In this article, I will explain some of the functionality of the FreeToastHost email system from the perspective of why certain features are implemented the way they are.

The FreeToastHost email system is intended to be a flexible email forwarding system that implements and/or supports the following features: 

• Support for a wide variety of email systems
• Multi-part/rich content emails
• System provided distribution lists/email aliases
• Custom group distribution lists
• Replies to group emails per user settings
• Unsubscribing non-members from distribution lists
• Spam detection/blocking
• Email blacklists
• Email whitelists
• CC'ing a club archive email address
• Logging of emails
• Useful, informative bounce messages.

Users sometimes post asking about why they do not receive emails through via the FreeToastHost email system as quickly as they do via their regular email/webmail client.  The short answer is because of all the work the system has to do to implement all the above functionality, despite it only being an email forwarding system.  We keep looking for ways to make the system work faster, but because of the inconsistent ways that different email systems implement standards, the FTH email system has to do a lot of extra work to make sure that the right emails get to the right people while keeping the risk of spam low.

So, lets give you some examples...  One area where email systems vary is how they indicate whether an email is being forwarded.  As a "for instance", lets say that you have set up a forwarding rule for an email account that forwards certain emails to your club officer email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  (not a real email address).  There is no consistent way that the email is indicated as being forwarded, and without some special code to look for clues, these emails will look like they have blind-carbon-copy email addresses, which the FTH email system specifically blocks because those are frequently used by spammers. 

At the current time, Gmail indicates a forwarded email by inserting a 'X-Forwarded-To' header line in your email, Hotmail/Outlook uses 'Resent-To', and Yahoo uses 'X-Yahoo-Forwarded'.  Those are the email systems that FreeToastHost will accept a forwarded email from at this time, as we have special code in place to detect those so they are not confused with emails containing a BCC address.  We could add support for forwarding from more email systems, but forwarding does not seem to be something a lot of users do, so it is not a high priority.

I am using this example to illustrate how challenging it can be for the FTH email system to both implement all the above features and makes sure everyone gets their intended email in a timely fashion.

Another example...  Some of you will send an email to a lot of email lists at once, and some of the same people may be in different lists.  The FTH email system can handle this much better these days than it used to.  Preventing duplicate sends to the same end recipient email address is important beyond just being a nuisance.  Some email systems will discard emails as being spam if they detect them being send more than once to the same recipient.  Therefore, our email system has to keep track of every email address that it sends an email to in order to prevent duplication, even when the same person is in multiple email lists.

Lets talk about spam prevention a bit.  There are about 4 different things that the system does to reduce the risk of spam.  First, the system will not accept emails with BCC (blind-carbon-copy) email address, since those are frequently used by spammers.  Next, the system has rules to decide who is allowed to send to which lists.  For example, only members can send to the members list and only officers can send to the guest list.  Next, the system uses SpamAssassin to check the content of the incoming emails for clues that they may be spam--it does this by "scoring" the emails using rules, and calling any email "spam" with a score above a minimum that clubs set. Lastly, if all else fails, clubs can black list spammers, assuming they can determine the original email address of the spammer.  All these activities take time to complete, but they are necessary to reduce your risk of being spammed.

In conclusion, the FTH email system is a workhorse system that is always on, always working in service of the over 10,000+ clubs/districts with a FreeToastHost website.  We will continue to look for ways to improve it, while maintaining all the features that you have come to depend on.

Steve James, ACB, ALB
FreeToastHost Ambassador
FreeToastHost System Developer