Dear HarmonySite Administrator,
Our email-delivery provider (Mandrill) changed the way they do business, making it no longer feasible to use them as a provider any longer. So we looked around for an alternative, but could find nothing suitable. So we have moved the responsibility for email-delivery back to our web server (where it was until about a year ago).
What does all this mean to you? Not much. Emails will still be delivered as they always have. There are some internal technical considerations, but they affect us, not you. You will actually see two improvements:
1. Member email addresses can no longer be "blocked". That was a "feature" of the Mandrill system. This means that you no longer need the special admin page for "unblocking" email addresses. That page has now been removed from your HarmonySite. Naturally this doesn't guarantee delivery of all emails (no-one can ever guarantee that), but it does mean that member email addresses won't get arbitrarily blocked for no obvious reason.
2. Members who hold "special" email addresses, such as president@mygroup.com or treasurer@mygroup.com, who have emails arriving to those email addresses automatically forwarded to their own personal email addresses, will likely see a reduction in spam arriving via those email addresses.
The only downside of this switch is that it will become harder for us here at HarmonySite to determine the reason behind any non-delivery of a particular email. Mandrill's reporting and logging of emails sent was exemplary. The logging system on our web server is rudimentary, but can usually still provide indications of whether or not an email was delivered, an if not, why not.
As usual, if you have any questions about this, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Mark Virtue
HarmonySite
Australia
+61 2 8005 4277 (Australian number)
In North America, call: 1-415-651-7009 (San Francisco number)
Skype name: mvirtue
