Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


What's the gernal consensus of colocrossing?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

What's the gernal consensus of colocrossing?

Recently been trying to get ports 25 unblocked for email yesterday, confirmed I will not send mass emails, will set up a filter of some sort, yet they keep asking me to specify exactly how many e-mail I will send when I have already said not a lot I just want to set it up so replied something along the lines of I dont know but to be clear I wont send mass e-mails.

I just want the emails to work before I host any sites, obviously. I'm not sure what else to say to them? How am I supposed to know exactly how many e-mail I will send without a magic ball when I've already said I won't spam and typically rarely send e-mails.

Last message said they are looking into it and haven't replied all day.. not expecting a reply I don't think it's hard to make a decision to unblock a port instead of leaving me waiting all day for something I would expect to be done within 20 minutes. It's shady behaviour imo.

All my other vps providers have had their ports unblocked upon request inc ethernetservers, serverpoint and bullethost (they have been brilliant compared). Are they just a***holes that I should avoid doing business with in future or something?

Comments

  • Colocrossing is a well known spam host, like really really well known to the point that it's probably still not worth attempting to send any emails from their IPs, since even if they let you 99% of email providers will chuck you in spam regardless. They got bought and the new owners are trying to improve their reputation since the only part of CC that really holds any value is their IPv4 space.

    I really like Colocrossing personally, I have a few dedis and support has been excellent, uptime has been rock solid. I just wouldn't use them for email specifically. Keep the stuff you have with them and just use a relay like most people do.

  • MrRadicMrRadic Host Rep, Veteran

    @eb1995 said:
    Recently been trying to get ports 25 unblocked for email yesterday, confirmed I will not send mass emails, will set up a filter of some sort, yet they keep asking me to specify exactly how many e-mail I will send when I have already said not a lot I just want to set it up so replied something along the lines of I dont know but to be clear I wont send mass e-mails.

    I just want the emails to work before I host any sites, obviously. I'm not sure what else to say to them? How am I supposed to know exactly how many e-mail I will send without a magic ball when I've already said I won't spam and typically rarely send e-mails.

    Last message said they are looking into it and haven't replied all day.. not expecting a reply I don't think it's hard to make a decision to unblock a port instead of leaving me waiting all day for something I would expect to be done within 20 minutes. It's shady behaviour imo.

    All my other vps providers have had their ports unblocked upon request inc ethernetservers, serverpoint and bullethost (they have been brilliant compared). Are they just a***holes that I should avoid doing business with in future or something?

    Why do you need port 25? Use port 587 or 465 to send emails.

    Thanked by 2yoursunny raindog308
  • kevindskevinds Member, LIR

    @MrRadic said:
    Why do you need port 25? Use port 587 or 465 to send emails.

    Doesn't really work that way.

  • Petey_LongPetey_Long Member
    edited September 28

    Good luck trying to find a non-tainted Colocrossing IP. Solid chunk of online services straight up block the ASN altogether. These are the same places where you can use a Chinese/Russian IP no problem. So I guess just take that as you will.

    I'd only recommend them to someone who needs something inexpensive and is using it as a backend server of some sort.

  • crunchbitscrunchbits Member, Patron Provider, Top Host
    edited September 28

    @eb1995 said:
    Recently been trying to get ports 25 unblocked for email yesterday, confirmed I will not send mass emails, will set up a filter of some sort, yet they keep asking me to specify exactly how many e-mail I will send when I have already said not a lot I just want to set it up so replied something along the lines of I dont know but to be clear I wont send mass e-mails.

    I just want the emails to work before I host any sites, obviously. I'm not sure what else to say to them? How am I supposed to know exactly how many e-mail I will send without a magic ball when I've already said I won't spam and typically rarely send e-mails.

    Last message said they are looking into it and haven't replied all day.. not expecting a reply I don't think it's hard to make a decision to unblock a port instead of leaving me waiting all day for something I would expect to be done within 20 minutes. It's shady behaviour imo.

    All my other vps providers have had their ports unblocked upon request inc ethernetservers, serverpoint and bullethost (they have been brilliant compared). Are they just a***holes that I should avoid doing business with in future or something?

    I wouldn't take it personally, I don't think they're being a**holes to you purposely or specifically. I get the gist that they're trying to clean up the space after a lot of reputation damage. IPv4 reputation becomes harder and harder to maintain each passing day on the modern internet. I may be wrong here but I thought we just saw an entire /9 from Cogent get put on UCE L2. That seems a bit insane, since it wouldn't be far fetched to have 1 big client with a /21 or /20 of IP space get exposed (maybe left their CUPS printer on public IPv4 without firewall?) and take down nearly 8.5 million other IPv4 addresses.

    Either way, it's basically an arms race for providers and if you let someone through that decides to crap all over your space it not only can affect many neighboring IPv4's but also ends up being a significant amount of admin time to send and enforce abuse tickets and play the whole "I was hacked, I swear it won't happen again!"... happens again next day... scenario. Then to solve the problem you have to action the offender and then follow-up with dozens of individual requests to numerous lists. It's a significant time sink over nothing, takes away from quality of service to every other customer and quality of life of everyone working at the provider.

    For a few dollars a month it's virtually a must to use someone like @jar with MXRoute or mail.baby. Unbeatable. If you're just sending some internal notification stuff for yourself that isn't production/essential then that is a valid use-case that sucks to incur more cost, but just expect providers to have some sort of weighted system to unlocking. Despite wanting to be nice to legitimate customers it's the bad apples that completely ruin it. That whole 5% creates 95% of the admin work/hassle/time-sink.

    Some tips I can give you just from the provider's POV (not that you have to do them all, but they do stack):
    1. Use valid information on your account when signing up (whether they require it or not--does help)
    2. Don't always access their panel from VPN
    3. Buying the absolute cheapest possible/smallest plan monthly and immediately asking for port 25 is usually red flag
    4. Legitimate looking e-mail rather than [email protected]
    5. Offer to share something of some substance, i.e. a business registration / anything from another provider / really anything you can think of that might help

    Does it suck? Yes. Should it be necessary? No. But for a lot of providers--especially if you don't outright own the IPv4 space you'll start to get threatened if you don't keep it pretty squeaky clean. Even if you do own it, you don't want to be getting ASN blocked.

  • I dont know

    How am I supposed to know exactly how many e-mail I will send

    This contradicts with

    I wont send mass e-mails.

    Because you may not intend to send mass emails, if you send hundreds of emails per hour, that’s still mass mailing. Try to give them a number, any number, even a ballpark figure. No need of magic or sorcery for that. If you can’t predict the numbers even approximately, it sounds very fishy.

    Thanked by 2Arkas raindog308
  • AdvinAdvin Member, Host Rep
    edited September 28

    It's usually not worth it to use a VPS or dedicated server for email sending. Instead, use an outbound relay like Amazon SES. SES is 10 cents per 1000 emails and your email delivery will be far better than using a standard VPS/dedicated server provider.

    Even huge cloud providers like Vultr will usually never unblock port 25 unless you've used them for an extremely long time.

    Thanked by 2raindog308 sasslik
  • fiberstatefiberstate Member, Patron Provider
    edited September 28

    @crunchbits said:

    Either way, it's basically an arms race for providers and if you let someone through that decides to crap all over your space it not only can affect many neighboring IPv4's but also ends up being a significant amount of admin time to send and enforce abuse tickets and play the whole "I was hacked, I swear it won't happen again!"... happens again next day... scenario. Then to solve the problem you have to action the offender and then follow-up with dozens of individual requests to numerous lists. It's a significant time sink over nothing, takes away from quality of service to every other customer and quality of life of everyone working at the provider.

    1000%. Add to this that providers themselves are now charged per abuse alert generated if they are on leased space.

    "I was hacked, I swear it won't happen again!"... happens again next day... scenario.

    Facts.

    Thanked by 1crunchbits
  • @Void said: Because you may not intend to send mass emails, if you send hundreds of emails per hour, that’s still mass mailing. Try to give them a number, any number, even a ballpark figure. No need of magic or sorcery for that. If you can’t predict the numbers even approximately, it sounds very fishy.

    200-300 per day is standard among many hosting companies. give them this number if you are not sure.

  • Thanks for the replies I guess I will accept my port losses. I know their IPs are typically bad but the first 3 seemed alright not appearing on many blacklists, could access many websites without an error.

    @void re the amount of emails yes slightly contradicting if you nitpick but you can see where I was coming from and would expect them to as well.

    @crunchbits I don't use a VPN or anything, all pesonal info leads back to me in the UK with a payment method to verify that. I also have a normal name, nothing exotic. I have sent also them a list of the admin logins of the servers I recently created with cpanel etc, they are all named server 1, 2, 3 (to go up to 8 with 4 with them) on the same .net domain and my user account is same domain name but ends in co.uk.

    Also my servers are yearly, not the lowest spec, so it's not like I would go spam mad and pump and dump the servers and get my servers cancelled.

    Just wish they had put somewhere that they block port 25 like other providers care to do (or made it obvious at least). I really don't appreciate them ignoring my tickets, it's not hard to say no rather than have me wait like a lemon for days now to assume it's a no and also be pissed off that I've just spent a load of money somewhere for them to act like that...

  • @eb1995 said:
    Recently been trying to get ports 25 unblocked for email yesterday, confirmed I will not send mass emails, will set up a filter of some sort, yet they keep asking me to specify exactly how many e-mail I will send when I have already said not a lot I just want to set it up so replied something along the lines of I dont know but to be clear I wont send mass e-mails.

    I just want the emails to work before I host any sites, obviously. I'm not sure what else to say to them? How am I supposed to know exactly how many e-mail I will send without a magic ball when I've already said I won't spam and typically rarely send e-mails.

    Last message said they are looking into it and haven't replied all day.. not expecting a reply I don't think it's hard to make a decision to unblock a port instead of leaving me waiting all day for something I would expect to be done within 20 minutes. It's shady behaviour imo.

    All my other vps providers have had their ports unblocked upon request inc ethernetservers, serverpoint and bullethost (they have been brilliant compared). Are they just a***holes that I should avoid doing business with in future or something?

    I personally like ColoCrossing since they’re cheap as hell but they’re a well known spam host as others said so good luck sending emails.

  • @fluffernutter said:
    Colocrossing is a well known spam host, like really really well known to the point that it's probably still not worth attempting to send any emails from their IPs, since even if they let you 99% of email providers will chuck you in spam regardless. They got bought and the new owners are trying to improve their reputation since the only part of CC that really holds any value is their IPv4 space.

    I really like Colocrossing personally, I have a few dedis and support has been excellent, uptime has been rock solid. I just wouldn't use them for email specifically. Keep the stuff you have with them and just use a relay like most people do.

    So a few questions if that is ok.
    1. When did the ownership change and who changed?
    2. Do they still own this forum? That’s what their people told me over a decade ago via direct chats outside LET. They also helped a nonprofit I was with at the time so I can say good things when Nick was there.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @kevinds said: Doesn't really work that way.

    Yeah, actually it does.

    Port 25 is for SMTP relay. Are you relaying from other hosts? No? Then you want port 587, which is for SMTP submission.

    There are a number of providers I use who block port 25 and I sent email (to myself) from each for them. I don't know why this is an issue at all.

  • I have two VPSes with ColoCrossing, and they both had/have port 25 open. Perhaps I was simply lucky. The two IP addresses weren't super clean, but they were cleaner than I had expected, which was a pleasant surprise

  • @raindog308 said:

    @kevinds said: Doesn't really work that way.

    Yeah, actually it does.

    Port 25 is for SMTP relay. Are you relaying from other hosts? No? Then you want port 587, which is for SMTP submission.

    There are a number of providers I use who block port 25 and I sent email (to myself) from each for them. I don't know why this is an issue at all.

    We don't know enough about the OP's intentions, but if he also wants to receive mails, he'll need port 25

  • kevindskevinds Member, LIR

    @raindog308 said:
    Port 25 is for SMTP relay. Are you relaying from other hosts? No? Then you want port 587, which is for SMTP submission.

    I believe you have them backwards..

    Relaying through an email server, usually with username and password would accept emails on 587, sending emails to another server you don't have an account on, submission, uses 25.

  • @kevinds said:

    @raindog308 said:
    Port 25 is for SMTP relay. Are you relaying from other hosts? No? Then you want port 587, which is for SMTP submission.

    I believe you have them backwards..

    Relaying through an email server, usually with username and password would accept emails on 587, sending emails to another server you don't have an account on, submission, uses 25.

    It takes two to make an argument, and I think everybody else is a bit wrong :)

    SMTP on port 25 was traditionally for both direct submission and relay, the protocol doesn't really distinguish⁰ so those names are assigned by what you are doing rather than the protocol.

    587 and 465¹ are both listed as mail submission. 587 is for Mail Submission Agents (MSA) and intended for authenticated mail sending where 25 is usually used without auth, so is less suitable for relaying instead being more useful for submitting outgoing messages to your service providers smart host (which, yes, will relay it elsewhere, but likely via port 25 unless the target is internal). It certainly isn't useful for getting mail from one provider (your own mail host) to another as there is no authentication relationship between them. Daemons listening on ports 587 and 25 both generally support encryption via STARTTLS once a plain connection is established.

    465 is SMTPS. Much like HTTPS is to HTTP, connections on this port are always encrypted, otherwise it behaves as port 25 so can be both direc submission or relay as it is just SMTP wrapped in TLS. It doesn't directly support authentication (as per SMTP) though the usual hacks (POP-before-SMPT, etc) are often supported. In theory you could live without port 25 in either direction and use 465 & 587, but there are enough hosts out there not supporting 465 (and only accepting submissions on 587 if they are authenticated) that this can be problematical. Some places do insist on SMTPS or MSA. At DayJob we do for specific clients that we have a relevant agreement with (even verifying sender certificates as well as them verifying ours) but this unfortunately isn't practical more generally.


    [0] Back when it was designed we were fairly naive and it was thought a good idea for any mail host to relay for others if needed as part of the self-healing intention of the Internet.

    [1] For historic reasons there is some confusion between the two. 465 is mail-(SMTP)-sumbission-through-TLS and 587 is MSA (mail submission) which supports TLS via STARTTLS.

    Thanked by 2sliix angstrom
  • @kevinds said:

    @raindog308 said:
    Port 25 is for SMTP relay. Are you relaying from other hosts? No? Then you want port 587, which is for SMTP submission.

    I believe you have them backwards..

    Relaying through an email server, usually with username and password would accept emails on 587, sending emails to another server you don't have an account on, submission, uses 25.

    You are both saying more or less the same thing just with minor inaccuracies.

    https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.txt

    Port 25 is not really for relaying (although relaying does work if setup for it), it is the port your MX record listens on for incoming mail. It's official name is Simple Mail Transfer [Protocol] or smtp and if you want to receive mail from other people on your server you pretty much have to use this port. Sure you could reverse proxy it or relay it from another server to any port you want but I'm talking basic normal config.

    Port 587 is commonly refered to as the submission port or Message Submission to be more exact. This is generally what ISPs, mail relays, etc provide for users for their outgoing mail. Most providers don't block this by default (although I have come across some that do) so you can use it to send emails.

    Hope that helps.

    Thanked by 2angstrom cmeerw
  • GulfGulf Member

    @fluffernutter said:
    Colocrossing is a well known spam host

    From the reports, Colocrossing has made a lot of improvements in mail reputation.

    Last year, the reputation was -35 (-100 to 100)
    Now, repo is -6. +29 points during the year.
    Good job.

    But numbers are still high
    38,238 IPs were measured (that send emails)
    1,926 are still owned by spam operators.

  • @Gulf said:

    @fluffernutter said:
    Colocrossing is a well known spam host

    From the reports, Colocrossing has made a lot of improvements in mail reputation.

    Last year, the reputation was -35 (-100 to 100)
    Now, repo is -6. +29 points during the year.
    Good job.

    But numbers are still high
    38,238 IPs were measured (that send emails)
    1,926 are still owned by spam operators.

    Yeah they're trying to get better, which I fully support them attempting to do! less spam is always a good thing. It's good to see them being so strict about outbound email.

  • colocrossing is supposed to pay me affiliate withdrawal money one month ago. Now nobody answers my ticket on their website, I did absolutely nothing wrong. The colocrossing person here replied my message once, then never replied the remaining messages.

    Thanked by 1eb1995
  • GulfGulf Member

    @fluffernutter said:
    Yeah they're trying to get better, which I fully support them attempting to do! less spam is always a good thing. It's good to see them being so strict about outbound email.

    But too late :D
    Many providers block their networks by default. Do not see any possibility to use them for sending emails.

  • @Gulf said:

    @fluffernutter said:
    Yeah they're trying to get better, which I fully support them attempting to do! less spam is always a good thing. It's good to see them being so strict about outbound email.

    But too late :D
    Many providers block their networks by default. Do not see any possibility to use them for sending emails.

    New owners have different priorities I think. Hopefully they'll be rehabilitated in a few years.

  • SirFoxySirFoxy Member
    edited October 5

    I got locked out of my account and wasn't receiving the password reset emails so I opened a ticket with the same account email saying that, and they replied asking me to login to my account and make a new ticket as they couldn't find any services?

    Therefore, I guess I'll let my E3 BF dedi cancel itself as I cannot.

    Decent budget services, but pretty poor support and obviously part of an investment portfolio.

    Their main focus previously here was providing infrastructure for hosts like Virmach, and Rack Nerd, not really on the individual consumer. Seems like they're trying to sell to the consumer more.

    Thanked by 2eb1995 sasslik
  • @SirFoxy said:
    Their main focus previously here was providing infrastructure for hosts like Virmach, and Rack Nerd, not really on the individual consumer. Seems like they're trying to sell to the consumer more.

    And kinda failing at it.

    I mean their deals aren't that game breaking and then you have companies who sit on their infrastructure offering worse (looking at you dedirock) or have their own hardware with deals that makes colocrossing look expensive (linveo my beloved).

    Dedirock and colocrossing deals have looked the same for a good while... Maybe BF will change that but tbh... They're not great...

  • @MaxTakeba said:

    @SirFoxy said:
    Their main focus previously here was providing infrastructure for hosts like Virmach, and Rack Nerd, not really on the individual consumer. Seems like they're trying to sell to the consumer more.

    And kinda failing at it.

    I mean their deals aren't that game breaking and then you have companies who sit on their infrastructure offering worse (looking at you dedirock) or have their own hardware with deals that makes colocrossing look expensive (linveo my beloved).

    Dedirock and colocrossing deals have looked the same for a good while... Maybe BF will change that but tbh... They're not great...

    Yeah, the brand in entirety looks a bit outdated and stale and has for a while. Old inventory, not really exciting product offerings. That's what happens when you get bought, and sold, and churned out. It's often about squeezing every last drop of cash out with little focus on the future.

    Imo they should just drop all of the locations but LA and Buffalo and just focus on those locations. Get some new equipment in, etc.

    The E3 dedi was cool because of the price but tbh it's just a little too old for me to justify even renewing.

  • Didn't see these replies, interesting. Anyway, update on this: still can't use port 25, have advised them and they've ignored my ticket B)

Sign In or Register to comment.