Tag Archives: fusemail

Goodbye FuseMail, hello TuffMail

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6

I have changed mail providers again. I’ve been with TuffMail for about 3 weeks now.

After my initial hassles with FuseMail, they came round. Pat and Henry were great. They got back to me after my scathing blog post, the issues were cleared up. All was well. I was all set to stay put.

FuseMail Problems

I had a problem deleting mail. I use IMAP, so I’d mark the mail to be deleted (press delete). Then the message is still visible, but crossed out. It’s waiting to be “purged” or “expunged”. I’d hit Expunge (in Evolution) and some of my mail waiting for deletion would be deleted. But only some. Then I’d repeat the process several times, and eventually get rid of all the mail to be deleted.

At least twice during this process, other emails were also deleted. Messages that I had not marked for deletion. I noticed that two very important client emails disappeared. It rocked my faith in FuseMail and my email in general. It was a very unsettling feeling.

I contacted FuseMail support. Explained my situation. I even managed to find the message ids of the lost messages from my backups. The response was very friendly, but pretty useless. They essentially said they couldn’t reproduce the problem, and so couldn’t do anything about it. They didn’t have a Linux machine to test with Evolution.

Hello TuffMail

So after a few weeks I finally made the switch to TuffMail. TuffMail is run by geeks. Every one of my suport emails has been answered by a guy called John Cano. I’m guessing he’s the man behind TuffMail.

His support sucks. Technically, he’s spot on, but his customer service sucks. It’s like asking for help on the #centos IRC channel. You’re expected to read the manual yourself, figure out what needs to be done, and then do it. Either I misunderstand John’s emails, ore they’re sarcastic at my expense. I’m assuming I misunderstand! ;-)

But, aside from the geekyt support, the service is technically excellent. Spam filtering seems to be rock solid after I finally got it seup properly. I can create complex sieve rules to filter my mail (which I adore). I haven’t lost a single email. All seems to be well.

Recommendations

Can I recommend FuseMail? Honestly, probably not. If you’re not too worried about losing email, or if you don’t use Linux, maybe they’ll be ok. Personally, I can’t in good faith recommend them after my experience.

Can I recommend TuffMail? If you’re a geek and don’t need “friendly” support, sure. The service is technically great. The configuration options are plentiful. You can set it up just how you like it. If you’re not a geek though, and you want a friendly support desk, no, I can’t recommend TuffMail either.

So my search for a technically competent, Linux friendly, well supported email system continues. Recommendations on a postcard… :)

FuseMail is Go

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1

After my bitching about FuseMail, two of their guys chimed in and saved the day. My faith in FuseMail was restored. I’ve gone ahead and moved my personal email over to them. It’s live. :)

A few things I like:

  • Mail is filtered on the server. I no longer have to download spam if I don’t want to.
  • Virus checking and spam filtering are automatic, I don’t have to worry about it.
  • My mail should be relatively safe, automatic backups, etc.

Thanks to Pat and Henry for responding to my blog post and dealing with the issues. I feel reassured.

FuseMail fail

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13

I signed up with FuseMail to host my email.They have failed me. Badly.

I reported a problem to them. I provided a detailed technical report. I received a short response which did not relate to my problem. I replied, at length, explaining that they had completely failed to address my problem. I received a second reply which was almost as short and just as useless as the first.

Overcome with frustration, I called them. The agent was the same person who sent me my first reply. I knew the call wasn’t going to go well. After 40 minutes on the phone, they finally conceded that they had made a mistake, there was a problem with their system. A senior engineer had fixed it, it would be sorted in 5-15 minutes. No apology.

Privacy

While on the phone, without asking my permission, the agent went into my mail account. She was looking for an email I said I had arrived, but she couldn’t find it. She had full and unrestricted access to my email. Ouch. I’m amazed that FuseMail staff need no permission to read my mail.

So, this leaves me looking for a new mail service. The best thing about FuseMail would seem to be their 14 day money back guarantee. I can cancel without having to pay for the shoddy service! :)

For the geeks out there, here’s a log of the ticket.

I opened with:

G’day,

I’ve set up a new domain and associated mail account for domain.co.uk.

Here’s the log when I try to send a test mail:

telnet mx.fusemail.net smtp
Trying 208.70.128.213…
Connected to mx.fusemail.net.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 smtp-gw31.mailanyone.net MailAnyone incSMTP Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:38:03 -0500
HELO callum-macdonald.dyndns.org
250 smtp-gw31.mailanyone.net Hello callum-macdonald.dyndns.org [119.11.6.234]
MAIL FROM: me{at}callum-macdonald.com
250 OK
RCPT TO: steve{at}domain.co.uk
550 Email Address was not found lvl0
DATA
503 valid RCPT command must precede DATA
500 unrecognized command
quit
221 smtp-gw31.mailanyone.net closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

Please advise.

Cheers – Callum.

FuseMail responded with:

Hi,

The MX record is not currently pointing to us, if you have changed this recently, please keep in mind it can take up to 24 hours for this to propagate.

In outrage I replied:

Come on now, don’t treat me like I’m stupid.

I didn’t say that the MX was pointing to FuseMail. I said, the server is not accepting mail for the domain. I included a telnet log which showed me connecting to the server and attempting to deliver mail. The mail was rejected.

If your response was meant to say “The mail server will only accept mail once the live MX records point to it.” then it should have said that. What it did say was just bloody obvious. Stating the obvious doesn’t help me resolve my problem.

So, let me repeat myself. The server mx.fusemail.net is not currently accepting mail for the domain domain.co.uk.

I have another domain, opencouchsurfing.org which I have set up on FuseMail. The server mx.fusemail.net *does* accept mail for that domain, even though there are *no MX* records pointing to fusemail for that domain.

So, there is a problem with domain.co.uk. The server should accept mail for the domain but it does not.

Just for the record, as a new customer still on trial, I’m not impressed by support so far. I expected a better level of understanding from a dedicated mail hosting company. I feel like I’m dealing with GoDaddy’s hosting support.

Callum.

To which they had this to say:

Hello,
None of your domains will receive mail in our system. The MX record for these domains must be pointed to our server for the mail to be delivered here. This is how the transfer of emails work. I can assure you that if you send mail to any of your addresses they are not going to come here unless there is a forward setup on the other server to send it to chmac{at}fusemail.com. Let us know if you have any other questions.

What do you think? Have I overreacted? Should I give Fusemail another chance? Or should I terminate them at once for gross incompetence?

Update: I have removed the technician’s names from this post upon request from FuseMail.