Article  Preventing Blacklisting with a Dedicated Web Server A blacklisted email server or email address can wreak havoc for a company who does most of their business by email. When you never know whether your customers will receive your messages, because your emails are so often ending up in people's junk mail folders, you risk losing business because of unhappy customers. That's why a dedicated web server and email server is so beneficial for your business. With personal and small business web hosting, many clients typically share the same server. Each has limits on how much space they can take up on the server, and partitions to prevent them from going over (or seeing other people's files). Similarly, in hosting providers that offer email services as well, many clients typically use the same email server. Sharing an email service has its drawbacks, however. The problem is that if one client on the server is sending out spam emails, the server can get blacklisted by the major email services such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL. Once that happens, email sent from that server will start ending up in people's junk mail folders. In order to ensure your clients get your communications, you will have to request that they whitelist you, which is where they put your email address or addresses on a list of approved senders. You don't have to be told how devastating that could be to your business. If new or potential customers never receive your messages, you could lose their business, or at the very least, make them very unhappy. And if your newsletters, sales promotions emails, autoresponders, and other communications never reach their destination, you could lose out on one of your main ways of generating repeat business. Although most reputable web hosting providers do take steps to prevent their email servers from being blacklisted, and take action to correct the problem if it happens anyway, even a brief bout of blacklisting can upset the way your business runs. This is where a dedicated web server comes in. This is the Cadillac of web hosting: Instead of sharing a server with umpteen other small business owners and everyone else who thinks they want to have a website, you will have your very own server. This saves it from getting cluttered up with other people's files, operating software, and what not. The more there is on the server, the more it gets bogged down, so in addition to protecting your website, you also maximize its performance. Similarly, having your own outgoing email server means that you can control what is sent out on your server. You don't have to worry that someone else on the server might send out spam and get everyone else's emails blacklisted by association. Because you control the server, you know what is being sent out, and you also have the ability to try to fix it if your server gets blacklisted for some reason. Of course, having your own dedicated web server and email server is more costly than the shared hosting options you usually see. When numerous clients share the same server, they also share the expense: the cost of the equipment, periodic maintenance, operating software, and the redundant power and Internet connections required to operate the server. These costs aren't anything to sneeze at, so by sharing a server, individuals and small businesses can save a lot of money. However, when you have a large business or you have a lot riding on whether or not your emails get through to their recipients, this cost may be justifiable. Consider which is higher: the cost of the server, or the cost of the business you could lose if you don't have your own server. Having a dedicated web server and your own email server gives you invaluable control over your website and communications. Category Internet Author Anonymous Add To Favorites Print This Article Email Article To A Friend Post Comments   Rate This Article (0) 1 - Poor2345 - Good678910 - Excellent Added On 02-19-2010