Broadband pricingMonthly Inc VAT. See VAT Exc.
| Up to: | 8Mb/s | 8Mb/s | 24Mb/s* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tariff | Std | Prem | ADSL2+ |
| A | £18.99 | £31.00 | |
| C | £26.99 | £39.00 | |
| D | £34.99 | £47.00 | |
| E | £46.99 | £59.00 |
Setup £59.99 Full tariff list The package Max *ADSL2+ trial Extra charges
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Our old mail servers are A and B, and these use POP3 and have no spam filtering. Our new mail servers start from C and offer the features described here. Ask tech support if you want to move to a new server.
See our guide to moving to the new mail server for more details.
Spam (junk mail) is an increasing problem, so we have now installed spam and virus filtering which can be very effective at cutting it down. It is worth reading some of the details on this page to get the most out of it.
Many people are used to using email on one machine, using the POP3 protocol to get their email every few minutes. This transfers mail to their computer. IMAP means the mailbox stays on our server, and that allows you to access the same email on more than one machine. This is ideal if you have a laptop and need access to email on the move. IMAP works well with most mobiles as it allows you to see the subject and text of an email without paying mobile rates to download large attachments. We do still support POP3, but for many people IMAP is likely to be better.
We also provide web mail - allowing access to your email via a web page. There are a choice of web mail applications to use which offer similar features. This is great if checking your email from an internet cafe or someone else's computer.
Email works based on an email address. An email address is a name of some sort, followed by an @ symbol, followed by a domain name. E.g. fred@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk. To use incoming email you need a domain of your own, and this is shown on our control pages. Also on the control pages you can set up one or more mailboxes. A mailbox relates to a specific email address.
The simplest way to set up email is to set up a mailbox for the specific email address you want to receive email on. You can then log-in to that mailbox to get your email. There are several ways to log-in which work with various email programs such as thunderbird, or outlook, etc. We also offer web mail allowing you to log in to a web page to check and send your email.
Once you have a mailbox set up, email to the email addres of the mailbox simply arrives in that mailbox ready for you to collect. However, there are a number of ways you can filter your incoming email before it gets to your mail box.
One feature of a mailbox is that it can have several folders. This only works with IMAP and Web mail and not using POP3. One folder you always have is an INBOX which is where your incoming email is put. When mail arrives it is checked for spam, and possible spam gets put in a special spam folder if you have one in the mailbox.
The control pages also allow you to set up email aliases. An alias affects incoming email. The aliases are processed when the email arrives with a view to coming up with a final email address to which the email has to go. This can even be more than one address sending a single email to several places. Each final address must be either one of your mailboxes, or some separate email address to which you want the email to go. If the final address is in your domain and not a valid mailbox, then it is not valid. You can force an email to be invalid by sending to an address like reject@invalid. This is because the domain invalid is a special domain defined as never being valid.
The alias list has no specific order. Each alias specifies a target email address in your domain, and can also specify the sender email address. With source email, a blank for the part before or after the @ means any. You can also use % to mean any characters, e.g. fred% matches fred.bloggs. Each email that arrives is checked to see if it matches one of these aliases. Each alias says where the email has to go. If there is a match to one or more aliases then the new destination applies. As more than one alias can match this can mean multiple destinations. Each new destination is then checked against aliases again.
This process only applies to aliases that have a destination name before the @. You can also make an alias that has no name before the @. This is a catch-all alias. If there are no matches from the first check (as above) then a check is made for any of these catch-all aliases allowing any destination name. We don't usually recommend a catch-all is used.
If neither of these checks find any matches then the email stays with its original destination address. If you want email for a mailbox to work and go to that mailbox, but also have a catch-all you have to make an alias that send the mail for you mailbox to the mailbox (i.e. no change of destination address). This stops the second step of checking for a catch-all.
Then finally the address has to be one of your mailboxes for it to be valid, or it has to be some email address in a different domain.
Our email control pages are part of our broadband control pages. Once logged in you can control the setup of any of your domains. Email is controlled by domain. Throughout this document we use the domain put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk as your domain.
This page contains details of how to use the mail services provided on the new mail servers C to Z. Mail servers A and B are our older mail servers and operate differently. Please ask support if you wish to move to one of the newer mail servers.
Your domain is set to use a specific mail server, for example mail server C. Tech support can change this for you. Your DNS entries on your domain are set up for you, but you can change them if you wish. Incoming mail should go to an MX record that is for the mail server, such as C.secondary-mx.co.uk. You will normally have an entry called mail.put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk which is what you use for collecting mail or accessing web mail. You do not normally need to change these settings. They ensure your email is sent through to the right mail server for you to collect.
If you run your own DNS, then you will need to point your MX records to the right mail server. Please refer to the mail server using a special name of the form put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk.secondary-mx.co.uk. This is defined for every domain for which we handle email and is the correct IP address of the right server.
This is an area that has not changed since our older mail servers. You can create entries in the DNS and in mailbox names and in filters that affect subdomains. I.e. the domain part has something in front of your normal domain, e.g. fred@test.put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk. You do this using the advanced mode in the mailbox/filters setup. You will need to ensure a suitable DNS MX record is in place, which could be a wildcard MX. If you need help setting up DNS please ask support.
You can also have a sub domain of any of your domains set up as a separate domain on the control pages, possibly even under a separate login and password. You need to ask support if you want this. Once this is done you can still control mailboxes and filters for a sub domain from the parent domain as before, but accessing from the sub domain control pages you can only control that subdomain (and any of its sub domains) not the parent. Please ask if you need sub domain email.
Some customers are unsure about moving email to the new servers. We can, of course, set up a subdomain for you to try out the new email server for your email on just that subdomain before moving all of your email over.
In each domain you can create mailboxes. A mailbox is simply an email address, such as you@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk. A mailbox has a password which you can change any time you want. If you simply set up a mailbox such as you@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk then email for that email address will go in to that mailbox when it arrives. Normally you make a mailbox for each actual person that wants to receive email.
You can get your email in a number of ways.
POP3 is an older protocol (Post office protocol) that allows your to collect email from our server and transfer it to your PC. Normally the email is collected and removed from our server. This makes it less suitable if you use more than one PC or want to also use the web mail to see your messages, though some clients can be set to leave messages on server for a period of time. Unlike IMAP which allows various folders, including a "spam" folder as explained below, POP3 does not, so you can only access new incoming email (the INBOX in IMAP terms).
You use POP3, set your mail server to mail.put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk, and the username is the mailbox name (in lowercase), e.g. you@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk and the password is the one you set for that mailbox in the control pages.
IMAP is a system that allows email to be held on the mail server, in folders, and accessed as you need. It is very efficient when dealing with email with attachments, for example, as the attachment is not transferred until you need it. This makes it idea for mobile phone use as large attachments can be costly.
Because the mail is stored on the mail server, you get the same view of the email from as many machines as you want to use to access you email, including the web mail. You can see an email on one PC, and file it away, and then using another PC you see it has been filed away. There is no duplication. Some email clients can tag email with different colours even. You can make folders in your mailbox using your email program.
To use IMAP, set the server to mail.put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk, and the username is the mailbox name (in lowercase), e.g. you@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk and the password is the one you set for that mailbox in the control pages. You can use the normal IMAP port or SSL IMAP port for encrypted communications.
SMTP is the way email is actively delivered to a mail server. It is how our mail servers received mail to be checked and stored in the mail box. You can have your own mail server and have mail delivered to you directly. This would bypass our mail systems and spam/virus checking. If you want, you can have email sent to our mail server, checked, and re-written to a different address (perhaps a sub domain) that goes to your mail server. This would allow some pre-filtering of your email. However, this is not the way the mail system is designed, so has some draw backs. Firstly, the mail will only be checked against default spam rules and settings as there is no mailbox to hold the settings for the final email address. (Note: We are adding per-domain settings controls as well now). Also, if the mail was to multiple recipients then it will not be rejected but just marked as spam (which may be easy for your mail server to filter). If running your own mail server, we recommend you set up your own spam and virus checking, and we can offer some advice on this if needed.
We provide a choice of web mail servers. You can access these using http://mail.put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk/ and you then have a selection of different web mail services. This automatically redirects you to the https page for the right server. Which you use is your personal choice - they have slightly different appearance and features. The username is the mailbox name, e.g. you@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk and the password is the one you set for that mailbox in the control pages. These all use IMAP internally, so allow folders to be created and accessed. If you use POP3 to collect email, then it will normally be transferred to your normal PC when you collect it and is then not normally available by web mail. Using web mail the first time also creates the spam folders (as your first IMAP login) which means future possible SPAM is sent to these and not accessible to POP3, unless you delete the spam folder - which you only have to do once as the spam folder is only created on first IMAP/webmail use.
Sending email uses our outgoing mail servers. You set up smtp.aaisp.net.uk as your outgoing server.
You can use the normal SMTP port 25 for sending email, or the submission port 587 if you have problems using port 25. We support TLS. You can also send using SSL using port 465.
If you are sending from somewhere that is not on our network or a customer line then you must either use a local mail server for the ISP you are using, or use authenticated SMTP mail. This is available using the username and password for your mailbox. Authentication is offered if using submission port, TLS, SSL or connecting from outside our network.
The broadband control pages allow you to define an organisation string for your domain. When email is sent using our mail servers we will automatically add this as an Organization: header in the email. If you use authenticated sending then we will use the domain from your authorisation, otherwise we use the sender domain name to work out which organisation to use.
This is mainly aimed at providing a means to automatically, and unobtrusively, mark all of your company's emails with the details required by the Companies Act 2006 - e.g. Company name, registration, and registered office address.
Using TLS/SSL/HTTPS to access or send email means your client checks our certificate. We use CACert to sign the certificate which may mean you get a warning. You can check the CACert site to confirm the authenticity of the certificate if you are unsure, and download the CACert root certificate if you wish. You could simply tell your client to accept the certificate if you wish.
You can set up aliases on the setup pages for your domain. These are email addresses that go to one or more other addresses. A common example would be accounts@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk which you may want to you@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk and him@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk. This means you only need to make one mailbox per person, you then can receive email for a number of email addresses. This is also very good if you have more than one name or people miss-spell it, e.g. fred.bloggs@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk, fred@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk and f.bloggs@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk may all want to go to a mailbox fred@put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk.
You can also use an alias to send mail to people on other domains and email addresses. In this case the mail is checked for viruses and spam in the same way (using default settings), and then sent out.
You can also do a catch-all allowing any name at your domain to be redirected to a mailbox - you do this by adding a redirect for @put-your-domain-name-here.co.uk, i.e. with nothing in front of the @. The catch all applies if there is no specific redirect for the address in question (even if there is a mailbox that matches that email address).
You can also redirect whole domains by specifying a new address with nothing before the @. This means the original local part (the bit before the @) is used in the redirect. This can be very useful if you have several equivalent domains as one redirect in each extra domain means you can handle email as if it arrived at your one main domain.
Normally these rules apply to all email for the specified destination, however you can set the rules to only apply to email that has a specific from address as well. This can be useful when you use an email address specifically for a certain sender and only want that address to be valid (and forwarded to your mailbox) if from the correct sender or senders domain.
You can use the % symbol in the filtering rules to match any string, e.g. fred% means fred followed by anything. This can be useful to set up some partial wildcard rules.
We automatically check all incoming and outgoing email for viruses. Any email with a virus is rejected. There is no option to disable this feature.
The system is updated automatically with new virus signatures. The way it works is that it looks for an exact match for a specific pattern in the email that is a known virus. This makes it very unlikely that it will ever mistake a legitimate email for a virus.
Unfortunately, no system can be 100% accurate, and it is possible that it could mistake a legitimate email for a virus. If this happens then the sender will get a bounce email back telling them. If you have problems with such emails, please contact support so we can address the problem. It is also possible that a virus will get through, especially if it is new. So we cannot guarantee that you will get no viruses. There is no compensation for viruses getting through or for email being incorrectly blocked.
Unlike virus checking, which is very black and white, spam filtering has many shades of grey. For example, if you ask a supplier to send you details of new products - then an email from them about a new product is not spam. The same email sent to someone else who did not ask will consider it spam (actually, UCE, which is unsolicited commercial email). So spam filtering works on giving each email a score.
The way the email is scored can be fine tuned by you. This can be per email address or have general settings for a whole domain. The settings control the way the score is calculated. You can then say what score you consider spam. There is one level for "definite spam" above which the mail is rejected. There is another for "possible spam" which means the mail is accepted, but marked in the subject as SPAM. This "possible spam" is automatically moved to a folder called spam if you have one. If the mail is to multiple people, then we have to accept it before checking the individual spam settings - in this case mail that you consider "definite spam" may come in. If this happens we automatically move it to your "Trash" folder for you.
It is also possible to teach the system what you consider to be spam and what you consider to be ham (ham is the name given to legitimate emails that you want). This is done per mailbox and applies to emails going to that mailbox (regardless of original email address).
Don't worry if this seems complicated, we set sensible default values which mean most people do not have to make any changes.
There are a number of special folders which you can create which work with the spam filtering system. Some are created automatically on your first IMAP or webmail login. Please use lowercase.
| spam | This is the folder in to which SPAM is placed if it is recognised as such, but allowed in. This is the "possible spam" that you may wish to occasionally check. By default it is cleared out after 7 days, but you can change this time period on the Mailbox settings on the control pages. |
| spam.learn | This is a sub folder of the spam folder called learn. Any emails you drop in to this folder will be checked regularly and moved to the spam folder. The spam filter learns from these emails that they are, in your opinion, spam, and so similar emails will get a higher score in future. |
| *.learn | This is a sub folder of any other folder (other than spam or Trash). You can also use a sub folder of learnham or ham. Any emails you drop in here will be checked and moved to the parent folder automatically. The spam filter learns from these emails that they are, in your opinion, not spam, and so similar emails will get a lower score in the future. |
| *.forget | This is a sub folder of any folder, called forget. You can also use unlearn. Any emails you drop in here will be checked and un-learned (as either spam or not spam) and them moved to the parent folder. Put emails here if they were learned by mistake. |
The learning system only works once you have put several hundred emails in spam and not-spam learn folders and they have been processed. It is important to teach it not only spam but non-spam as well.
Each mail box has a number of spam control settings. These are visible on the control pages when you select the mailbox and select Advanced mode. Each setting has an explanation, and we may add more settings from time to time. Whilst many are obvious, most of these are specific spam assassin controls which we do not document in great detail but for which details can be found on the internet - you can ask support if you need help.
Within the Email Settings on the Contol Pages is a page for 'Black/White Lists'. You can use this to override the spam scoring system by matching an email with a mix of from address, to address and subject. More details about this are on the Contol Pages.
At present, moving from A or B servers means asking support to change you to the new mail server. When that is done, your new mailbox will be accessible. The mailbox names (email address) and passwords are the same on the new server, but some of the previous filters are lost. You need to promptly add any new aliases needed for your mail. There is a way to log in to your old mail box for a while, which support can advise you on. After around an hour no more email should go to your old mail box.
See our guide to moving to the new mail server for more details.
We operate a very simple pricing model for email, which is that email is £1.00/mon+VAT per month per domain. Our broadband services include one UK domain with DNS, web and email in the price. As the mail service includes the ability to permanently store mail in folders, the service includes up to 1GB or storage per domain only. Additional usage is charged at £1.00+VAT per GB (or part) per domain.
Storage normally gradually increases as people archive more email, but sometimes levels drop if people clear out old email. We monitor the level of stored email on an ongoing basis. This includes any email in the INBOX, Sent, spam and Trash folders. We note the highest level of storage used in each mailbox. We total all the mailboxes peak usage for the whole domain. When we invoice you in advance for the next period (typically a month or quarter) we also charge for any usage over 1GB for that period. We charge in whole 1GB chunks, so 1.1GB means paying for 2GB in total (though the first 1GB may be included with the broadband service in some cases). We then reset the maximum ready for the next billing period. This means you are paying in advance for mail storage based on your previous peak usage. The control pages show the usage level for each mailbox.
We have live backup of the disks in use, and also a daily backup of the whole server. This should mean we can recover emails if the disk or server fails, but may mean up to a day of email is lost if a server fails. It also means that if you do accidentally delete something, and contact support the same day, we may be able to recover it for you. It is important to realise that we do not guarantee storage or recovery so you could potentially lose all email on the server if something drastic happens. Most email clients will allow automatic local copies of emails, which we would recommend you use, just in case. We will use reasonable skill and care, in consideration of the price we charge, to ensure email is stored and not lost/deleted. However, we offer no compensation if this should happen. You are therefore advised to keep your own copies of any particularly important emails.
"tertiary-mx.co.uk", located in Maidenhead, can be used as a backup email relay - typically for customers running their own email servers on their ADSL lines. The server will relay email for any domain on our system that has the email service selected, as well as sub-domains of that domain. (Email service is £1/month +VAT per domain as usual, which includes sub-domains)
A backup email server is a prime target for spammers, as often the backup email server does less spam checking than the primary server. To combat against spammers Tertiary-mx.co.uk does do some spam checking and will reject or defer connections/messages in some cases. The idea here is for tertiary-mx.co.uk to permanently reject messages that are obvious malware or spam based, and to defer 'dodgy-looking' messages so that the sender needs to retry and use the primary mail server, which will then decide what to do with the message.
Reject: Rejecting means the message is not accepted and a permanent error message is given, meaning the sending server will bounce the message back to the sender. They won't try sending it again to us or any of the other mail servers listed for the domain. We do this if:
