We experienced an extended mail server outage on one of our shared hosting servers (Basil) on Monday, February 22, 2009.

The issue started early Monday morning and was caused by substantial denial of service type attack by an extremely large volume of mail being sent to a specific mailbox.

To make sure this does not occur we have implemented new emergency response processes with our upstream providers, meaning they will have the authority to act immediately without our contact in similar situations. This will ensure that outages like this do not occur in the future.

In addition to the new processes, we are also hiring and training a new in-house technician to make sure you get the quickest responses and communication in the future.

Many of our attempts to respond to incoming tickets failed due to email addresses being hosted on the server where the problems were occurring. Please ensure that you are using an email address that is not hosted with us when creating tickets during outages – particularly those involving mail problems. It is also important to note that telephone support is only included in our Support enabled packages. For those without Support, we are more than happy to respond to a telephone request via email as long as you leave an accessible email address in your voicemail.

We understand the importance of email and we apologize for any inconveniences this has caused. We believe these changes will not only prevent a similar situation, but will allow us to continue to offer you with the best service in the industry.

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