If you host your web site and email with Appnet, then you are provided a certain number of free email accounts with the domain name that you pay hosting fees for each month. We are always happy to help you set up your email; we have helpful video tutorials that are easy to watch and give you step-by-step instructions, and we can usually answer your questions over the phone if you need further help and guidance. We always try our best to be very accommodating to our clients’ needs when it comes to email, as we understand that it is important to you as a client to be able to email your potential leads and communicate with others. Email is an integral part of what we do. That is why the topic of spam and knowing about appropriate email practices is so important to us, and we understand that it is important to ALL of our clients who have email accounts with us, as well.

In the past, we have had only a handful of periods when email has been "down," thus affecting several hundred clients and thousands of people. Most of the times when the email system has not been working correctly, it was due to spam being sent from email accounts that we provide. Spam is a huge problem. As most of you probably know from receiving spam emails daily, it's a part of ALL of our lives, especially if your email address has some age to it, or has ever been advertised anywhere online—either on your own site or in other spots, like message boards, where you may have typed it in and allowed it to display. We realize that our clients are probably not sitting back and sending out one email to thousands upon thousands of people all at once. However, we still felt the need to address how one's email account can be identified as sending spam and consequently be put on a spam list that the dreaded "spam cops" (trust us, these guys do exist) mark and take notice of, thereby impacting everyone's ability to send mail properly from our accounts.

There really is no set number of people that you can email all at once and it be considered "ok." Some may think, "I only sent that email about that special sale to 100 people; that's not considered spamming because spammers send out their info to thousands." The truth is, if you are going to send out an email like that, you only need to send it to people that have asked to receive those kinds of offers and emails from you and your company. If you send it to a contact list that you have just formed on your own over the years by amassing email addresses for people without asking if they would like to be contacted that way for offers and deals, then you run the risk of having someone flag your message as spam. Make it a policy not to send an email to too many accounts at once. This includes the "CC” and “BCC" fields especially. If you are going to send something to an email list of people who have given their express consent for receiving communications from you, then it is wise to use an email blast program. We offer a newsletter program and can give you more information if you are interested. Also, there are other programs just like this that can be found online by searching for these services. These services also allow people to opt out, which is their right; the ability to opt out should be a part of these kinds of newsletter emails that you might send. When your email does not have this option, you run the risk of getting blacklisted, which can truly affect us all.

The other way in which many accounts get labeled as spam is due to malicious software that may be running on their computers. It is very important that you run up-to-date virus protection and malicious software detection on your computers so that you do not accidentally download something that will literally infect your computer by using your email account to send out millions of spam messages each day. You can get these types of bugs from browsing sites online and by downloading things that people send you. If you have proper protection, you can ensure that this will not be an issue.

We hope that everyone understands these guidelines and will ensure that they are not inadvertently calling attention to their accounts by sending out emails to too many recipients. If you send an email to even one person that does not appreciate receiving it, you can be labeled as spam and cause complications for everyone using our email hosting services.

Please feel free to contact us if you have further questions, or if you are interested in signing up for our email newsletter programming for your web site.