Why You Shouldn’t Use Yahoo For Email
If this sounds like a rant, well, maybe it is a little bit. But it does have a big deal in the business world. It’s all about communication and if you can’t communicate you can’t get things done.
Well basically the situation is this. Yahoo has some of the strictest email policies to prevent spam but the side affect is that legitamite email doesn’t always get to your Inbox. And even more scary is legitamite email doesn’t always get to even your spam folder!
Currently with StartXchange emails are simply not getting through reliably. Looking at the error logs, our last newsletter was blocked by Yahoo because a few members reported it as spam. Unlike other ESPs, Yahoo doesn’t tell me which people reported it as spam, so I can’t remove them from the list.
So essentially what happens is the next time I send out a newsletter, those same people will get it and report it as spam again, and Yahoo will simply block the rest of the members from getting it. No spam folder, just denied.
I’ve done a bit of research to figure out ways to get the deliverability with Yahoo higher, and it seems there are lots of people having this problem. It’s not just a Tim Linden or StartXchange thing, it’s pretty much any small business.
What does this mean to you? Well it means you aren’t getting the emails you want! And you very well could be missing out important emails and not even know it. At least with other ESPs they put it in a spam folder and you can find them, but not in this case.
You could be missing important announcements, special deals, even customers trying to contact you. But you have no idea. And how does this reflect on you? Someone needing to get a hold of you, and getting no response?
This is why I totally recommend Gmail. You can even get it for your own domain like I do (timlinden.com) so you get the same great benefits, plus you get your own name to brand you even better. And their email deliverability is GREAT! And their spam filtration is top notch. I very rarely get spam in, and very rarely get legitimate email sent to the spam folder.
Are you using Yahoo or Gmail for email?
I have found a big problem with hotmail so am switching out of that as well. I keep only surveys and such in yahoo now and the most important stuff in gmail. I know free does not mean great by any stretch, just find it a shame.
I’d much prefer my own domain but if it gets reported then my domain would be blocked, so i use gmail for all email communication.
All my contact links lead to my helpdesk, and if i get chatty with one of my contacts i give them my email address, and set up a filter to filter emails from my contacts into a contacts folder.
Most of my members use my helpdesk, those i’ve gotten to know use gmail and sorted into the contact folder so i don’t miss em.
I use hotmail strictly for signups for things I am not too interested in (PTSU type of things), earthlink for my PTR emails, a site address for most other things with a few emails going to gmail (once my site closes next month will probably use gmail for a lot of other things)
as a webmistress, hotmail/msn, yahoo, and aol are the real pains. they reject EVERYTHING I send from site addresses–even replies to support questions–as spam WITHOUT EVEN HAVING SPAM COMPLAINTS FROM MY MEMBERS.
I can’t stand yahoo email. The other day I was in my own house on my wife’s laptop on her email acct. I saw an interesting email and told her to forward it to me. Well I found it hours later in my spam folder. Stupid Me I hadn’t made sure that I added her to my contact list when she created her acct. Way too strict filters. I find LOTS of emails that I want to receive in my spam folder. I wonder how many people just empty it every day without checking it.
I have been using Gmail since it’s inception. As far as FREE ESP Gmail is the “golden egg” by far. I use the other services as well but only if I really dont want to receive emails from certain businesses.
Your comments are right on the mark Tim. Over the years I have seen Gmail evolve into platinum product, and their devolopement never seems to stop. Not bad for a FREE ESP.
It’s amazing to me that Yahoo filters out legitimate emails as spam, but can’t seem to filter out all those viagra ads, porn ads and other questionable stuff.
Tom
Mr. Linden, you took the words right out of my mouth. The minute you wrote about Yahoo not allowing some messages to get through, I said in my mind,GET GMAIL! LOL
I was a member of a saft list and Gmail allowed tons of mail in and I could not believe it! Also, my main box is with Time Warner and they do what you wrote about and that is
allow all messages to get through and place them in spam box and I have the choice of choosing which ones I want to open. Thanks Mr. Linden, I really enjoyed reading this.
I use both and like both – I use gmail for most of my my TE’s and text ad exchanges.
I have no problem getting your newsletter as I have you added to my contact list – lot of people don’t do that and that is why it goes to spam.
The filters are needed – they are just doing their job. I just check my spam occasionally and if there is a site that in there that I want then I add them to my contacts and don’t have any problems with either Gmail or Yahoo.
I couldn’t agree with you more. I now use gmail for my safelists, and I am going to start switching everything else over, too.
The only way I can get ALL my messages is to turn the spam filters off, which then means I get a mailbox full of junk, which I then have to sort thru.
I am going to stop using Yahoo completely pretty soon. They’ve been useful, but not any more.
Thanks Tim, you always have good info for us.
Great subject Tim
As one who has been bit in the er …well you know.
I received all tim’s email @ my yahoo.com account for a couple months, then out of nowhere my SX account was canceled; Reason? tim’s e-letter to me bounced, without me being aware of it.
Very embarrissing !
Also I have been noticing, lately that I receive email to ‘yahoo.com’, any where from, 1hour late, to 7 days late. I also noticed I am constantly marking the Same [in-box] e-mails as spam day after day. Plus some of My lesser used TE’s wind up in spam witout me putting that label on them.
I quess I’m a procrastinator, because to change, to another gmail account I will have to notify 90-100 different TE’s & sites.
Thanks to Tim 4 all his effort to make his a top TE.
Dave
Another reason why your own domain is nice ;-) But I don’t think I’d ever switch from Gmail LOL
My Quote from above;
[I quess I’m a procrastinator, because to change, to another gmail account I will have to notify 90-100 different TE’s & sites.]
I did not mean switch from g mail; I meant Switch from Yahoo To G mail.
I agree with all that has been said about yahoo…it is very strict I have had my upline in my business send me items to yahoo and I would get it about 4-5 hays later if at all.
I too use gmail and have for a quite a while.
Bill
Tim,
I have often heard this about Yahoo accounts. Personally, I have a Yahoo account just to check if e-mails I send get through the Yahoo system. So far, (fingers crossed) I’ve had no trouble.
John
Thanks for this newsletter – I do have a gmail account but haven’t used it. I will be switching over today.
Thanks again
Tammy
“At least with other ESPs they put it in a spam folder”: Maybe it’s because the “ESPs” can read your mind, hmmm? ;-)
I get all my emails in my Yahoo account and even ones that aren’t addressed to me. The only thing that bugs me about the spam folder is that most of the emails that land there don’t have my email address correct. Kind of like the person who phones me during dinner and can’ t pronounce my name right – that’s how telephone solicitors give themselves away. I think the spam folder is a marketing tool that Yahoo makes available – for a price – for advertisers to use to make money. Advertising is a numbers game. If you throw out millions of ads to Yahoo spam folders around the world some of them may bite.
If Yahoo has such a “strict” spam policy, why is my inbox there flooded daily with spam email? I was hitting the spam button so much and still receiving hundreds (yes, hundreds) of spam mails on a daily basis, that I had to get a new email address! Not to mention the thousands of emails that wound up in my spam folder on top of it all. A Yahoo email address is only good to give out to those you do not really want to hear from!
I’m slowly making the transition to gmail.
Another problem with Yahoo is that sometimes messages that go to the Spam folder are delivered late. They’re usually like 2 days late, but I’ve had emails delivered a week after they were sent.
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I have switched my Business contacts to G-Mail as much as possible. But I notice G-mail is very hard to train. It is spamming my Forum direct E-mail to me. Taking a long time to Train NOT SPAM
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Chuck Bartoks lastest blog post..Where is Your Mindset? Are we Really Suffering “Grave Economic Reversals?”
OK OK im doing it LOL…just such a pain now I have to go to all my accounts and update to the new email address…so guess i will start with Startxchange LOL
Thanks Tim
Been there done that. Yahoo has been blocking my emails from SX and got my SX account temporarily suspended till I put in another email account. I even have SX in my Yahoo contacts but they still bounced the emails…..so now I have a different email account for SX to go to.
Wanted to add on to my comment….Yahoo has such a strict policy of no spam, yet I get spamed daily by people I don’t want to hear from…..so I click on spam and all they do is send it to the spam file and do nothing else……yet the people I want to hear from they bounce it as spam even though they are in my contact file…..Come on Yahoo…..GET REAL.
I really like GMail. I have a number of accounts for different purposes. It is always easy to use, but I do wish they had folders. The filters work, but folders are better! Anyone have a tip for me on that??
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I think in the past people were told to never give out their ‘real’ email address because of all the junk mail flooding their inbox.
Subscribing to newsletters from traffic exchange is important because you don’t want to miss out on anything.
You can also have mulitiple gmail accounts.
Hi Tim and all,
It’s even worse than that – some of my email goes to my spam folder – that I have in my contact list! I was expecting an email one day – it didn’t come to my inbox so I checked the spam folder. There I found several genealogy newsletters, some from yahoo groups no less!, that I had added to my address book. I checked the address book, and they were still there.
However, I had no idea that they were completely denying some emails. I started making the transition to gmail a while back too.
Wow the famous topic, spam every one has their own definition of spam and so does every ISP so you can not win but her is something you are missing and may not know, yahoo will block your emails if you are sending a large amount of mail to their servers when i say a large amount only yahoo knows what number that is if your emails exceeds this number you get blocked.
I use Yahoo, MSN, and Gmail. I tried Gmail and liked it, but would really like to have folders. That is why I have stuck mainly with MSN as my email provider.
But they recently changed their interface and I can’t stand it now. I think they tried to make it lightweight like Gmail.
I also get too much spam with MSN. Yahoo I only use for personal emails so what you speak of is a non-issue.
Now that you mention the “your own domain” email aspects of it, I will definitely be a big supporter of Gmail. I never did like the webmail interface for cPanel email accounts.
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I agree, Yahoo blows chunks. They are a faceless conglomerate impossible to communicate with.
I’m curious: “Looking at the error logs, our last newsletter was blocked by Yahoo because a few members reported it as spam,”
Error logs? These tell you when mailings have been blocked? How do you do this?
Hi Tim,
I agree totally. We are having the same issues here at OBT and it is very frustrating. Gmail is so awesome these days. I have all my other email addresses forwarded and filtered into separate labels or folders.
It is just great!
It almost makes you want to require gmail for members, but that is going a tad overboard.
As a side note, gmails support system is great as well. My account was recently hacked, and with the right information, I was up in no time.
Take care,
I use Gmail, never know that about Yahoo.