Yahoo Mail, Google Mail, Hotmail and AOL comparison
So I changed the IP address of our mail server when we moved from ServePath to The Planet. Here’s what happened with the different major email providers:
Hotmail blocked us fairly quickly after the move but after exchanging a few emails (which after the first holding mail were very promptly and professionally answered) it was all sorted out. They also have a cool feedback system where you can see how many mails you’ve sent on a particular day and what percent generated complaints (showing less than 0.1% for us).
AOL also blocked us but after a single email which was dealt with within 2 hours they removed the block so again I was pretty happy. They also have a nice feedback loop system.
Google Mail were arguably the best of all and there was no interruption during the mail server move, I guess their algorithms must have registered that none of our mail was generating spam reports so there was no need to block us despite a sudden spike in email traffic from a new IP address.
Which finally leaves Yahoo who I am afraid have been staggeringly unprofessional. I have been mailing constantly since the server move and have been unable to get anything other than a canned response. They are not interested in the number of complaints I’m getting from Yahoo users. They do have a feedback loop system but it’s taken them nearly a week to get application details to me.
Worst of all by throttling the mail they have caused huge backlog of mail to develop which has impacted our users who are on higher quality email providers. I’ve now resolved this by changing the application so it doesn’t mail Yahoo addresses but that is not ideal.
I am really now pretty stuck as to what my next step is. Maybe I need to put something on the homepage explaining that Yahoo cannot handle a high volume mailer who changes IP address and that people should use another provider but it’s not really a route I want to go down.
I’m not sure there’s much point continuing to mail Yahoo, they obviously aren’t interested in their more than 10,000 users who are unable to use our site properly.