Just like Spinal Tap!

We’re pleased to announce some major changes to our hosted email services. You’ll be relieved to hear these do not require any action on your part, although you may want to go have a look.

Firstly, we’ve got a new spam setting. In true Spinal Tap fashion, we decided to make our spam detection systems go one louder.

You see, spam is getting trickier. It’s always a game of who can build the better mousetrap and we’ll always be playing catch-up to a certain extent. We just think we’re ahead of all the others.

Currently we use a range of tools neatly bound together to give us a likelihood of any given message being ’spam’. These include language analysis, looking a the route and source of the message as well as comparing it with several ‘fingerprint’ databases of known bulk email.

As it is impossible to say with 100% certainty that the recipient will consider the message spam (you may very well want that little blue pill; it’s none of our business), we can take great steps towards determining that the message has used tricksy methods to find it’s way into your mailbox. This results in a score out of 10 where 0 is all clear and 10 is the most spammiest message ever written.

Once we have the message score, your settings determine what we do with it. Up ’till now we’ve just some rather misguiding words to describe the settings: Low, Medium, High and Extreme. Fact is, Extreme is the best in use and some spam still gets through.

Today we’re renaming these level as 1 to 4 and introducing our new friend, Level 5 or ‘highest’. Level 5 introduces a new bespoke system that we have been testing in-house for over a year to make sure we’ve got it just right. It adds additional remote server blacklisting using our own internal scoring system.

We’ve also altered the control panel to use a funky little slider as we think this will better represent how the system works. API v2.3 users can also take advantage of the new setting by setting ’spam’ to 5 in ModifyMailbox.

No spam filter will ever be 100% effective but Level 5 will give you the best protection you’ve ever had against unsolicited email. Better still, this upgrade is available to all users free-of-charge.

And there’s more!

If you’re noticing that the Control Panel is a little zippier today, you’re right. We’ve introduced version 2.3 of the API which is demonstrating a 1000% speed increase over 2.1 and 2.2. The reason? We’ve replaced the SOAP interface with REST. OK, this may be nonsense to some of you reading so lets put it this way. REST is simpler and more efficient than SOAP so it’s a lot faster.

For those of you using the API, you can read the docs at http://soap.apm-internet.net/v2.3/apidoc/. Please note the existing SOAP interface isn’t going anywhere for a while yet.

Finally, we’ve made some tweaks to the user interface. This is the start of many more improvements to come. Mailboxes now show at a glance if Autoreply is set and we’ve fixed a problem with the Autoreply input screen.

As ever, any questions do let us know via support@verygoodemail.com

PJ Evans
Geek-in-Chief

The Fax machine is still an office essential in many businesses – but have you ever stopped to consider the cost of running one of these machines?

If you’re using a dedicated BT line for fax this can add up to over £180 per year alone!

• Then there’s power usage – it’s not particularly green to have fax machines sat on standby 24 x 7.
• Do you have a maintenance contract in place? How much does that cost?
• Consumables such as paper and toner – well, there aren’t any if you use faxtastic!
• And how much of your staff time is taken up managing the fax and distributing incoming faxes?

It all adds up – actually more than we realised when we started adding it all up!

So, on cost alone, choosing a fax to email solution like faxtastic! should be a simple decision and that’s before you look at functionality benefits!

With services ranging from FREE, to only £2.50 per month for the most expensive, it’s considerably cheaper than other Fax to Email services.

Oh – and being run by the very nice people at The Very Good Email Company – it’s friendly too!

If you haven’t already got your fax to email number – go get it now at www.faxtastic.co.uk

Iain

Following on from the success of our MessageBunker in-the-cloud email archiving service within our Partner network we can announce that from today – 12th February 2010 – this service is only available through accredited Partners.

This removes any potential conflict with direct sales and enables Partners to provide this innovative service alongside their existing email solutions.

Take a look here for a list of MessageBunker Partners.

If you’d like to become an accredited Partner please contact us at partner@verygoodemail.com and start generating new revenues today!

Iain

Just reading an interesting piece over on ISP Review entitled Marketers Complain Legitimate Email Blocked as SPAM by UK ISPs

It’s not the argument of what constitutes Spam – we’re all different – but I did find myself agreeing strongly with one of their conclusions: “we do encourage any ISP that deploys anti-spam filtering to give its customers some degree of control over which addresses it applies to; even if that is merely in the form of a basic “on” and “off” switch.”

We’d strongly agree with that sentiment – and being able to select the level of filtering (from ‘Low’ to ‘Extreme’) has always been a core feature of our filtering platform here at The Very Good Email Company, along with the ability to view and restore any removed mail from the customers’ Spam folder.

Iain

As stated by the Chancellor in his Pre-Budget Report  on 9th December, the standard rate of VAT will return to 17.5% on January 1st 2010. We are therefore updating our invoicing and payment platforms to reflect this.

If you currently pay for services from The Very Good Email Company, such as Faxtastic, or any of our other email services, through Worldpay you will receive an update directly from them advising you of the amount to be paid. You will need to do nothing and changes in charges we make will take effect from midnight on December 31st.

On a happier note we hope you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!