TrafficI 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.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.