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[MXroute] Alive in 2018 and giving you 2 years of service for $30 (recurring)
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[MXroute] Alive in 2018 and giving you 2 years of service for $30 (recurring)

jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
edited August 2018 in Offers

Hey friends!

It's been an interesting time for MXroute, iteration after iteration, phases of good times and bad. The one thing that has never changed is my commitment to deliver you from the hell that running your own mail server can be (and if that's not you, no worries!) for a price that makes Google nervous. None of this "$X per user" stuff. Just the best delivery and receiving I can offer, at the best price I can challenge myself to charge.

Let's get down to what I'm offering you today:

  • 40GB Storage
  • Unlimited Email Accounts
  • Unlimited Domains
  • Webmail
  • Custom URL for webmail (use the domain you signup with, CNAME webmail.yourdomain.tld to the hostname of the server you're assigned to)
  • A commitment to high quality delivery (can't tell the rest of the internet what to do, but I can damn well try)
  • IMAP / POP3 / SMTP
  • cPanel control (because you know how to use it, and they have an extremely active development team)

All this for $30 (recurring discount) every 2 years. You up for it? Click the link below to order:

Order Here

Some quick notes about the service:

  • Email is limited to 300 outbound per email account per hour. Automatic suspension above that to prevent spammers or compromised accounts from impacting your delivery.
  • Webmail is Roundcube, Horde, and Squirrelmail
  • We've replaced MailChannels with our own in-house system, with the support of HostUs
  • We've brought on a new team member to help with support, Louis is incredible and you're going to love him instantly.

Thank you all for your support in these last... nearly 5 years? Yeah, it's been almost that long. We've seen ups and downs, but we keep moving forward. We're not going anywhere. We're stronger than ever. Let us take the problems you have with email off your hands.

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Comments

  • jar said: We've brought on a new team member to help with support, Louis is incredible and you're going to love him instantly

    Since someone is going to ask: "Who the fuck is Louis?"
    That's me :)

  • jar said: We've replaced MailChannels with our own in-house system, with the support of HostUs

    This is a pretty significant change.... could affect deliverability very dramatically. Can you please explain more?

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2018

    jiggawattz said: This is a pretty significant change.... could affect deliverability very dramatically. Can you please explain more?

    Beautifully clean IP space loved by basically everyone but AT&T (though I have word that may be clearing up). Strong filtering on outbound. Rotating IPs, fallback SMTP servers. Plans and IP space to continue scaling out the servers as needed. Everything MailChannels promised us and slowly backed down on (excessive false positives by spam filter), that is what I'm going after in-house :)

    There's still some tweaks to be done around exposing information, though bounce emails work fine. The infrastructure is a bit young and may see some hiccups, but shouldn't be anything as bad as the continually increasing number of rejected outbound emails by MC.

    Thanked by 1OPNodes
  • Is actual running package/service upgradable to this one?

  • @jar said:

    jiggawattz said: This is a pretty significant change.... could affect deliverability very dramatically. Can you please explain more?

    Beautifully clean IP space loved by basically everyone but AT&T (though I have word that may be clearing up). Strong filtering on outbound. Rotating IPs, fallback SMTP servers. Plans and IP space to continue scaling out the servers as needed. Everything MailChannels promised us and slowly backed down on while continually increasing prices, that is what I'm going after in-house :)

    There's still some tweaks to be done around exposing information, though bounce emails work fine. The infrastructure is a bit young and may see some hiccups, but shouldn't be anything as bad as the continually increasing number of rejected outbound emails by MC.

    Older services are also affected by this change?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @vovler said:

    @jar said:

    jiggawattz said: This is a pretty significant change.... could affect deliverability very dramatically. Can you please explain more?

    Beautifully clean IP space loved by basically everyone but AT&T (though I have word that may be clearing up). Strong filtering on outbound. Rotating IPs, fallback SMTP servers. Plans and IP space to continue scaling out the servers as needed. Everything MailChannels promised us and slowly backed down on while continually increasing prices, that is what I'm going after in-house :)

    There's still some tweaks to be done around exposing information, though bounce emails work fine. The infrastructure is a bit young and may see some hiccups, but shouldn't be anything as bad as the continually increasing number of rejected outbound emails by MC.

    Older services are also affected by this change?

    They are. It's been live in production for a week now.

  • louis_laulouis_lau Member
    edited August 2018

    @quick said:
    Is actual running package/service upgradable to this one?

    I can change your current service to it. But you won't receive a refund for the rest of the period of your current package.

    You can also take the deal alongside your current package of course :)

    If you'd like that first option just open an upgrade request ticket.

  • williewillie Member
    edited August 2018

    jar said: Custom URL for webmail (use the domain you signup with, CNAME webmail.yourdomain.tld to the hostname of the server you're assigned to)

    Can existing users do that too? How do you deal with TLS for this (automatically generate SNI certs somehow?)

    Also is there any chance of putting existing https webmail on port 443 instead of 2096? Congrats on the changes.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @willie said:

    jar said: Custom URL for webmail (use the domain you signup with, CNAME webmail.yourdomain.tld to the hostname of the server you're assigned to)

    Can existing users do that too? Also is there any chance of putting existing https webmail on port 443 instead of 2096? Congrats on the changes.

    Yep, just point the webmail subdomain of your primary domain to the server hostname via CNAME, give it a bit for AutoSSL to kick in and sign it, and it'll be over port 443 with your domain :)

  • Can now the service be used as a mail relay service for owned mail server?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @jvnadr said:
    Can now the service be used as a mail relay service for owned mail server?

    Once I scale out the relays a bit more and have a bit more data collected I'll be opening that up.

    Thanked by 1jvnadr
  • HxxxHxxx Member

    Good stuff @jar . Keep up the good work. Running a mail server and making sure stuff gets to where is supposed to go, is hard. That's why we trust you with that.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jar said: Once I scale out the relays a bit more and have a bit more data collected I'll be opening that up.

    Nice! It would be good to have this option, having benefit from your infrastructure and deliverability but also be able to have own backups from our mail server.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • Honest Feedback on MXRoute + Question.

    1. Is this product available for existing clients to switch to? Or is it a limited time special? It looks very similar to the package I have (the YOUWIN) package that I currently have for $40 biennially.

    Customer since 2015.

    At the start MXRoute was great. Things just worked and you couldn't ask for more. I won't get into details as to some of the hiccups they've had along the way, but nothing that's worth repeating here. (nobody's perfect)

    I will say that recently, it was a bit of a disappointment losing MailChannels without notification. Not a single email/ticket opened with me. My sent-emails started bouncing one day because my SPF records didn't match (I previously had it configured to the mailchannels relay)

    The extremely slow support is a bit of an issue too. Their servers lock you out with draconian fail2ban/csf rules configured to blacklist your IP for 24-48 hours for 3 failed login attempts or something like that. If you reach out to them about it, they get back to you a week later saying that it's "resolved" now and to reach out if it happens again.. (not helpful...)

    For a few of my domains, started the long overdue process of moving email over to Google again :/

    THAT BEING SAID:
    Overall, as long as your expectations are correct, I would still purchase this product and recommend it. Don't expect a email service that you can use comfortably for personal/work without quite a few annoyances (Honestly, just stick with Google/Microsoft for day-to-day use. Protonmail if you're concerned with not having the big companies snoop through your mail) HOWEVER, if you have the occasional use for domains that need to receive email on occasion, but are not regularly checked. Or if you need SMTP accounts to send emails that will have fair deliverability rates without configuring it yourself, I think this is a great product. It is also great as an email system to integrate with other services (e.g. WHMCS via POP3) if spam filtering and lack of fancy features doesn't matter all that much to you.

    ** NOTE: I Have only run into ONE delivery issue ever with MXroute (I dont send email lists. mostly business/personal), so deliverability for what I would consider "general use" has been excellent **

    What I will do personally:
    I have already moved my email that has been catch-all'd on mxroute for nearly 2 years now because I finally got fed up with the annoyances. However, given the justifications above, I would consider renewing if I am able to snag renewal at this new $30 price point. The service is definitely worth more than $15/year, and you get your value back.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2018

    Jonchun said: The extremely slow support is a bit of an issue too. Their servers lock you out with draconian fail2ban/csf rules configured to blacklist your IP for 24-48 hours for 3 failed login attempts or something like that. If you reach out to them about it, they get back to you a week later saying that it's "resolved" now and to reach out if it happens again.. (not helpful...)

    While I appreciate the recommendation and don't want to come across as being argumentative, I do want to point out that this has not been true for quite a while. Customers only complain about brute force protection, no one actually wants it beyond claiming they do in comments. Not one case of a compromised email account to date has led to any discovery of successful brute force attacks. As a result, this has been tuned way down. There continues to be no evidence to support any need to increase it again.

    Jonchun said: I will say that recently, it was a bit of a disappointment losing MailChannels without notification. Not a single email/ticket opened with me. My sent-emails started bouncing one day because my SPF records didn't match (I previously had it configured to the mailchannels relay)

    This is why I've always told everyone to watch our Twitter, and that I cannot guarantee any settings outside of the ones I suggest. Our SPF record was updated. Again not trying to be argumentative, I just want to air the other side of it. Companies have to make vendor decisions all the time, and MC had to go (increasing cost and false positives by spam filter). Finalizing such a big change while running a small business, I need to be able to inform people of things in mass without having to stop and write press releases, so I keep the Twitter active. Priority #1 is making sure the email doesn't stop.

    The support should also be mostly resolved. There's some backlog but that's getting cleared out. The new delivery system is doing well and I'm iterating on it daily to improve it even more. The number of complaints about delivery through it have actually seemed fewer to me since the switch from MC. Hope you give it another shot, bad times couldn't last forever ;)

    • The firewall stuff was an issue as recently as just a few months ago. Obviously, I don't fail logins often (my issues were caused by legitimate reasons such as turning on an old phone that had an old password saved in the email client). If it has been tuned down more recently than that, that's great to hear.
      (I just checked, and my ticket regarding this issue was 04/28/2018) Given how long MXRoute has been around now, this is a very recent change and not "quite a while" like indicated. It is also possible that not all of your servers have the same settings.

    • Twitter seems like a strange way to choose as the ONLY platform for product-affecting, important announcements, but that is fair if that is what you chose. I would recommend some sort of website integration via Twitter API in this case. Please note that you used to say things like

    Basically what you're paying for here is MailChannels. Never get a bounce due to IP reputation issues.

    so I would argue this is a fundamental change in product, that should probably come with the offer of a prorated refund to all pre-existing customers (yes, it's a cheap product, and yes it wasn't guaranteed... but it was how you marketed it, so that would be the ethical thing to do)

    • I have been a long time user. You previously recommended using the mailchannels relay SPF record, so I'm not sure what you mean by not guaranteeing any settings outside of the suggested ones. Here is one such example (I know I have PMs or something elsewhere where you even explicitly said that the mxroute spf doesn't have to be in there, but not going to go hunting for that now)
      https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/79289/email-hosting

    • Glad to hear support is resolved. The slow support was starting to become a real problem.

    • I'm probably going to renew my plan as stated. However, it looks like you missed my question on the difference between the older biennial 40G plan, and the one you're offering now. Is this a promotional price? Is it available to switch to? (for what it's worth, I would save money even if I bought it now and just did a manual transfer)

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2018

    I appreciate your feedback and only seek to have both sides of a story present where a story is told. It doesn't invalidate your perspective but it shares mine. Your perspective is always valid because it is how you experienced it.

    Jonchun said: The firewall stuff was an issue as recently as just a few months ago. Obviously, I don't fail logins often (my issues were caused by legitimate reasons such as turning on an old phone that had an old password saved in the email client). If it has been tuned down more recently than that, that's great to hear. (I just checked, and my ticket regarding this issue was 04/28/2018) Given how long MXRoute has been around now, this is a very recent change and not "quite a while" like indicated. It is also possible that not all of your servers have the same settings.

    Maybe more to that story then, I'm sorry for any trouble.

    Jonchun said: so I would argue this is a fundamental change in product, that should probably come with the offer of a prorated refund to all pre-existing customers (yes, it's a cheap product, and yes it wasn't guaranteed... but it was how you marketed it, so that would be the ethical thing to do)

    I only hyped a vendor because the vendor met the promises I made for the product. I think I'm right to assume that my customers didn't treat me as merely a reseller that should keep that vendor forever if that did not remain true. Our relationship was always about me getting their email where it needed to be, not me being a MC account. MC was merely the means, and yes I advertised that while it continued to be the means by which that promise was kept. That it was meeting the promise it was sold with had been increasingly not true for quite some time (constant complaints of false positives). I realigned and improved the product for most users (someone is always going to be the exception, the goal is iterating to reduce those exceptions) so that I could continue to deliver on the content of the promises made when selling the service. From my view this is what my customers hired me to do, to make these decisions and do the work. Sinking the ship on purpose (selling my business and personal assets to fund a paid mass exodus, shutting down the service for everyone as a result) for the sake of being unnecessarily apologetic about working hard to keep the promises that I've made is not part of our shared ethics system I'm afraid. While there may have been other circumstances around when the move happened, it was always going to happen and had been mentioned several times on the Twitter feed. A version of it had actually been in production for several months for a small portion of our outbound mail, testing for the day that the switch would occur.

    Jonchun said: You previously recommended using the mailchannels relay SPF record, so I'm not sure what you mean by not guaranteeing any settings outside of the suggested ones

    That's not what I did. I was asked how "I" handled it, not how I delegated the instructions to customers. I did the include, I told customers in their welcome email to use my domain for their include. I would never suggest that customers use an SPF record that I can't manage, when I'm expected to manage delivery for them. I apologize if my words were unclear, as seems to have been the case.

    Jonchun said: I'm probably going to renew my plan as stated. However, it looks like you missed my question on the difference between the older biennial 40G plan, and the one you're offering now. Is this a promotional price? Is it available to switch to? (for what it's worth, I would save money even if I bought it now and just did a manual transfer)

    My answer has typically been that I avoid increasing workload for the purpose of decreasing income, as even when support was easily managed by just me I found that I would be overwhelmed with requests to switch promos, taking an afternoon of work to focus solely on reducing income. I began suggesting to everyone that they purchase the promo they want to move to, if that was their desire, and that they would be responsible for any migration involved. With that said, you might talk to Louis and see what he says. He has full authority to continue with that or make any other decision he deems appropriate. He will be in support tickets and our Discord.

  • Are all MX records on the same IP? If let's say I bring 10 domains to you, will their MX be on the same IP or do you have multiple IP's and randomize them?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2018

    @Malin said:
    Are all MX records on the same IP? If let's say I bring 10 domains to you, will their MX be on the same IP or do you have multiple IP's and randomize them?

    They will all be on the same. Keep in mind that IP isn't sending mail.

  • @jar said:
    They will all be on the same. Keep in mind that IP isn't sending mail.

    I know. I was asking for something else. I'll shoot you a PM.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • @Jonchun said:
    Is this a promotional price? Is it available to switch to? (for what it's worth, I would save money even if I bought it now and just did a manual transfer)

    I answered this above :). Instead of buying it and doing the manual transfer, then cancelling the old package. I can just change it for you. Only condition is that you due date will be moved to today. So you'll "lose" however many months you had left until the due date. IMO this option is easier for you and it has the same end result for us financially.

  • jar said: Our SPF record was updated.

    Ummm......... so what is the new SPF record

    The name server at ghost.mxroute.com is still returning the old record

    "v=spf1 +a +mx +ip4:107.155.64.166 +ip4:23.92.70.100 +include:mxroute.com -all"

    And yes - if you make a change like this, you need to send an email to your customers and not use Twitter. Really common sense.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2018

    Except for the customers who then tell me they'd like me to stop sending emails for product announcements that don't require them to do anything. Can't please everyone. Someone is always mad about everything.

    Correct SPF is the include of ours. Always has been.

  • louis_laulouis_lau Member
    edited August 2018

    @jiggawattz said:

    jar said: Our SPF record was updated.

    Ummm......... so what is the new SPF record

    The SPF record you need to configure has always been "v=spf1 include:mxroute.com -all". We changed the record on mxroute.com. So you never need to change anything.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jiggawattjiggawatt Member
    edited August 2018

    jar said: Except for the customers who then tell me they'd like me to stop sending emails for product announcements that don't require them to do anything.

    But those customers' emails are still getting delivered... whereas the affected customers' emails are likely being sent to spam or dropped without the customer even knowning.

    Do you see the difference in magnitude of these situations?

    louis_lau said: The SPF record you need to configure has always been "v=spf1 include:mxroute.com -all". We changed the record on mxroute.com. So you never need to change anything.

    The name server at ghost.mxroute.com is still returning

    v=spf1 +a +mx +ip4:107.155.64.166 +ip4:23.92.70.100 +include:mxroute.com -all

    Just FYI

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2018

    @jiggawattz said:

    jar said: Except for the customers who then tell me they'd like me to stop sending emails for product announcements that don't require them to do anything.

    But those customers' emails are still getting delivered... whereas the affected customers' emails are likely being sent to spam or dropped without the customer even knowning.

    Do you see the difference in magnitude of these situations?

    So, getting back to my original question: is 23.92.70.100 or 107.155.64.166 still involved in your sending infrastructure? What is the exact SPF record I should publish?

    I'm sorry, who is impacted and why? You're skipping details and I'm not following. The correct SPF record has never changed.

  • jiggawattjiggawatt Member
    edited August 2018

    jar said: I'm sorry, who is impacted and why? You're skipping details and I'm not following. The correct SPF record has never changed.

    jar said: This is why I've always told everyone to watch our Twitter, and that I cannot guarantee any settings outside of the ones I suggest. Our SPF record was updated.

    I see now that you just changed the record at mxroute.com ... not the SPF records customers were recommended to publish. This is fine, thanks for clarifying.

    Thanked by 2jar louis_lau
  • @jar said:

    • Email is limited to 300 outbound per email account per hour. Automatic suspension above that to prevent spammers or compromised accounts from impacting your delivery.

    Saw you mention this in the other MXroute thread and I've been thinking about it ever since. Figured this would be a good time to ask some questions.

    • Does sending email to yourself through MXroute count as outbound? I have many monitoring services and such that send from my domain to my domain. In the event of a major outage somewhere, I could see (possibly) triggering the 300 email limit. But I don't know if it's "outbound" since it never leaves your mail server.

    • I assume you get an email notification if your service is suspended. Would it be possible to implement a "soft" notification at, say, 250 emails?

    • What's the remediation process for getting access back? Open a ticket and wait? Or is there something automated that someone can do? I'm just curious as to the potential outage of email during this time.

    I've been a happy customer for almost 3+ years, but I didn't have to worry about a sudden spike in emails affecting my service. 300 outbound per hour is certainly reasonable, but now quantity is on my mind. (Not sure if I have ever even come close to that, but I never tracked it before.)

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @rpollestad said:

    @jar said:

    • Email is limited to 300 outbound per email account per hour. Automatic suspension above that to prevent spammers or compromised accounts from impacting your delivery.

    Saw you mention this in the other MXroute thread and I've been thinking about it ever since. Figured this would be a good time to ask some questions.

    • Does sending email to yourself through MXroute count as outbound? I have many monitoring services and such that send from my domain to my domain. In the event of a major outage somewhere, I could see (possibly) triggering the 300 email limit. But I don't know if it's "outbound" since it never leaves your mail server.

    • I assume you get an email notification if your service is suspended. Would it be possible to implement a "soft" notification at, say, 250 emails?

    • What's the remediation process for getting access back? Open a ticket and wait? Or is there something automated that someone can do? I'm just curious as to the potential outage of email during this time.

    I've been a happy customer for almost 3+ years, but I didn't have to worry about a sudden spike in emails affecting my service. 300 outbound per hour is certainly reasonable, but now quantity is on my mind. (Not sure if I have ever even come close to that, but I never tracked it before.)

    So we're looking at first iteration of this logic so one thing I should stress is that it's existence and method are both subject to change. Right now this is meant to be the guard rail on the edge of the bridge, not the police car chasing you down. A minimal measure to prevent catastrophe while I work to build the second iteration which can be much more intelligent. You can find the first iteration here: https://gist.github.com/mxroute/93d0e6e19e6ea8c8f05d743a2ef4b505

    Right now: Any email sent will count regardless of destination. Your notification is the error returned by the server. The process would generally be a ticket but I'm aware of every suspension and may intervene before you can speak up. If it's an account compromise sending spam, waiting is appropriate. If it's a situation that serves no beneficial function for me to have it suspended, I'm going to whitelist it and remove the suspension.

    Honestly if you worry more about your security and not sending bulk unsolicited email to external services, you can trust that I'm looking out for you and not just leaving this automation to it's own devices.

    The second iteration will feature alerting and more finely tuned logic. The third iteration I want to focus on self service features (TBD what that means).

    Thanked by 1rpollestad
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2018

    Btw if anyone likes stats, this is first iteration of public monitoring on our in-house MC replacement: http://stats.mxroute.com/d/QvKnwwKik/mxroute-outbound?refresh=10s&orgId=1

    (Yeah that much of our outbound really is spam, so many forwarders and catch-all accounts)

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