E-Mails Blocked by Hosting Service

"If you use a listserver program hosted on your webserver, such as AutoResponse Plus, what prevents your web hosting service from blocking your e-mails or shutting you down?" -- Maher Moghrabi

Your web hosting service needs to trust you that you are not sending out spam, but legitimate opt-in e-mails -- and you need to honor that trust. Many hosting services see themselves primarily for hosting webpages, not for heavy e-mail uses. If your hosting service won't work with you on this, get another. If you use AutoResponse Plus (http://www.autoresponseplus.com/link.php?a=rfwilson) -- a great program, by the way -- you can find some compatible hosting services mentioned in their members forum.

Some hosting services cater to spammers, that is, they don't shut down spammers when complaints start flooding in. Avoid them for several reasons: (1) If they have no conscience about facilitating spammers, they may not act ethically towards you either. (2) IP addresses that send spam are quickly blacklisted and trigger spam filtering of e-mail sent from that IP address. Unless your hosting service uses a separate IP address (or maybe a separate "block" of IP addresses) for your outgoing e-mail, you could be blacklisted as a result of other spammers on the system and not know it. (3) Spam-friendly web hosts typically charge more money to look the other way.