Email filtering / Pre-sales Q&A for your web host is vital!

A lot of web hosts will have a spam filtering solution. One popular one over the past few years was Spamassassin in conjunction with ClamAV as a server-side antivirus filter.

These email filtering programs work "ok" some may arguably say they work well enough.

However, many web hosts are partnering with larger specialty spam filtering solutions from a 3rd party like Postini.com who is a leader in the industry.

This is a prime example of information you should find out BEFORE signing up for a web hosting account. Any web host can say "sure, we include spam and virus filtering".. but how is it offered, by what, and by whom?

Fine restaurants will tell you the special of the day, and often they will go into detail about how the dish is specially prepared, how it is served, as they explain it to you.

Similarily, fine web hosts, those that are trustworthy and provide excellent service, should be happy that you asked, and be very upfront about their web hosting account features, including the email spam and virus filtering service.

It is OK, and perfectly correct to ask these types of questions when you are signing up with a new web host. It is as this crucial moment, the pre-sales Q&A, that will quickly tell you who you are dealing with, and whether or not that web hosting company just wants to sell cheaply rolled web hosting accounts to anyone dumb enough to buy them.

For instance, if I say:

ABC Web Host, 100 megs of storage, 25 email accounts, free spam filtering $19.95/month

OR

DEF Web Host, 500 megs of storage, 50 email accounts, free spam filtering $6.95/month

Which is the better deal? They both offer storage, email accounts, the only difference seems to be that you get more for less, at DEF web host.

Well if you are buying apples, or oranges, and that is simple, then DEF is the obvious choice. But what if I told you this:

ABC Web Host, $19.95 - hosted on 5 highspeed network connections in a full redundant data center. Spam filtering provided by professional 3rd party Postini.com

vs

DEF Web Host, $6.95 - hosted on my friend's cable modem at home, 1 network connection usually stays up most of the time, Spam filtering provided by some software that we think we've got working properly now.

Which one is the better deal now?