Domain email hosting with good spam filters

boots_babe

Hi,

For years we've had our own domain name, which we don't use as a web site but use for our email addresses. This is all we will be using it for going forwards.

We currently have it hosted with Easyspace, but don't use that to actually access the emails, we have it setup to be accessed directly via Gmail.

The problem we've increasingly had over recent months, is that the spam filtering at Easyspace seems poor. Gmail's spam filtering is great, but when spam arrives in Easyspace, if Gmail leaves it on the server as it detects it as spam, then the Easyspace account fills up quite quickly. We currently have 12MB of space with Easyspace - sometimes it fills up within a day, but more usually over a period of a few days.

This is getting worse and worse, so as our service with Easyspace is up for renewal, I'm interested in moving to another hosting service which:

- has better spam filtering
- has a larger space allowance.

Our Easyspace renewal is around £20 for the year.

I've looked around and can see a few other services around the same price, which provide more space allowance and *claim* to have great spam filtering. The problem is, I don't know who really is good at this, and who isn't.

So was hoping for some advice or recommendations please?

Many thanks.

OneADay

You could try tweaking Gmail settings to auto delete spam like this

http://internet.wonderhowto.com/how-to/automatically-delete-spam-messages-gmail-0139569/

Personally I find hotmal better than gmail for spam filtering (both seem to mark genuine emails as spam - usually bulk email emails from companies).

boots_babe

But the problem isn't with Gmail. The Gmail spam filtering is fantastic - I know other people with Hotmail (and we used to have it years ago too) and they are plagued by spam whereas within our Gmail account it's almost never that anything gets through.

The problem is on the Easyspace hosting itself. Any spam that comes through to there, stays in the Easyspace inbox and isn't filtered out.

That means that when Gmail pulls down the emails from Easyspace, it correctly identifies these as spam and leaves them on the server.

The server then gets full pretty quickly as it is only 12MB in size.

An increased mailbox alone won't help as it'll just elongate the problem, but that's why I thought if we can get something that has decent spam filtering it would eradicate the problem we're having.

danmanchester

Is your gmail account a Google Apps one? Or are you simply redirecting emails from Easyspace to a standard free Gmail address?
The reason I ask is that I do a similar thing ie: .co.uk domain email address via Gmail (Google Apps) although I have had this Google Apps account from the days when they were free.

If your Gmail is a GApps account then you don't really have any need for Easyspace email hosting, just transfer your domain registration to a registrar (Heartinternet for example) that offers free catchall email forwarding. Easyspace may even offer this service for free but I suspect they've sold their email hosting package, not sure as I've never dealt with Easyspace.

boots_babe

No we don't have Google apps, just a standard free gmail account.

danmanchester

Ok, well the Google Apps side of things might not matter too much to you then.

In fact, it's probably simpler just using a standard Gmail address to receive your forwarded .co.uk domain emails and manage everything in Gmail. Just had a check on Easyspace "
Free Email Forwarding

If you already have your email setup on your main domain, or perhaps you want to use the likes of Gmail or Yahoo mail, Easyspace Email Forwarding allows you to send on everything to one convenient place."


so no need to use their email hosting package...just forward email to your Gmail and let it manage the spam. Then all you'd need to pay for is the annual domain renewal.

boots_babe

Hmm that's interesting. We actually rang Easyspace yesterday to talk it over with them. Explained what our issue is, and asked if they can offer any options to help with the problem.

They said no. They actually said that our package at the moment includes web hosting which we don't use, so we then asked about email only options and they said they don't do anything.

So I'm a bit confused - is the email forwarding definitely a current, standalone option? If it is then we can happily renew our domain with them and just have the free forwarding. I'd need to call them up again though and try to speak to somebody different to see if they would do this.

danmanchester

Looks as though it is, http://www.easyspace.com/domain-names

scroll down a bit and where it says Free with all domains click the green more info button and it shows "free email forwarding".

So on that basis as you don't need any kind of hosting package you'd just be leaving the domain registration with them.

esuhl

As dan says, just set up email forwarding with your domain registrar (so email to you@yourdomain.co.uk is forwarded to your gmail inbox), ditch the email hosting, then set the "from" field in your email client to your you@yourdomain.co.uk address. (Maybe gmail also let you do this via their webmail...?)