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LuxSci: Secure, Premium Email and Web Services

LuxSci Frequently Asked Questions

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General Questions

Email Services Questions

Web Hosting Questions

F.A.Q. Answers

Answers to General Questions

 How easy is it to upgrade once I sign up?

Very Easy. We have online account upgrade tools so that you can upgrade your service level at any time without assistance. If you have questions or require assistance, our sales staff will be happy to help you.


 How long of a commitment do I have to sign up for?

Monthly or Yearly. When you order your account, you have your choice of paying monthly or yearly, with the corresponding commitment. If you make a yearly commitment, you get a substantial discount in the price of your services. This choice of commitment can be made on the "Finalize Package Configuration & Pricing" page when your are ordering.


 How long will it take before my account is ready?

At most 1 hour. Once you place your order and make we receive your initial payment, we will setup your account within one hour, assuming that the payment is received between 9am and 11pm Eastern Time (USA). Once you set up your account, you will receive a "Welcome" email message with your administrative username and password in it. You can then use that login information to login to http://luxsci.com setup your users, web sites, and other services, view your WebMail, and obtain additional help.

After you have created any additional users in your account, set up any web sites, etc., all you have to do is have your domain point to our services. This can take a few hours or a few days, depending. see: How long does it take to transfer my domain to LuxSci?


 How long does it take to transfer my domain to LuxSci?

There are two possible ways that you could transfer your domain's services to LuxSci. The difference depends on who will manage the DNS settings for your domain:

  • If you are signing up for email hosting only and you have DNS services already, i.e. with your registrar or current web host, you can sign up with LuxSci and choose to "manage your own DNS". In this case, all you have to do is contact your current DNS provider and have them change the "MX Records" for your domain to point to LuxSci's inbound email servers (we will give you these server names after you sign up). This change will typically take somewhere between a few minutes and 24 hours to take place (the "transfer period"), depending on how your DNS is currently configured.
  • If you are signing up for web hosting, or if you wish LuxSci to manage your DNS for you, then you will need to wait at least 6 hours from the time we setup your new DNS services on our servers for this information to synchronize with all our DNS servers. Then you will need to log in to your domain registrar's web site (or contact them) and change the "DNS Servers" for your domain to a set of DNS servers that we will give you after you sign up. This transfer will typically take somewhere between 0 to 12 hours to take effect. After the DNS server transfer takes effect, the DNS changes will begin to go into effect -- this is the "transfer period" and it typically lasts somwhere between a few minutes and 24 hours, depending on how your DNS is currently configured.

During the transfer period, you should not lose email or web services. What will happen, is that the new information about what servers are "in charge of" your web and/or email services will slowly percolate through the Internet. So, some viewers of your web site or senders of email to you will see the updates before others, resulting is some email going to your new LuxSci servers and some still going to your old servers, and similarly for your web site if you are transferring that to LuxSci as well.

If you have any questions about transition time and what happens, please contact us.


 What payment methods do you accept?

  • We accept secure online credit card payments via VISA, Master card, and American Express
  • We accept payment via check or money order in U.S. funds drawn from U.S. banks.
  • We accept payment via PayPal.com. International customers from many countries also use PayPal.com to make payments.
  • We accept direct wire transfers for payment. Depending on the size of the payment, there may be an additional cost. Contact us for information.
  • We accept automatic recurring credit card payments as well. For these, we encrypt you credit card information with PGP and store this in a secure database. The passwords are not stored anywhere on any of our servers and thus your credit card information will be safe.
  • We accept recurring automatic monthly or yearly payments via PayPal.com.

 Do you have a referral or affiliate program?

Yes. We have a referral program that will give you a 10% commission on sales of eligible services to your referees during their first year of service with LuxSci. You don't have to be a LuxSci client to become an affiliate.

Read about our Affiliate Program.


 How good is your technical support?

Excellent and Prompt. Our technicians are experts in system administration, database administration and web design. They respond promptly and will help solve any problem that you may have. Our 800 number is available 24/7 and a technical support representative is always available in case of emergency. Our regular support hours are 9am to 11pm EST. We also have support via AOL Instant Messenger available. Contact Us.


 Will I be advised of server down time due to scheduled maintenance in advance?

Clients are notified in advance of scheduled down time by postings to the "news and notices" section of our members' portal and/or via our opt-in email newsletter.


Answers to Email Services Questions

 I am not sure what email services I need... I am new to all of this.

Read the article: Email Services: What are they and what do you need? This was written to clarify all those jargon terms and help you decide what services are right for you.

You may also be interested in this article: The Case For Secure Email, which explains how email is insecure and what features we offer to help mitigate that.

If you have or want to have a domain name of your own, but don't know what DNS is, you should read: Understanding Domain Name Service (DNS)


 I already have a web site somewhere else... can I sign up for just email services and keep my existing site?

Yes. It is very common for the email services and web services for a domain to be provided by different companies. To sign up for just email services, select one or our standard email packages or use our custom package wizard and select "Email Services".

Once your account has been setup, you will contact your current web hosting company, or whoever is managing your DNS services, and have them update certain "MX Records". This will cause the email for your domain to flow to LuxSci's servers, but will leave your web site and other non-email services unaffected.


 I am afraid I will lose email during the transition between my current services and LuxSci.

Don't Worry. When you switch your services from your current provider to LuxSci, there will be a transition period (see this FAQ for more info) of a few hours to a day or so. During all or part of this time, your inbound email will be delivered to either your current (old) provider, or to LuxSci, depending on if the transition has "propagated" to the computers used by the person sending your email.

As a result, no email will be lost; however, email may arrive at either provider during the transition time.

We recommend that once the transition is complete, your user(s) connect to your old provider one last time and download any email that may be remaining on their servers.

If you are concerned about the impact of the transition, we recommend making it happen over the weekend. If you contact us, we can give you some technical suggestions on ways to minimize the transition window down to as little as 30 minutes to so!


 I have a lot of email at my old provider... how can I move that to LuxSci?

There are several ways to migrate your existing email to LuxSci.

  • IMAP: The easiest way is to use "IMAP". You can configure your email program so that it has two separate IMAP accounts in it at the same time. Then, you can drag and drop messages from your old provider's email folders to your new email folders in LuxSci. This method is easiest because it doesn't matter how much email you have or what format it is in.... this works.
  • POP: If your old provider supports POP but not IMAP, you can use LuxSci's "Remote POP Email" tool to have LuxSci contact your old provider and download all your POP email from your old account into your LuxSci INBOX. Alternately, you can connect to your old provider from your email program and download that email directly to your computer using POP.
  • Custom: If you have a lot of email or a lot of users at your old provider, LuxSci can work with you and your old provider to migrate your email to our system. Depending on the complexity of this process and the quantity of email involved, consulting charges may apply. Contact LuxSci for more information.

 I have many email addresses and accounts; how can I manage them all?

  • You can host any or all of the domains with us and have your email delivered to one or more LuxSci email boxes.
  • You can send email from your LuxSci account in such a way that it appears to the recipient(s) to be from any of your other accounts using our smart signatures [even if some of these are not hosted by LuxSci].
  • You can easily view and download email from your other (POP3) accounts to LuxSci using our POP Downloader.
  • You can have your email forwarded to or from your LuxSci email boxes.

 Can I send email with a return address that is not registered at LuxSci?

Certainly. You can send email where the return and from addresses are arbitrary. Using our WebMail application, you can easily send email where the return and from addresses are @anydomain.com, even if the domain is not registered with LuxSci! This is great if you have many different email addresses -- you can send email as if it comes from any of them.

Note that use of this feature is subject to our acceptable use policy and should not be used for sending Spam or for return or from addresses that do not belong to you (i.e. that are fraudulent). Abuse of this service is grounds for account termination or prosecution.


 Do I need to change my domain's MX records from our ISP's mail server to LuxSci's mail server?

Yes. You will need to change your MX records to point to one of our inbound email servers (you will be told what server names to use once you sign up). We can also manage your DNS for you and provide several levels of backup inbound email servers.


 If I start with email address @luxsci.net, is it easy to switch to my own domain name later?

Yes! You may new add domain(s) to your account at any time. Once the DNS changes take effect for these domains, they will have their own set of email aliases, forwards, and email boxes.


 Is there any limit to the size of attachments or email messages that I can send or receive?

Our email system has an upper limit of 30 Mb on the total size of any individual email message sent or received. Sending of email messages from WebMail is further limited to containing attachments totaling than 29 Mb is size. Messages larger than this will be rejected and are really too big to be sent as email anyway and should be communicated via FTP or some other mechanism.


 Will I be informed when I approach the limits of my disk space quota? What happens if I exceed my quota?

Yes. You will receive an email when you are within 10% of your disk quota. If you exceed your quota, you will NOT lose any email or suffer any other negative consequences; you will merely be charged a small disk usage overage fee at the end of the month. Read more about disk space.

 Are there any limits on how many email messages I can send?

There are no limits on sending email through our WebMail interface; however, there are limits to sending email directly through our SMTP servers from other types of email clients. In order to help prevent the use of our systems by Spammers, we limit each user to sending no more than 200 individual email messages per day through our SMTP servers (a message with multiple recipients is still considered 1 individual message). This limit is much larger than most users would ever need, but way too low for anyone seeking to send SPAM.

Don't worry - if this limit is too small for you and you have a legitimate need to send more than this number of messages in a day, we can give you a higher limit! Contact Sales for more information, or to arrange to purchase a higher limit. We are not trying to limit legitimate email, just to pro-actively limit Spam and usage that could be considered excessive.


 Are there any limits on often I can check my email via POP?

In order to protect our servers from excessive use that may impact performance, we limit each user to checking their POP email no more frequently than once every minute. This limit does not affect use of IMAP, SMTP, or WebMail.

We take an average of your connection frequency over the period of an hour. If you are exceeding the rate of once every minute, POP connectivity will be suspended for 15 minutes to 1 hour -- until your hourly average rate of successful connections falls back to at most once every minute.

Most clients find that once every 3-5 minutes is frequent enough for checking their POP email, as email is not an instantaneous medium.


 Is there a limit on how many aliases or users/email boxes I can have?

No. You can have as many users or email boxes as you like in your account sharing the same disk quota. An email box or user corresponds to a login to LuxSci.

If you have your own domain name, there is no limit to the number of aliases you may have (within reason); You can send and receive email for these aliases. You can even have catch-all aliases where email for any user of your domain for whom there is no alias gets sent to some specified user. LuxSci provides online tools with which you can manage your aliases.


 Can I use my Mac OSX POP or IMAP e-mail client using my own domain name with your email servers?

Certainly. You can use any POP or IMAP client with our servers, even if you have one or more of your own domain names. Those email clients that are built into Apple Mac OSX will work right out of the box. Many of our Mac users use clients like Mail.app, Entourage, and Eudora.


 Is it possible to access my mail though a telnet or an SSH session? This would be of some use to me as I connect through terminal clients without graphical interfaces.

No. LuxSci does not support "telnet" and only grants SSH access under very special conditions. As such, it would not be possible to access your email through a telnet or SSH session to one of LuxSci's servers. You can, however, access your email using WebMail or any email program supporting POP or IMAP, assuming you have subscribed to these services at LuxSci.


 Do you support SMTP relaying?

Yes we do. If you order "SMTP Relaying" services, you can send email to anyone using LuxSci's SMTP servers, whether you are using our WebMail or your own email client (like Outlook). In order to prevent our servers from being used for sending Spam, we only relay email from authorized users -- you must specify your username and password when connecting to our SMTP server.

All clients can send email from WebMail, even if they have not purchased "SMTP Relaying" services.

Read more about SMTP Services and our Anonymous SMTP Service.


 Can I send bulk email or email to vary large lists of recipients?

LuxSci is a premium email service and not a bulk email service. We do not generally permit sending of bulk mailings, even if they are legitimate, from our servers. This helps ensure that our servers do not, even accidently, get on black lists and helps preserve our very strong anti-Spam stance and reputation. See our Acceptable Use Policy and our standard SMTP limits.

LuxSci has partnered with a company which specializes in legitimate bulk emailing, email marketing, newsletters, etc., to provide these services. They also provide advanced features like tracking, processing of bounces, and more. See IntelliContact Pro and try them free for 15 days.

Note that LuxSci can raise the per-user sending limits and can permit limited mailings to selected larger groups of people. However, this requires approval by LuxSci management and may incur an additional cost. Please contact us if you have specific questions or requests in this regard.


 Can I download email to my LuxSci account from other email accounts?

Definitely! We provide a web-based application where by you can download email from any number remote email accounts (i.e. accounts on other servers) to your LuxSci account. This supports any remote account that you can connect to using the POP3 email protocol. This application allows you to preview messages and specify what to download or delete, download without preview, delete messages or leave the on the server, to download from multiple accounts all at once, and to have email download automatically to your LuxSci email folders every 20 minutes.

Note that email downloaded in this fashion can be subject to all anti-Spam or anti-Virus services that you may have with LuxSci!


 Is your WebMail integrated with IMAP?

Yes. WebMail and IMAP are fully integrated -- they use the same email folders. WebMail even supports delete/expunge cycles like IMAP does. Perfect for people on the go who need to check their email from lots of different places.


 Does the web-configurable email forwarding feature allow forwarding to multiple email addresses?

Yes. The web-configurable email forwarding, alias, and catch-all alias features allow you to redirect each message to up to 5 destination email addresses. Larger distribution lists are available by upgrade (and are free in some cases, i.e. if you order Email Defense as well), contact Sales for more information.


 Can I import and export my address book from Outlook?

Yes. All users get versatile address books that can be easily synchronized with Outlook and many other email clients. Read more...


 Can I have an address book that is shared among all of my users?

Yes. However, sharing address books is an "Enterprise" feature which requires the purchase of one or more Enterprise Web Aide licenses. Read more about Web Aides, their pricing, and features.


 Can I use a Blackberry or palmOne Treo with LuxSci?

Yes. Both of these types of devices support connecting to Internet email services via POP or IMAP, and LuxSci has instructions that will help you with their configuration. Checking email with either type of device can be done in such a way that copies of all your email remains on the server so you can also access it via WebMail or via other email programs.


Answers to Web Hosting Questions

 Can I host multiple domains in the same account?

Certainly! Our web hosting packages are designed so that you can host an arbitrary number of different domains and web sites through the same account: sharing the same disk and bandwidth quotas, all administrable through the same login(s). This really cuts down on your overall cost. Think maximum flexibility and ease.


 Do you provide statistics on my web site usage?

Yes! We provide complementary statistics reports that are available through our member's portal. These reports are update twice daily and include:

  • Basic access statistics - hits, bytes, visits, and page views aggregated monthly, daily and hourly, as well as by file and visitor's domain.
  • Referrers - Which web sites were people visiting right before they accessed your site? This information is broken down by URL and is aggregated over the entire history of your web site.
  • Keywords - What keywords are people using in the various search engines that result in them finding your web page?
  • Agents - What versions of which web browsers or on what operating systems are your viewers using?

 Do I have to have my own domain name to have a web site?

No. If you don't have or want your own domain name, then you can use the luxsci.net domain name; this is known as "virtual directory" hosting. Your web site could be located at http://luxsci.net/mysite. This is less expensive for you since you don't have to purchase a domain name or DNS services.


 Do I need to change my domain's DNS records?

Yes. You will need to contact your domain registrar and change the "DNS Servers" for your domain to point to LuxSci's DNS servers. LuxSci will take care of configuring your DNS appropriately for your web and email usage.


 Do you support secure connections?

Definitely! The LuxSci member portal is a secure site protected by SSL so that checking you WebMail is entirely secure. We also have a file manager in the member's portal so that you can securely upload and download files to and from you account. We also support SSH, upon request and approval, should you require it to configure your web site. See LuxSci Security Services.

If your web site needs secure pages, we provide SSL hosting as well (provided that you purchase a secure site certificate - we can assist you in that process).


 Do you support SSH (Secure SHell) access?

Only under special conditions. For security reasons, SSH access may be granted to web hosting clients only upon request and approval by LuxSci management. SSH access is only granted if absolutely necessary for web site configuation and will be granted for only a limited period of time. There is no guarentee that an SSH access request will be granted before it is made, as access is at management discretion. Please contact LuxSci if you absolutely require SSH to see if will be granted to you.

For accounts that do have SSH access, SSH users must strictly abide by LuxSci's acceptable use policy, or risk account suspension or other action.


 Do you limit the sending of email from web sites?

Yes. For anti-Spam reasons, we track the number of email messages sent by your web site scripts. You can view daily summary or a detail auditing reports of email messages sent from your web site scripts. Each web site is limited to sending a certain maximum number of email messages per day (the default maximum is 500 messages). If your site exceeds this maximum, it will be blocked from sending additional messages for 24 hours. Additionally, you and our support department will be notified of this breach. Our support department and you will also be notified when you site gets "close" to its sending limit; the default warning threshold is 250 messages in one day.

The LuxSci support staff can adjust your sending limits as needed on a per-web site bases. However, you must indicate for what purpose the messages are being used and your usage will be monitored. Use of web sites for sending Spam, bulk email, or unsolicited commercial email is strictly prohibited and grounds for account termination; this monitoring process is a proactive way to detect and catch accidental or malicious excessive outbound email activity.
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