Pobox queueing released messages?

[aynrandgirl]

I started a trial Mailstore account at Pobox. I was testing the spam hold-and-release feature by turning my spam lever up to "Trusted Senders Only" and then releasing received messages from the spam quarantine. I've found that Pobox is queueing my messages anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes after I've released them before actually sending them to the Pobox mailstore and forwarding addresses. Quite aggravating. Is this normal, or a feature of the trial account?

[EdinwolfPA]

Originally Posted by aynrandgirl

I've found that Pobox is queueing my messages anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes after I've released them before actually sending them to the Pobox mailstore and forwarding addresses. Quite aggravating. Is this normal, or a feature of the trial account?

Hello,

YES, in my experience with Pobox, this is normal behavior.


FYI........Pobox's Mailstore severs frequently have issues every 6 months or so .......so you could have trouble accessing the web interface from time to time.

David

[aynrandgirl]

Ok, thanks. Regular mail delivery to the mailstore seems delayed as well.

[EdinwolfPA]

Originally Posted by aynrandgirl

Ok, thanks. Regular mail delivery to the mailstore seems delayed as well.

Mail delivery is slow at times and their overall infrastructure could be better....

My Pobox account is up for renewal in a few weeks and I have decided that I am going to close my account there soon.......

I moved everything to Luxsci on October 19th.........shortly after their last Mailstore hiccup.

David

[EdinwolfPA]

Everything else at Pobox works Great except the Mailstore part of it

David

[aynrandgirl]

Originally Posted by EdinwolfPA

I moved everything to Luxsci on October 19th.........shortly after their last Mailstore hiccup.

Does the Luxsci spam quarantine work like the Pobox one?

What happened to prompt the change? Luxsci is 2-3x more expensive than Pobox ($120-180/year vs $50/year).

[David]

Originally Posted by EdinwolfPA

Everything else at Pobox works Great except the Mailstore part of it

Agreed: Pobox's basic forwarding account is superb (imho) Though I don't have an account now (when I did) I found that it worked superbly well with Fastmail.

[EdinwolfPA]

Originally Posted by aynrandgirl

Does the Luxsci spam quarantine work like the Pobox one?

Yes, they are similar to each other.

Originally Posted by aynrandgirl

What happened to prompt the change? Luxsci is 2-3x more expensive than Pobox ($120-180/year vs $50/year).

I decided to try Pobox in the first place mainly for two reasons:

• I had a Major SPAM problem through my ISP e-mail account
• I needed a place for my domain name e-mail from NameCheap

When I first signed up for a Mailstore account at Pobox back in December 20012 they had a major Mailstore outage that lasted several days. I had constant Mailstore access problems, etc. Pobox gave me 6 months for free due to this outage. I only paid $35.00 for my Mailstore account.

Also, on October 19th I again had similar Mailstore webmail access errors via their webmail interface the same ones I got back in December 2012. For this problem Pobox gave me 2 weeks for free.

I moved my domain name e-mail from Pobox to Luxsci on October 19th mainly due to sever problems with the Mailstore component at Pobox.

I needed access to my domain name e-mail and I did NOT want to deal with the problems again.

So moving my domain name e-mail to Luxsci was the right decision for me.

** I should also note that my e-mail account at Luxsci is my replacement for my Fastmail account which I will be closing by the end of August 2014**

David

[EdinwolfPA]

Originally Posted by David

Agreed: Pobox's basic forwarding account is superb (imho) Though I don't have an account now (when I did) I found that it worked superbly well with Fastmail.

Yes, Pobox did get rid of my SPAM problem that I had with my ISP e-mail account so I am thankful for that.

So my time at Pobox was worth it just to deal with that issue alone.

David

[David]

Pobox (in the beginning) were deeply involved in the development of the 'SPF Specification' - you could enable it, and block, any messages that did not conform to the new (at the time) specification for SPF.

I had an email address that received massive spam, every day, to the extent that I was unable even to use it. After enabling SPF protection at Pobox (in advanced spam settings) it took about two months, to completely free up this address (from spam) everything bounced (except the couple of messages a day that were genuine)

Now (for a long time) they seem to have disabled this feature, why I do not know .....

[aynrandgirl]

Originally Posted by David

I had an email address that received massive spam, every day, to the extent that I was unable even to use it. After enabling SPF protection at Pobox (in advanced spam settings) it took about two months, to completely free up this address (from spam) everything bounced (except the couple of messages a day that were genuine).

Now (for a long time) they seem to have disabled this feature, why I do not know .....

I don't see anything calling itself "advanced" spam settings. There's one slider that selects among pre-arranged anti-spam features whose strength you don't control.

Are you sure SPF is disabled? If Pobox doesn't host DNS for your domain, you set up SPF from your DNS provider (I use Namecheap) not Pobox. If Pobox does host DNS for your domain: "Go to your domain's MyPobox page. If you see a section in the right bar labeled "Pobox SPF", we host your domain's DNS, and you can set up an SPF record saying all mail from your domain will come through our SMTP servers. Clicking the button in that section will create the record."

[aynrandgirl]

Originally Posted by EdinwolfPA

Yes, they are similar to each other.

Neat. I've decided I really like the "bounce nothing,quarantine everything" style of spam management. You can't lose false positives because they've been stored in the quarantine rather than being permanently rejected. Only Pobox and Luxsci are doing that so far as I know.

I'm still struggling with the exorbitant cost of Luxsci for a single user. A premium acct + premium filtering is ~$200/year. A basic acct + premium filtering is ~$140/year. Not a huge sum in the scheme of things, but way more than the usual suspects (Polarismail, Rollernet, Pobox, or Runbox).

[William9]

LuxSci premium spam filter is provided by an enterprise service of McAfee. When using this premium service, MX records are configured to point to the McAfee service, then the filtered messages are to delivered your LuxSci account. No noticeable delay. I've used the service for years and it works very well. My experience with this service is nearly zero spam in my inbox. Conversely, I rarely have to release non-spam from the quarantine.

[EdinwolfPA]

Originally Posted by aynrandgirl

I'm still struggling with the exorbitant cost of Luxsci for a single user. A premium acct + premium filtering is ~$200/year. A basic acct + premium filtering is ~$140/year. Not a huge sum in the scheme of things, but way more than the usual suspects (Polarismail, Rollernet, Pobox, or Runbox).

True, it is a little more expensive than your average e-mail provider.....But it is worth it in my opinion....

At Luxsci I get tech support 365 days/year, 7 days a week from 9:00am-11:00pm EST..and with the recent changes Luxsci made recently make it even better http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=67998

David

[aynrandgirl]

Originally Posted by EdinwolfPA

At Luxsci I get tech support 365 days/year, 7 days a week from 9:00am-11:00pm EST..and with the recent changes Luxsci made recently make it even better http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=67998

Their website service does indeed look pretty good. Better than most I've seen out there, and if their hardware in fact isn't oversubscribed (as they claim) more desirable than the usual gaggle of web hosting services.