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We wanted to bring to your attention something that may assist customers in their email performance as well as help reduce mail disk space overages or the potential of being charged for mail disk space overage. Customers who use IMAP as their incoming mail protocol or customers who use the web mail interface more often than an email client (like Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) should pay special attention to the contents of this email.

There are three folders some people are not aware of that are used by mail applications (both servers and email clients) that can fill up with messages. These folders are: [Junk E-mail], [Sent Items], and [Deleted Items]. The [Junk E-mail] folder is used by Outlook 2003 to auto-filter potential spam messages. These messages are not received in your inbox, they're simply sent to the [Junk E-mail] folder where they sit until you delete them. The [Sent Items] folder is where emails that are sent using the web mail interface are stored after they are sent to the various recipients, and the [Deleted Items] folder is just that, where items deleted from your inbox are stored. Each of these folders, if not properly maintained, can fill up with messages and can contribute to the overall disk space usage for your domain. Therefore, by purging emails from these three folders and completely removing them from the server you can reduce your disk space usage and any disk space overage you may currently be paying. None of these folders necessarily retain messages that are needed, so by purging them you should not be losing any mission-critical data. If you want to be sure, by using an email client you have the ability to set up a local folder (one on your particular desktop) that can hold your [Sent Items] or [Junk E-mail].

CrystalTech does what it can to assist customers in improving the performance of their sites, and in giving customers ideas and options when it comes to lowering their monthly bills. With that in mind, beginning March 17th, we will automatically be purging all customers' [Junk E-mail], [Sent Items] and [Deleted Items] folders of any messages older than 30 days. We will not purge any folders of all messages, just those that are 30 days old or older.

Thank you, and should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know.

CrystalTech Support Team
www.crystaltech.com

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Yesterday afternoon, CrystalTech sent an email to all customers outlining a plan that both assisted customers in minimizing their potential for paying for email disk space overage as well as proactively addressed the potential for mail server issues that result from having millions of unnecessary messages on those servers. This plan consisted of automatically deleting messages that were 30 days or older that were placed in customers' [Junk-Email], [Deleted Items] and [Sent Items] folders.

After careful consideration, and after an extensive discussion of this plan with customers in our Forum, a discussion that included the CrystalTech CEO, we have decided to re-examine this plan. Therefore, we will not be automatically deleting files from these 3 folders beginning March 17th, as initially stated.

As stated, CrystalTech does what it can to assist customers in minimizing potential charges to their monthly hosting costs. However, we also do our best to listen to customers and to adapt policies or procedures in ways that are mutually beneficial to both CrystalTech and customers. The discussion on this new plan was extremely beneficial, and CrystalTech has, once again, listened.

That being said, customers must understand that we not only have a commitment to them, we also are committed to providing as stable and reliable a hosting environment as possible. Therefore, while we are re-examining the methods for reducing the number of messages stored on our mail servers, we would like customers to know that we will eventually be instituting a policy regarding how mail is stored on our servers. Prior to the release of this new plan, however, we ask that all customers examine their [Junk-Email], [Deleted Items] and [Sent Items] folders and purge any messages that are unnecessary. When we do finally agree on and implement a specific plan, we will be sure to let customers know well in advance.

Thank you, and should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know.

CrystalTech Support Team
www.crystaltech.com

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