IMPORTANT: Email Hosting ends March 1st

This article was originally posted December 10, 2012.

Current iMinistries email customers,

In an effort to provide our customers with the best possible services, iMinistries will be discontinuing email hosting on March 1st, 2013. You may be asking yourself, “wait a second, how does this help provide our customers with the best possible service?”

Let me explain.

1. Recently, there has been an uptick in the amount of email accounts being hacked into and used to send out spam. This gets our email server blacklisted, email stops working, and we have unhappy customers. We don’t like that. Besides it affecting actual email accounts, it also affects our servers ability to send out notifications from the websites. Not only is it affecting email subscribers, it’s also affects every church that uses our system. Prior to the most recent attack, that you are already aware of, there had been several smaller attacks that didn’t have the same impact on our email server. It has been a growing trend recently and we feel it’s time to move on from email hosting.
2. When we have to deal with hacker/spam attacks, and providing general support for email, it takes away time we could be working on improving what matters most, our CMS.
3. We can’t provide what larger, dedicated email hosts, can provide you. There is a limit in the storage we can provide. With so many better options, it just makes sense for a church or ministry to utilize those.

Our recommendation is for churches and ministries to use Google Apps as their email vendor. Google offers several different options for a church or ministry. The business plan (http://www.google.com/intl/en/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html) is appropriate and affordable for most churches and ministries. If you have a valid 401 3c, then you might consider taking advantage of the Google For Non Profits option (http://www.google.com/nonprofits/products/). This option can take up to 30 days as it’s something you will need to apply for. Google even offers several email migration options which can be found here - http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57920

If Google Apps is your option please follow these steps to verify ownership of your domain.

1. Select the option to change your TXT record.
2. Click Continue
3. Look in step #2. Google provides you with a value that looks similar to googleffffffffe683be0a. Copy whatever this value is and send an e-mail to . Provide us with your domain and the value.
4. Click the “I will verify later” button.

Once we have added this DNS entry for you, we will respond to your ticket. At that point you can finish verifying your domain ownership.

If Google Apps isn’t an option, there are other email hosting options available to you. You could contact the company that hosts your domain name, many times they provide solutions. You could also setup your own exchange server and self host your email.

Once your new email is setup, please let us know so that we can change your account settings and remove the monthly charge from being billed to you. All you need to do is submit a support request at support.iministries.org. Let us know the URL of your church and the churches name and we’ll make the change immediately.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us. We’ll be happy to help get you moving in the right direction.

Thank you,
iMinistries