"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.
