In the upcoming weeks we will be working on upgrading all of our shared SmarterMail servers to the latest available version.
No email functionality should be lost or affected by these upgrades. All email client devices (such as Outlook, Thunderbird, MacMail, iPhone, etc…) will continue functioning as expected. If you access your email via webmail, then you will notice a change in the webmail interface being used as SmarterMail had a complete user interface (UI) change to make a more modern look in the newer versions.
In addition to the web UI changes, these upgrades will also allow for increased spam prevention methods to be utilized. More on this in the section below.
Why are these upgrades and changes being preformed?
There are several reasons as to why these upgrades and changes are being made. Firstly, it is always recommended to stay on the latest versions of all software that you are using. By updating, this allows for security patches and performance enhancements to be made.
In additional to the already mentioned security patches and performance increases, the upgrades come with additional features that will help reduce the overall amount of spam that users on the server receive.
Most email providers (such as Gmail, Yahoo, ATT, Comcast, AOL, etc…) have strict DMARC requirements for sending domains to meet in order to send emails to their users. At Hostek, we have to fight spam on a daily basis as well in order to try and prevent spam from reaching our users. To increase these efforts, we will be updating the spam weights assigned to different spam filtering rules such as SPF Failures, DKIM Failures, Reverse DNS Failures, etc.
These changes should overall help prevent spam emails from making it to user inboxes for users on our shared email environments. We do not expect these changes to affect the arrival of legitimate emails to your inbox.
Our guide on DMARC Policy will show additional information that might help you understand what thse SPF and DKIM checks are… as well as the guide will help you in making your domain DMARC compliant, which in return can help prevent your emails from failing to reach their recipients.