Ordering

To be sure you can use this service, check the "Can I use it" page which describes the requirements in detail. In short, if your business has its own domain name(s), you can use this service. We offer a low price for "family" domains that are not used for business purposes.

Determine how many domains your business uses for email addresses. It is typically only one, e.g. mybiz.com, but there may be additional ones, e.g. mybiz.net. You only need to sign up domains that have mailboxes (email addresses).

Determine how many mailboxes (email addresses) these domains have. Since this service works for entire domains, you must sign up all mailboxes, it is not possible to sign up only "some" mailboxes for a domain, or we can invoice you on an annual basis. Typically, the number of mailboxes you sign up for will be the same as the number of people in your organization.

Click "Sign Up" and enter your order. For smaller organizations of up to 100 people, we expect payment by credit card. The card will automatically be charged monthly following the 30-day free trial period. You can also take advantage or our early payment discount and prepay for twelve months at the price of ten. We will accept Purchase Orders from larger organizations in the US and Canada.

The signup will ask for a main (Administrative) contact name and address, and optional billing and technical contacts.

When signup is complete, you will receive an email confirmation including a "Login ID" and initial "Password". We also recommend printing the confirmation page.

You will have the option of immediately continuing with the Setup Wizard or finishing the process later. The setup steps must be completed before the Service becomes active.

Setup

Setup consists of first running the Setup Wizard and then changing your "MX" records.

Running the Setup Wizard

You can immediately run the Setup Wizard after completing the ordering (sign up) process. Otherwise, click "Members" on the top menu and enter your "Login ID" and "Password" (these were listed on your confirmation page and were emailed to you).

The first step is to enter your (first) domain name.

Next, the current "MX" record(s) for this domain will be displayed. Typically, there is only one MX record. This identifies the mail server which currently receives all email messages for your domain. If your domain runs at a hosting company, this is typically the name of a computer at the hosting company.

The entry box will already contain the "Hostname" of the mail server. Alternatively, if your company runs its own mail server and you are the technical person in charge, you can enter the IP address of the mail server directly. (You can later change the mail server in the configuration Control Panel.)

Next, select the name of the mailbox you want to forward spam to, e.g. spam@yourdomain.com. Note that this option is not enabled by default for any filter. Be sure you know how to add a mailbox to your domain and can do it soon if you select this option. You can change this option later in the configuration Control Panel. It is very likely you will want to turn this off after verifying that the service is working well.

If you signed up for any additional domains, these steps will be repeated for each domain.

Last, verify the selected settings for each domain and click "Save Settings".

Our system will then email you detailed instructions on how to change the MX records for your domain(s). This email will be sent through our "relays". This ensures that you only receive this email if your domain has been successfully added to our service. Since our system updates itself every five minutes, please allow 5 - 10 minutes to receive this email.

Changing Your MX Records

The last step necessary to enable our anti-spam service is to change the MX records for your domain(s). Don't know what MX records are? No problem - simply forward our e-mail message to the company or person in charge of your domain (web site). If you are interested, the "Technical Documentation" page describes MX records in detail.

If your domain runs at a hosting company, you can usually forward our email message to their support department and they will change the MX records for you. Some of the larger hosting companies, such as Interland, let you change your own MX records if you are comfortable doing so. Please note that your hosting company may take a day or so to fulfill your request for the MX record change. Depending on your current DNS configuration, specifically the TTL value, it could take several hours (72 or more) for the change to propagate through the Internet. Only then will our service be fully functional.

If your company runs its own mail server, you can forward our email message to the technical person or system administrator in charge of the server.

Once the MX record change takes effect and propagates through the Internet, you will notice a huge (95% +) reduction in spam.

Here are the necessary step-by-step instructions on how to change the MX records for common DNS providers:

1and1:

1. Select Domains
2. Check the domain you wish to edit the MX records for.
   
3. Select "Edit DNS Settings" from the DNS pull-down menu at the top.
4. Under Advanced DNS settings, select "Other mail server" next to Mail Server (MX record).
5. Enter the MX entries provided by SpamStopsHere and select "OK".

cPanel:

1. Select MX Entry, under Mail.
2. Enter MX records provided by SpamStopsHere.
3. Make sure that "Always accept mail locally even if the primary mx does not point to this server. " is selected.

GoDaddy:

1. Select the domain you wish to change the MX records for.
2. Select Total DNS contol and MX records.
3. Click add new MX record.
4. Select priority of MX record.  Hostname should be the "@" symbol.  The entries provided by SpamStopsHere are supplied in the "Enter goes to address" filed.  You can use the default TTL entry.

Network Solutions:

1. Click the Domains tab from the left menu.
2. Click Manage Domain Names.
3. Select the check boxes next to the domains that you want to edit.
4. Click Edit DNS.
5. On the Edit Domain Name Servers page, in the DNS Manager – Advanced Tools section, click Manage DNS Records.
6. On the DNS Manager Settings page, in the Host Aliases: MX Records section, click Add/Edit.
7. Your current MX records are listed in editable form, and any Network Solutions service that is associated with the MX record is listed under the Mail Server text box.
8. To add/edit MX records:
   
   • Enter the MX records provided by SpamStopsHere in the Mail Server text box and their associated priority numbers in the Priority text box
   • Click Continue
9. To delete MX records:
   
   • To the right of the MX record, select the check box in the Delete column
   • Click Continue
10. Review the list of requested changes.
11. Click Continue.

(Please Note: these instructions are accurate at the time of this writing.  Any support related questions regarding your DNS information should be directed to your DNS provider)

Configuration (Optional)

• Optionally forward some or all blocked email to a special mailbox for your review, e.g. spam@yourdomain.com.

• Decide if you want to review mail blocked by the "URL/Phone # Filter" and "Phrase Filter". By default, this will be set to Reject.

• Select which countries to block. There are currently 12 countries to choose from, including China, Taiwan, Korea, Brazil and Russia.

• Select which "Real-Time Blacklists" to use. There are currently 3 blacklists to choose from, including the well-regarded "SpamCop".

• Optionally specify mailboxes which bypass the spam filtering.

• Create and update your domain's "Whitelist" and "Blacklist".

When you first activate this service, you can choose to review all blocked emails. We suggest only reviewing the emails blocked by some of the filtering methods. See the topic "Suggested Configuration Settings" for details.

Possible Change after 1 - 4 Weeks

If you initially chose to forward any email to a special spam mailbox for review, there is a good reason to turn this off after a few weeks of using our service.

As you become more comfortable with our service, you may find that the spam mailbox is being checked less frequently. In this case, we suggest reconfiguring your service to reject the spam rather than forward it to your spam mailbox. In the unlikely case that a client's email is blocked, and you are rejecting spam, the client will receive a descriptive message stating that their email was blocked by our service, and the reason for the rejection. The client can then contact you by other means (phone, etc). This is preferable to having their email message sit unread, possibly for days, if you are checking the spam mailbox infrequently.