When one first installs Interspire Email Marketer on their server there is often a temptation to use the default server settings for sending email. Afterall if you are already paying for hosting why shouldn’t you send native email at no additional cost? Here are a list of reasons why not.
- If you have a shared hosting account (probably not a good idea for various other reasons) you are likely sharing the IP address of your server with other users. It is very difficult to manage your email sending reputation when you can’t control (or see) what others are sending and doing with the IP address you share.
- If you have a dedicated IP address you at least control your reputation but be warned that many hosting providers recycle IP addresses. While it may be 100% dedicated to you today you don’t know what the past history of that IP address might be.
- Since most websites hosting companies don’t have a high percentage of customers that send hundreds of emails a day you are going to send up a red flag to the ESPs and ISPs when you start sending hundreds or thousands of emails in the same day. It takes time to slowly warm up and IP address without raising red flags and that process is slower when you use a native server that is owned or hosted by a company that doesn’t have the reputation to be email heavy.
- If for any reason you do run into an issue with the ISPs or ESPs they will follow your activity back to your host and file a complaint. Most hosting providers will shut down your entire account without asking for explanations. They have zero tolerance for SPAMers and they aren’t going to take the risk. If this happens to you your Interspire Email Marketer install will be down until you can reprove your reputation to the Host and worst case scenario you may lose that data forever (trust me I’ve been there and it isn’t much fun).
- A lot of hosting plans, including dedicated plans, have limits to the number of emails you can send PER HOUR and PER DAY. These limits are reasonable for average use but very limiting for someone using Interspire Email Marketer.
What is the alternative? We will cover specific options in later posts on our site but in short we recommend finding a 3rd party SMTP provider that can handle all your sending and IP reputation for you. These providers understand delivery and they are the best at what they do. It is always worth the expense.