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Email Services

A solid foundation for building business

When it comes to delivering products and services to your customers, the business partners you choose can make all the difference. Both you and your clients need reliable tools, technology and support to maximize your potential.

Sterling has been providing reliable email solutions since 1997. A solid infrastructure, dedicated staff, and a commitment to unsurpassed customer service have helped Sterling grow and thrive in a turbulent industry. Our state of-the-art facility and dedicated servers provide a rock-solid foundation for a wide variety of technologies.

Services Include:

• SPAM filtering
• VIRUS filtering
• WebMail service
• Managed solutions (POP3)
• Unmanaged solutions (SMTP)
• SMTP Mail Store & Forward services
• Secondary/backup email services (MX20)

SPAM filtering service
The SPAM filtering service eliminates the unsolicited email problem that plagues the Internet today.

Sterling's proprietary SPAM filtering system runs 37 separate tests on each piece of email that passes thru the system. The result of each test is weighted with an appropriate value, the sum of which will determine a "total score" for each email. This total score is then compared to a threshold value which determines which email are spam and which are not. Messages that contain pornographic content are automatically deleted. Spam messages are tagged by an automated process that edits the subject line and inserts the word "[SPAM]" at the beginning. These tagged emails are then easily processed by the recipient and an efficient manner. The system can also delete spam messages instead of flag them if desired.

Some of the 37 tests that are performed include: "who is this FROM, is it a known spammer", "who is the email TO, is it sent to NOBODY, or is it being sent to a number of recipients on the TO line?", "are there keywords in the email, Viagra, mortgage rates, etc.?", "are the LARGE fonts in the email, numerous font changes, multiple colors", "Is there an unsubscribe message in the footer of the email." These tests and more, when properly weighted, create an incredibly accurate deterministic system for isolating spam messages. There are only 1 in 1000 false positives, and better than 98% of the SPAM messages get tagged. In addition, we have created a proprietary security mechanism that averts "Directory Harvest Attacks." This keeps the spammers from harvesting valid email addresses from domains protected by the Sterling SPAM filtering service.

As if these results are not good enough...we're constantly tuning our SPAM filtering software in an attempt to achieve a nearly perfect filter.

Pricing is dependant on the quantity of users being serviced. Call our sales department for a custom price quote.

See how much SPAM actually costs your organization by using our ROI Calculator. Common questions and answers can be found on our FAQ page.

VIRUS filtering service
Sterling has implemented an enterprise-class virus scanning product that prescreens our clients' email for known viruses, before it is sent to their system. Best practices suggest that the clients continue to run client-side virus scanning systems on the PC's, and that they implement this double-check system to ensure their systems are protected against the numerous and proliferating viruses.

This service scans all email messages from the Internet and checks them for viruses, Trojan horses, and other destructive messages. If a virus infected email is detected, the message is discarded and a notification is sent to the originator of the email.

Customer Benefits

• Stops the virus before it gets to your PC or company network.
• Around the clock, 24-hour a day protection.
• Available whether your email is hosted with Sterling or you have your own mail server.
• Requires NO installation, training, or ongoing management from the customer. We do all the work.
• New virus definitions are updated every day.
• Reduces the load on customer owned mail servers. Our servers do the work.

Pricing is dependant on the quantity of users being serviced. Call our sales department for a custom price quote.

Common questions and answers can be found on our FAQ page.

WebMail service
All managed email services from Sterling include a WebMail interface. This is especially useful for people that travel and do not have the luxury of taking a pre-configured laptop with them. This email interface is included at no extra charge, and can be used from any publicly accessible internet portal.

Managed solutions (POP3)
Sterling provides a full line of hosted email services. These services can utilize the @sterling.net domain, or they can be configured to utilize your own custom domain (@yourdomain.com). There is no limit to the number of email accounts that we can attach to your domain or personal dialup account.

An alias such as info@yourcompany.com can also be setup very easily. Messages to these pseudo email accounts are automatically forwarded to one of your standard email accounts for processing. This allows you to pre-organize your incoming mail and provide anonymity for your personnel (i.e. 'webmaster' instead of 'Bob', 'billing' instead of 'Julie'). Alias' are included at no charge.

Pricing is dependant on the quantity of users being serviced. Call our sales department for a custom price quote.

Unmanaged solutions (SMTP and DNS)
If your company has it's own server and manages it's own email, Sterling is happy to host your DNS for you and even provides dedicated outbound services in some cases.

SMTP Mail Store & Forward services
For those clients with large networks and on-site support for company email, Sterling offers a store-and-forward service which holds your company Internet email on our site until your server logs in to get it. With this service you do not need a dedicated Internet connection to support your mail server.

Many companies are moving to this configuration utilizing low-cost dial-on-demand ISDN connections at pre-programmed regular intervals to retrieve and send mail. This service also allows you to utilize Sterling's DNS services and keeps you from having to maintain your own DNS server. The service utilizes the SMTP "ETRN" commands to do periodic bulk Internet email transfers with your email server.

Secondary/backup email services (MX20)
This service can also be used to create a backup mail system for your onsite server. In the event of a line outage or server crash on your site, our system will store your mail for up to a week, while you get your systems back online. When you get back online, your mail is automatically forwarded to your server and your clients never knew you had an outage.