human replies one more time, and they are whitelisted for life.

A variation: You signup for something but don't want to get a crapload of email from them. You set a temporary whiteless address ont he server, it's valid for a week, then auto deletes. You get the registration email, but after a week, all mail bounces.

The only drawback is this requires server side intervention.

There alternative ways, but you get the idea. The general idea is the user is checked against a list of address. ALSO, ther'es a service that provides EXACTLY what you're looking for....i'm trying to google it up...but it's a shell for yuor mail email account. I'll explain mroe once I find it.

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: dpm
If i can find some way of doing this, and some cheapish web hosting company (cos email hosting companies do indeed seem really expensive) that either uses or will allow me to use horde, then I'm set...

Virtually all (99.99%) web hosting companies who offer cPanel control panel already have Horde webmail pre-installed.

This includes RippleHost, AddAction and HigherHost.com (first 3 months free, you can't beat that!)

Your webmail URL is usually www.yourdomain.com/webmail

I setup a subdomain webmail.mydomain.com and redirect the Horde login page to that subdomain, makes checking webmail easier and faster.

 

[dpm]

Placer14 - that sounds great, but I'm definitely not up to setting my own server up, and I'm not sure about a couple of little details - what about automatically sent emails?

Say you order a new CPU, the company sends you a registration email from welcome@example.com, then a invoice email from orders@example.com and a delivery notice from shipping@example.com. I know that this is an exagerated example, but these would be automatically generated emails, and wouldn't repeat, thus triggering the white-list. Neither could I guess them in advance and add them to a whitelist. This would seem to leave me with just plain blacklisting emails after they arrive - i tried that a couple of years ago with a hotmail account, and its no fun at all.

plus. quite frankly, I'd like to use individual addresses so i'd know which companies are selling my email address, so I can stop giving them my custom.

cheers,

 

[Placer14]

DPM, your absolutely right...it woud be a pain but I think there's a way to use wildcards with that. I haven't been able to actually put this system to work to speak from experience. Although, see my previous edit abuot the special service...i'm still looking for it.

This is EXACTLY what you need.

 

[dpm]

aha! apparantly Horde IMP is the answer to my problem. I can use a catch all to recieve mail, use multiple identities to change the "from" address, and use filters to automatically delete anything to certain "to" addresses.

Perfect, and simple (and possible me-proof )

Now, all i have to do is find a decent host.
Rossman - thanks for the suggestions - I've been reading your posts on hosting to get ideas. How much do you think I'd have to spend to get a decent service?

Bear in mind that this isn't exactly high priority for me, as I'll be using a different account completely for personal email - this is just for shopping and other online signups. So obviously I don't want to throw loads of cash on it, and the actual web hosting part of it isn't that important to me (although I suppose I could always use it for a couple of photo albums...)

 

[Placer14]

This is upsetting me...basicall it's designed to work exactly like you want. You have a main account at this site (user@domain.com). (which you can give out at your discresion) Then, you create aliases that ACT like compeltly seperate mailboxes (sub-user@domain.com). This way you can track who is using waht addresses.

They charged fro the service, but might be worth it to you if you're going to consider hosting options as well. I'll keep looking and fi I find it, i'll let you know. AHHH!!!! Found it! http://www.mailshell.com Enjoy!

*edit: Linkied

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: dpm
aha! apparantly Horde IMP is the answer to my problem. I can use a catch all to recieve mail, use multiple identities to change the "from" address, and use filters to automatically delete anything to certain "to" addresses.

Perfect, and simple (and possible me-proof )

Now, all i have to do is find a decent host.
Rossman - thanks for the suggestions - I've been reading your posts on hosting to get ideas. How much do you think I'd have to spend to get a decent service?

Bear in mind that this isn't exactly high priority for me, as I'll be using a different account completely for personal email - this is just for shopping and other online signups. So obviously I don't want to throw loads of cash on it, and the actual web hosting part of it isn't that important to me (although I suppose I could always use it for a couple of photo albums...)

Horde is a great webmail client, I prefer it over Neomail. For me it's a tie between Horde and Squirrelmail.

Regarding web hosting, you get what you pay for. What is your monthly or annual budget? How much webspace do you think you need?

 

[ChefJoe]

As a current ripplehost.com user, I can say that you really can't beat the price (free/$4.99 per year) but they don't have a true catch-all configurability. Well, not easily.

It's setup so that the catch-all is the default account (rh????) and you'd have to check that by logging in with the e-mail of rh????... which isn't very appealing for those owning their own domain. You can't enter in a wildcard forwarder (*@mydomain.com would be "catch all"). Us users discovered a possible work-around by text-editing the backup file for the forwarders and, thus far, one test dummy said it worked.... but I'm about to leave ripplehost simply because the support is lacking. Read their forums and you'll see tons of questions where the admin doesn't respond (at ripplehost) but I think that person's an admin at e-rice.net and he responds to most every post there..... e-rice.net is $10/yr.

I'm considering a move to addaction.net.. though that's a bit overkill for my e-mail needs.

Truth be told, ripplehost through the rh??? account may be great if your e-mail is only for high-probability of spam, but I was unhappy with their reliability for all my e-mail. Things that should have resolved to actual e-mail ID's I'd created randomly wound up in the catch-all - and there was no explanation as to why that kept happening (a few e-mails every two weeks or so... header info says it should have sorted properly).

Hrm, if I do move, I'll have a number of months left at my ripplehost.com account I could "donate" ... but I'd xfer my domain so it'd be server1.ripplehost.com/~rh??? as storage.

EDIT: Move completed, I've paid $9.95 for the next 6 months of addaction.net hosting. So far, I like it. I sent a question and had an answer when I woke up in the morning.

 

[RossMAN]

I agree with ChefJoe who has done extensive research on this and has provided me with invaluable input regarding RippleHost.

AddAction.net may be overkill but it's reliable with GOOD 24/7 TECH SUPPORT, custom bluetrix cPanel theme with auto installers and best of all $9.95 for 6 months.

When I say, you get what you pay for, I am not lying