MrSite - SMTP Service or Server?? T&C's

Aubs

Hi all,

My brother in law was in need of a website for a business venture he is trying. He decided to use MrSite (www.mrsite.co.uk) to host the site as it has a built in 'paypal merchant' system available and also has email capability. All good.

He wants to use his blackberry to send and receive emails from his site hosted with MrSite.

We have now been told that they provide POP3 for receiving emails, but you have to use your own ISP' SMTP for sending mail.

This is a bit impractical when using blackberry as sometimes you'd be using wi-fi so your home/work ISP and other times mobile broadband so your mobiles' ISP.

Looking at the terms and conditions, available from here, one of the items:

Availability

• POP3 and SMTP services on the Customer's domain name is available only during the Customer's period or subscription to the Services.

I spoke to a representative of MrSite called Clifford McDowell who said that "SMPT services" is different to an "SMTP Server" and that the SMTP Services they provide only allow email to be sent via their webmail.

Based on the above quote from their t&c's, they are specifying POP3 and SMTP (yes, services and not server) in the same sentence which in my opinion is pretty misleading if they are not referring to POP3 & SMTP that allows you to send and receive remotely.

Any comments from you guys on the above and whether you think the T&C's are misleading in this case or not would be appreciated.

To pay £70-£80 for something that isn't particularly usable as intended and isn't good!

Aubs

kwikbreaks

He will be able to send emails from the webmail that is provided as that will have its own SMTP server. It is normal to use your ISP SMTP server to send emails from a mail client.

Blackberries are usually used on corporate servers which "push" the emails to them and no cheapo hosting is likely to support that.

Aubs

Hi Kwikbreaks,

Thanks for your reply.

kwikbreaks wrote: »

He will be able to send emails from the webmail that is provided as that will have its own SMTP server.

Yes, this is correct.

It is normal to use your ISP SMTP server to send emails from a mail client.

Is it? I have never done this unless you use your ISP email account for your email then obviously this is the right SMTP server to use (e.g. virgin or BT). - Hotmail, Yahoo, gmail, to name but a few webmail email services, provide their own SMTP server for customers to send emails through.

Blackberries are usually used on corporate servers which "push" the emails to them and no cheapo hosting is likely to support that.

With Blackberries, you don't have to use push email, similarly I have a WindowsMobile phone and can use push, smtp, exchange, pop/imap for my email.

The point that I'm trying to get to though is by specifying "POP3 and SMTP" in the context they have, implies to me that they are services that are usable 'together', i.e. remote mail.

Aubs

kwikbreaks

The problem as I see it in challenging what they have supplied is that I couldn't see anywhere exactly what they were selling.

On the quick reading I have done it seemed to me that the service is for a shop script which only lets you apply some different skins to change the appearance. That may well give you a quick web shop but I've no idea how search engine friendly it would be or if it produces froogle feeds or sitemaps all of which are crucial for success.