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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
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    Looking for hosting recommendations - HSphere and MailFoundry

    I'm considering switching hosts. I'm currently at Fluidhosting as part of their purchase of the Steadfast shared hosting. I had been with Steadfast since December 2007 and I was extremely happy with their service. Unfortunately they decided they wanted to focus on virtual and dedicated servers, which is out of my price range.

    I'm having mixed feelings about Fluidhosting. Long story short, the biggest reason is the loss of Steadfasts MailFoundry anti-spam.

    I'm considering looking for something else. If I find something in my price range with the features I need, I might be jumping ship. I really have no idea where to go, so I'm hoping someone can recommend a a good host.

    Here's what I'm looking for, in order of importance:

    - Must be H-Sphere Control Panel
    - MailFoundry anti-spam
    - About 500MB of storage
    - Around $5 a month
    - Around 20GB of bandwidth
    - About 10 domains
    - About 10 MySQL databases
    - At least 20 email addresses
    - Based in Canada is a bonus, but not a requirement

    I might have to compromise on a few of my requirements, and I'm willing to do so, but that's a rough outline of what I want/need.

    I've been trying to Google and find something suitable, but I find it hard to find H-Sphere hosts in general. In addition, most places don't specify what kind of anti-spam they have, and switching to a host that uses the same solution is pointless. If anyone has any suggestions or experiences please let me know.

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    If I'm not wrong, http://www.cartikahosting.com/ does offer both, you may want to contact them though.
    Shared Web Hosting - Reseller Hosting - Semi-Dedicated Servers - SolusVM/XEN VPS
    LiteSpeed Powered - R1Soft Continuous Data Protection - 24/7 Chat/Email/Helpdesk Support
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    DowntownHost LLC - In Business since 2001- West/Center/East USA - Netherlands - Singapore

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
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    Chicago, IL
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    To note, we had been looking to discontinue MailFoundry ourselves anyway, replacing it with another anti-SPAM solution. MailFoundry is lacking in some regards, so I wouldn't focus on MailFoundry specifically. As an example, we've been very happy lately with SpamExperts, which we've since switched to from the MailFoundry. Unlike MailFoundry, SpamExperts supports a high availability configuration, IPv6, and a quality API.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  4. #4
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    Thanks Jedito. I've actually seen Cartika and their plans before and they look like someone I might go with. Unfortunately I think they might be a bit out of my price range. They charge extra for MailFoundry so I'd be paying $12 a month if I went there. I can stretch a bit from my $5, but not that much. If they had a plan that was half their smallest plan, I'd jump all over it.

    Thanks for the input Karl. The reason I was specifically naming MailFoundry was since that's what I had with you guys. I never had any problems with lost emails, and it did a fantastic job filtering out spam. Spam-Assassin is junk. It's terrible at scoring obvious spam, and it tags legit emails.

    I'll take your word for it that there are other quality spam filters and I'll update my post to reflect that. I just want something high quality.

    Edit: I see to be unable to edit my original post. Odd. Anyway, like I said, it doesn't have to be MailFoundry. But it needs to be a quality spam filter, not just the basic Spam-Assassin junk.
    Last edited by frodeaa; 02-15-2011 at 12:53 PM. Reason: Couldn't edit original post.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by KarlZimmer View Post
    To note, we had been looking to discontinue MailFoundry ourselves anyway, replacing it with another anti-SPAM solution. MailFoundry is lacking in some regards, so I wouldn't focus on MailFoundry specifically. As an example, we've been very happy lately with SpamExperts, which we've since switched to from the MailFoundry. Unlike MailFoundry, SpamExperts supports a high availability configuration, IPv6, and a quality API.

    Are you using the hosted solution or the firewall? is this cluster for VPS and dedicated customers or only for steadfast? I agree with the OP, Spam Assassin is not at the same level as an enterprise class spam protection. I am with fluid hosting and I have tweaked the spam Assassin with some many configurations and the only outcomes are "legit emails being market as spam" or "spam emails getting into my inbox". however, while I agree that mail foundry is not the best spam protection, I barely received 1 or 2 spam emails a month and all my legit emails arrived into my inbox safely. (maybe it was steadfast custom mail foundry configuration).

    To the OP, have you looked at rackspace hosted email? so far, my search only returns Cartika hosting for HSPHERE + Spam Protection, however, according to their pricing it is $10 for the cheapest hosting + $10 for the spam protection. Hopefully they will run an special soon.
    Mike
    Netsphare Technologies Ltd. Co

  6. #6
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by Latin_Carrier View Post
    Are you using the hosted solution or the firewall? is this cluster for VPS and dedicated customers or only for steadfast? I agree with the OP, Spam Assassin is not at the same level as an enterprise class spam protection. I am with fluid hosting and I have tweaked the spam Assassin with some many configurations and the only outcomes are "legit emails being market as spam" or "spam emails getting into my inbox". however, while I agree that mail foundry is not the best spam protection, I barely received 1 or 2 spam emails a month and all my legit emails arrived into my inbox safely. (maybe it was steadfast custom mail foundry configuration).

    To the OP, have you looked at rackspace hosted email? so far, my search only returns Cartika hosting for HSPHERE + Spam Protection, however, according to their pricing it is $10 for the cheapest hosting + $10 for the spam protection. Hopefully they will run an special soon.
    We have our own appliances. We offer it with our fully managed plans and as an option with all VPS, dedicated, and colocated offers. I guess you don't even need to be a customer, $5 a month per domain is the base rate.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Latin_Carrier View Post

    To the OP, have you looked at rackspace hosted email? so far, my search only returns Cartika hosting for HSPHERE + Spam Protection, however, according to their pricing it is $10 for the cheapest hosting + $10 for the spam protection. Hopefully they will run an special soon.
    Hello,

    Just to clarify, our entry level hosting package is $10 and mailfoundry is $2/month/DOMAIN (vs the $10 you had indicated)

    Quote Originally Posted by Latin_Carrier View Post
    however, while I agree that mail foundry is not the best spam protection, I barely received 1 or 2 spam emails a month and all my legit emails arrived into my inbox safely. (maybe it was steadfast custom mail foundry configuration).
    this is the benefit of mailfoundry - practically zero false positives. They sometimes take a little longer then you would expect to pick up new spam, but, I guess their primary objective has been to protect legitimate mail. we have been pretty happy with mailfoundry as far as an enterprise grade solution goes...
    www.cartika.com
    www.clusterlogics.com - You simply cannot run a hosting company without this software. Backups, Disaster Recovery, Big Data, Virtualization. 20 years of building software that solves your problems

  8. #8
    I suppose that you need to test all of them. The kind of spam and activity of spamed bot might be diffrent depending on the domain name extension and format of email.

  9. #9
    Join Date
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    Chicago, IL
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    Quote Originally Posted by cartika-andrew View Post
    Hello,

    Just to clarify, our entry level hosting package is $10 and mailfoundry is $2/month/DOMAIN (vs the $10 you had indicated)



    this is the benefit of mailfoundry - practically zero false positives. They sometimes take a little longer then you would expect to pick up new spam, but, I guess their primary objective has been to protect legitimate mail. we have been pretty happy with mailfoundry as far as an enterprise grade solution goes...
    I was a huge fan of MailFoundry and I love it that their #1 goal is to prevent false positives. I just got tired of being told the comprehensive API, high availability, and IPv6 were on the road map while they didn't even come out with any real software updates for nearly 2 years and implementing none of those things. We just got tired of waiting... If none of those things bother you, I still highly recommend MailFoundry.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Saskatchewan
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    Thanks for the input guys. I've been looking around but so far no luck. I'm wondering if it's unreasonable to ask for what I need in that price bracket. Being a Steadfast customer made me spoiled it seems. Having a low false positive rate is very important to me, which is why I liked MailFoundry. But at this point I'll take anything that's better than Spam-Assassin. It is absolute junk and it's tagging things and sending them to my inbox marked as spam, even though the score is far higher than the "always delete" option. It's driving me crazy.

    To the OP, have you looked at rackspace hosted email? so far, my search only returns Cartika hosting for HSPHERE + Spam Protection, however, according to their pricing it is $10 for the cheapest hosting + $10 for the spam protection. Hopefully they will run an special soon.
    No I haven't specifically looked at it. I don't have much of a budget, so hosting email separate from my websites is pretty much out of the question I think. I have 4-5 mailboxes across 3 domains that I need filtered, so at Cartika I'd end up paying $16 a month, while if I went with a $5 host and rackspace email I'd be paying $13-15. Cartika seems like a good host, and it's Canadian to boot, so if those were my only choices I'd probably go with everything in one place.

    I wish they had a cheaper plan because I don't think I can go above $10. And in fact I'd prefer to stay around $5. Even if it means only getting half the bandwidth, MySQL databases, domains and email addresses I want. I'm so swamped in spam right now that I'm almost desperate to the point where I'm considering compromising on not having H-Sphere.

    Not to mention that FH is having some issues with the migration, which is having an impact on my website and email availability. I know migrations are not easy things to handle, but it doesn't really help on my stress level.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Jedito View Post
    If I'm not wrong, http://www.cartikahosting.com/ does offer both, you may want to contact them though.
    i recommend them too

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Europe
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    632
    Quote Originally Posted by frodeaa View Post
    Thanks for the input guys. I've been looking around but so far no luck. I'm wondering if it's unreasonable to ask for what I need in that price bracket. Being a Steadfast customer made me spoiled it seems. Having a low false positive rate is very important to me, which is why I liked MailFoundry. But at this point I'll take anything that's better than Spam-Assassin. It is absolute junk and it's tagging things and sending them to my inbox marked as spam, even though the score is far higher than the "always delete" option. It's driving me crazy.



    No I haven't specifically looked at it. I don't have much of a budget, so hosting email separate from my websites is pretty much out of the question I think. I have 4-5 mailboxes across 3 domains that I need filtered, so at Cartika I'd end up paying $16 a month, while if I went with a $5 host and rackspace email I'd be paying $13-15. Cartika seems like a good host, and it's Canadian to boot, so if those were my only choices I'd probably go with everything in one place.

    I wish they had a cheaper plan because I don't think I can go above $10. And in fact I'd prefer to stay around $5. Even if it means only getting half the bandwidth, MySQL databases, domains and email addresses I want. I'm so swamped in spam right now that I'm almost desperate to the point where I'm considering compromising on not having H-Sphere.

    Not to mention that FH is having some issues with the migration, which is having an impact on my website and email availability. I know migrations are not easy things to handle, but it doesn't really help on my stress level.
    You should not bash SpamAssassin like that because many enterprise antispam appliances are based on SpamAssassin as the core of their platform (most of the time, that fact isn't mentioned anywhere).

    The way SpamAssassin is configured, tweaked and integrated into final antispam product is what makes the difference in filtering efficiency.

    cPanel, DirectAdmin, Barracuda Spam Firewall and many more platforms are all based on SpamAssassin but they are very different by efficiency and performance in the end.

    I understand your comments but specifically SpamAssassin is probably not main reason for your bad antispam experience with platforms built on it, you've been using.

    e.g. cPanel's integration of SpamAssassin sucks, but it's not SpamAssassin project fault, it's cPanel's fault.
    Last edited by xtrac568; 02-17-2011 at 02:57 PM.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Saskatchewan
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    Look I'm sorry if I hurt someones feelings, but you'd be cranky too if you were receiving as much junk as I am doing right now. Combined with site/email availability issues, I've gone from 3 years of not thinking about my hosting to daily annoyances and headaches. I just want stuff to work.

    I've already spent 2 hours trying to configure SpamAssassin through H-Sphere to no avail. It still tags legit emails as spam, and it still lets through obvious spam as legit emails. I don't have the patience or the inclination to continue to fiddle with a product that I deem to be far inferior to what I had previously. Sure the "SpamAssassin project" may not be to blame, but the fact still remains that it's a SpamAssassin solution that I have and it is performing badly.

    I want to go back to what I had at Steadfast. Reliable service with good support and stuff that just works. I'd like to stay with H-Sphere, so if it's the combination of H-Sphere and SpamAssassin that's junk, then there's no point in changing to a different host using H-Sphere and SpamAssassin.

    Unfortunately it's becoming increasingly clear that I might have to go to a different kind of control panel. I don't like cPanel so I don't know what that leaves me.

    I don't want this to get into a discussion about whether SpamAssassin is good or bad. I'm looking for a host that offers a quality anti-spam solution. To me that means something more robust than SpamAssassin. I'm wading through junk in my mailbox and it's becoming increasingly irritating.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
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    397
    Sorry to open a semi-closed thread, but I just came across this because I have been a Steadfast customer for 5+ years, irritated with fluidhosting, etc. you know the whole spiel...

    Anyways, for email, I suggest using google apps. I've used it with shared hosting for years and I love it. As long you're not into the whole "google is trying to index everything for world dominance", its great because you can just point your email DNS to google, and its just like gmail with your own domain name. Entry level is free.

  15. #15
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    Thanks BostonGuru. I'm still drowining in spam so I'll take a look at Google Apps as it might solve my problem.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by frodeaa View Post
    Thanks BostonGuru. I'm still drowining in spam so I'll take a look at Google Apps as it might solve my problem.
    +1 for Google Apps for a single domain with up to 50 users/email accounts. The spam filter is based on Postini, and works pretty well.

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