Jason Clarke

I hate the thought of even contemplating another hosting provider move, but this is ridiculous. DreamHost is my current web host, and I use Gmail for all of my email handling needs. I have an email address (my name at my domain), which I have configured to forward to my gmail account, which is configured to send mail as if it is coming from my actual email address.

Fine, right?

Wrong.

For about a week, my email has been trickling in slowly, up to 12 hours behind when it was actually sent. DreamHost does have a status update referencing this issue (currently with 227 comments on it), but it’s very vague and doesn’t actually describe the true cause for the problem.

I personally submitted a support request about this problem before I was aware of the status update post, and received the following slightly more informative response:

 Hi Jason,

I am terribly sorry that you are running into problems here. This is
actually part of a bigger issue – which was hinted at last week with this
status blog post (and has since been updated):

http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/11/17/gmail-forwarding-slowness/

Basically, Gmail is currently greylisting all mail being forwarded to
them by our mail servers. Because of the technology behind greylisting,
this means mails are sometimes delayed for hours before they can get
thru. We are trying to work with Google right now to clear this up – and
hopefully we’ll be able to do so shortly – but in the interim mail
forwarded to Gmail accounts will be delayed. Please accept my most humble
apologies for this mess.

In the interim, the best thing you can do is turn on a standard mailbox
and keeping forwarding intact. That way any mail sent after the mailbox
was turned on should arrive right away and the messages will eventually
show up in Gmail too. Please keep in mind that you won’t find any
messages that were in the process of being forwarded to you as they are
already in the queue attempting to be sent to your Gmail inbox – but you
will see anything sent afterwards show up in that newly formed inbox on
our servers here.

Should you manage to have any other questions, please feel free to let me
know and I’ll make sure that you get the answers which you seek.

Thanks!
Jason

So here we learn that somehow DreamHost has been greylisted by Google. This means that Google has found it necessary to apply a certain level of blocking to the emails that are coming to Google’s mail servers from Dreamhost servers. There are all sorts of reasons this could be the case, but a common one is simply that the volume of email is too high.

This is a real possibility, since there appears to be only fairly weak spam filtering options available, and no spam filtering whatsoever is applied to accounts that are forwarded to other domains.

I did implement the suggestion of using DreamHost’s web mail service for the time being until proper forwarding service was restored. What a mistake. I can’t believe how much spam Gmail is filtering out for me that is just flooding the crappy Squirrel Mail interface that Dreamhost provides. Using it is painful, slow, and feels like a time warp back to 1997.

A recent comment in the Dreamhost Status blog post for this issue copy and pasted the text of their support issue, which contains more information on the subject:

Hello,

Sorry about the mail delays you are experiencing. We are unfortunately
dealing with temporary greylisting from both gmail and verizon. Gmail
being the major cause of the problems with delayed email. These delays
are affecting gmail and verizon forwards, as well as sending messages to
non-customers with gmail or verizon addresses. We are also seeing delays
of all mail sending from our hosting machines. A lot of you have noticed
php mail with regards to the hosting machine delays. Unfortunately mail
from our host machines is also causing non-gmail/verizon messages to be
delayed. We are currently creating a separate relay server to handle the
mail that is getting backed up, this however will only cause non-gmail
accounts to go through without any delays. This relay will help with php
mail and other hosting messages that are going out, and hopefully clear
up delays for non-gmail destined addresses.

This is a serious issue and we are doing our best to contact google for
resolution. We do have some google employees who are customers who are
trying to help us resolve this issue. We have experienced this problem in
the past with aol which caused us to disallow all aol.com forward
addresses, hopefully we can avoid this drastic measure with gmail
forwards. This is a volume block unfortunately, so any forward email
address is contributing to the gmail greylisting. If you are using a
gmail forward we would suggest that you remove it and set your address to
go to a normal mailbox until this is resolved. Sorry about the problems
this has caused you. If we could directly fix this issue it would never
have gone on this long or be ongoing. We do also hope that you can use
your accounts to contact google in order to let them know that they are
affecting their clients with this greylisting. Any contact to google,
their gmail team specifically, will greatly help and will be greatly
appreciated.

Note: The verizon block is a temporary block and should be lifted soon,
it is not the same level of greylisting we are receiving from Gmail.
Please take note that if you are forwarding mail to Gmail and you
complain about it as spam, Gmail will flag our servers as the source,
actions like these lead to our servers getting blocked. It is also
suggested that if you want google to handle your mail you can use google
apps, http://www.google.com/a/ , then use the MX editor to have your mail
handled by Gmail directly without using our servers at all.

Thanks!
DreamHost

So now they are basically stating that there is no resolution in sight, it is unclear if it ever will be resolved, in a previous instance with another domain (aol.com) they simply had to block forwarding to that domain (in other words, they gave up), and at the end of the response they’re suggesting simply setting up a Google Apps account and having Google handle your email entirely, keeping DreamHost out of it.

Does this sound like a company that knows what they are doing with their customer’s data?

But here’s my real problem with all of this. These support cases point out that the problem is far more severe than they are letting on in the public DreamHost Status blog. That’s completely disingenuous, and misleading. The issue is set to Medium priority, when in fact they are practically admitting that there may never be a resolution. That sounds more serious that Medium to me.

Switching web hosts is a huge pain in the rear, and I already recently had to do so to switch to DreamHost. I guess you get what you pay for, and at this point MediaTemple is starting to look mighty good. I especially like how well thought-out MediaTemple’s management tools are.

Sorry Dreamhost. Your “too cool for school” image is fun when you’re delivering your service adequately, but when things fall over it’s too easy to think that you simply don’t take your customer’s data, and money, seriously.