Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
Email Services Questions
Web Hosting Questions
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 courteous staff will assist you promptly.
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 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). We will
send a "Welcome" email message with your administrative username and
password in it, customized to your purchased options. You can use that
login information to at http://luxsci.com to complete the setup of
your account including users, web sites, and other services, view your
web-based email and obtain access on-line Members' help or create Support
Tickets.
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 do I transfer my domain to LuxSci?
If you would like to have an email hosting only account with us and you have
DNS services already (i.e. with your current registrar or web host), all that is
required is to contact your DNS provider and have them change the mail exchange
records ("MX Records") to point to our inbound mail servers. When you sign up
with us, we will let you know what records to change them to. Once the change
fully takes effect, your email will flow directly to LuxSci's servers.
If instead you would like LuxSci to manage your DNS for your domain, or if
you would like to have a web hosting account with us, all that is required is
to change the name server records ("NS Records") at your domain registrar to
point to our name servers. When you sign up with us, we will let you know what
records to change them to. Once the change fully takes effect, all of your DNS
information (including your MX records and your IP address) will be controlled
by LuxSci.
Will transferring my domain cause me to lose email or web services for
any length of time?
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 in some email going to your new LuxSci servers and some
still going to your old servers, and similarly for your web traffic if you are
transferring that to LuxSci as well.
If you have any additional questions about the transition process, please
contact us.
How long does it take to transfer my domain to LuxSci?
If you are signing up for email hosting only and you have
DNS services already (i.e. with your current registrar or
web host), you will only be changing the mail exchange records
("MX Records") for your
domain. This change will typically take somewhere between a few minutes
and 24 hours, depending on how your DNS is currently configured at your existing host.
If instead you would like LuxSci to manage your DNS for your domain, or if
you would like to have a web hosting account with us, this process generally takes
longer than just changing your MX records. You will be changing the name server records
("NS Records") at your registrar AFTER we set up your new DNS services on our servers
in preparation for the transfer. You will need to wait at least 6 hours from the time
we finish setting this up before changing your NS records so that this information has
enough time to synchronize with all of our DNS servers. Once at least 6 hours have passed,
you will then change your NS records which typically takes somewhere between 0 and 12 hours
to take effect. After the DNS server transfer takes effect, the full DNS changes will
begin to go into effect -- this is the "transfer period" and it typically lasts somewhere
between a few minutes and 24 hours, depending on how your DNS is
currently configured at your existing
host.
If you have any questions about transition time and what happens during this process,
please contact us.
What payment methods do you accept?
- We accept secure online credit card payments via VISA, Master card, and
American Express. We can also automate credit card payments.
- 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 your 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 secure and protected.
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. 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
How do I migrate my existing users and data to LuxSci? See : Migrate Your Data to LuxSci
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!
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. It does need to be done on a per-user basis, however.
- Bulk IMAP: If you have many users and/or a lot of email and you have
IMAP services with your old provider, then LuxSci can help you migrate. Simply
provide us with a file containing the usernames and passwords of your users
at your old provider and the details of how to connect to their IMAP servers. LuxSci
can bulk create your users for you in LuxSci and bulk copy your IMAP email to
your new LuxSci account. LuxSci can even bulk copy all "new messages" at your
old provider to LuxSci once your migration is complete ... to ensure that
you do not leave any email behind after the transition.
- POP: If your old provider supports POP
but not IMAP, each user 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 situation where the above methods will
prove inadequate, 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.
It is possible to migrate from Exchange, Lotus Notes, Novell, IMAP, and
many other types of email situations. 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 add new 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 50 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 no more than 29 Mb
in 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 300 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 0.8 minutes (roughly 48 seconds). 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 48 seconds, 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 48 seconds.
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.
Do aliases count as users/email addresses? Do they require additional user licenses?
No. Aliases accept mail for addresses which do not correspond to any email box
and then redirect to an actual existing user. As such, aliases are not considered users, do
not have their own login, and so do not require additional user licenses. Because of this,
you cannot log in to the member's portal with an alias, nor can you send or receive email
with an alias via POP, IMAP, or SMTP services.
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" or SSH for security reasons.
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.
Note that for anti-spam reasons,
LuxSci does not provide accounts for the sole purpose of SMTP
relaying; SMTP relaying is provided as part of our comprehensive email
services packages which also include inbound email services. If you are
looking for a provider for SMTP services only, we recommend SMTP.com.
Can I send bulk email, or can I send email to very 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 accidentally, 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 my email be archived?
Yes. In addition to a built-in mail filter that will save copies of today's
email to a special backup folder, we provide on line tools that allow you to create and
manage your own mail folders and filters. You can customize how your email behaves and
where it ends up.
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 of 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 them 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.
What's the difference between the Premium Email Defense Spam and Virus Filter and the Basic Spam and Virus Filter?
The major difference is that, just as its title describes, Email Defense
is our premium filter option -- it costs a bit more than our Basic filter,
but it affords much more effective filtering and hosts a larger set of features.
It combines 3 redundant virus filters with a host of spam filters, including
Cloudmark, to stop 98% or more of all malicious email. Email Defense
users receive a login to a special Email Defense portal where they can configure
their filter settings and access their individual quarantine to browse through
messages that have been caught as Spam. It is a domain-wide filter, meaning it
applies to all email addresses and users inside your domain. As such, you must
have your own domain name to take advantage of Email Defense, and it requires
changing the MX records for your domain in order to provision it. Read more about
the Email Defense Filter.
Our Basic Spam and Virus Filter, while perhaps not as effective as the Premium
option, serves as a solid alternative at a lower price. It utilizes many powerful
filter programs such as SpamAssassin and Clam AntiVirus, and unlike Email Defense
it can be provisioned on an individual basis without needing to provision the
whole domain. Basic filter options can be configured from within the LuxSci
member's portal. Also, you do not need your own domain name as you do with
Email Defense, so users with email @luxsci.net can take advantage of the Basic
filter. Read more about the
Basic Spam and Virus Filter.
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 WebAide licenses.
Read more about WebAides, their
pricing, and features.
Can I access my address books from Outlook or other programs? Users with WebAide Enterprise licenses can use
LDAP to view and query their address books directly from their
email clients. This is not a synchronization, but a means of
directly accessing read only versions of
your LuxSci address books from within your email clients.
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 updated 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 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 don't 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 your 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 your account.
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? No. LuxSci does not provide SSH access to its servers
for security reasons.
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 a
daily summary or detailed 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 basis. 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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