I've been a reseller for a few years now but have a handful of clients for whom any email downtime is a serious problem and my current host unfortunately is not perfect on this.

So, does anyone know of anywhere that can offer a mission critical, email hosting service that I can use for my clients?

I am based in the UK, but quality of service is the most important factor.

Thanks all.

Have you checked google.com/hosted

Have you checked google.com/hosted
Thanks, yes I had briefly looked at that, and it seems great, but I don't think it would be right to start migrating paying clients to use a free google beta application just yet. I'm really looking for a company that are aiming at the higher end 'you pay the premium to get the exceptional level of service' market.
So, if anyone has any real experience of a company that may fit the bill I would love to hear it. :)

Check: runbox.com

BTW: google has paid version as well, you can ask them for details. Also see yahoo.

Check: runbox.com

BTW: google has paid version as well, you can ask them for details. Also see yahoo.
Thanks, I'll check those out :)

I'm really looking for a company that are aiming at the higher end 'you pay the premium to get the exceptional level of service' market.

Yes, these companies do exist. Companies with a clustered setup, where they have dedicated mail servers tend to have better overall reliability on theri individual services vs setups where mail service is on the same servers as web, db, etc.. Inherently, most hsphere providers are configured this way. The "most premium" example os dynamicnet. However, if they are out of your price range, you will find many other providers with consistant 99.95+% uptime on mail service using this configuration.

Hope this helps...

That is if a few spamcop listings don't hinder it, as spamcop hates qmail even with all the patches they say are needed.

That is if a few spamcop listings don't hinder it, as spamcop hates qmail even with all the patches they say are needed.

I "think" you are talking about this:

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/329.html#bounces

These patches are basically to deal with misdirected bounces - which they do. The patches do resolve the real issue. The problem most people are having are spamers abusing autoresponders - problem is, it looks very similar to a misdirected bounces issue, and most people cannot differentiate between the 2. Any mail server can suffer an attack against autoresponders - for this sort of attack, the spamcop recommended patches do not resolve the issue for qmail - because their recommended patches do not address the actual problem you are trying to deal with - ie) you are trying to address a misdirected bounce problem, when in fact, you are getting blacklisted at spamcop because of an attack on autoresponders using spoofed email addresses....

The fix for this attack isnt overly difficult - however, again, this is not a qmail specific problem - it is basically a problem with attackers getting more creative and using autoresponders to get mail servers blacklisted...

what type of email service do you want to offer? one were people can just go on your website and signup for a email account?

what type of email service do you want to offer? one were people can just go on your website and signup for a email account?
It would be ideally an extra option to go with the current hosting packages I have, to give some additional peace of mind to clients for whom email is an essential part of their business (ie. costs them quite heavily if the service is interupted).