Webhost

[Mr. Fabulous]

Hi guys, need some help from the Somersoft IT Department. I'm considering moving my website from the current host to an alternative, due to issues with not receiving/sending emails over the last couple of months, which is potentially costing me business. Does anyone have any recommendations?

The webhost claims that the issue is on the sender/receivers end, however one guy whose emails weren't getting through told me the only email address he had issues with was mine. I asked him to send an email to an alternative address and it came through no problem. I sent two emails to two people from the same company a week ago and the email I sent went through for one person and bounced for the other (one was listed as the To: address and one as the CC: address).

They (the webhost) also provided me with instructions to monitor emails using a certain website address, which when I tried to use it, came up as an error page!

Lastly, how much of a PITA is it to transfer webhosting?

Thanks in advance guys.

 

[D.T.]

You mention both webhosting and troubles with emails - i suspect you have them both with the same place at the moment?

Moving the website can be easy or hard depending on what sorta content you have. If they're plain sorta pages, someone can just copy and paste them from one place to another and then point your domain name to the new location. Or, if you have a whole bunch of databases and stuff, it can get infinitely more tricky.

Moving the emails is much simpler. Happy to take a look and / or assist if you are prepared to share the details.

 

[Beanie Girl]

My partner concurs with D.T.'s analysis above.
If it's just html pages/files and images, you use an ftp client and move it from one server to another.
If you have databases, it's trickier but not impossible, partner's done it several times.

Web Host he recommends - westhost.com
very good service, very reliable, call centre open 24 hours
He's been with them for 7 years for 4 virtual machines

 

[zimby]

Do yourself a favour and separate web hosting from email hosting.
Get yourself a Office365 cheap monthly setup.
This will give you all the enterprise features/stability for a relatively cheap monthly cost.
Doing this is not difficult, just change dns/mx records/ sign up for a monthly subscription.
I'd suggest then moving your domain to a larger provider, these providers usually offer services to migrate websites etc, some names are godaddy, melbourneIT, crazy domains.

 

[Beanie Girl]

Zimby is right about having your mail server on a separate host from your web server
Alternatively, you can use Google Apps for Business for your mail hosting. After all, it's Google, massive redundancies (no single point of failure).
Google's spam filtering is just awesome

The following link instructs you how to point your MX records in your domain host/registrar

https://support.google.com/a/answer/174125?hl=en

 

[D.T.]

MUCH prefer google apps over office365.

 

[Sim]

I'm considering moving my website from the current host to an alternative, due to issues with not receiving/sending emails over the last couple of months, which is potentially costing me business. Does anyone have any recommendations?

How many users do you have using email?

Do you use Android, iOS or Windows phones?

Do you have a strong dislike for Microsoft and/or Google or don't care?

What CMS software (if any) does your website use?