I have a question: I was looking into getting a copy of LinkAssistant, but when I contacted EV1Servers.net (I have a dedicated with them), I was told that using an email address hosted on their servers for LinkAssistant was against their AUP. Does anyone know of a way around this? I don't want to risk getting my hosting account suspended, or violate the TOS/AUP of any other company. Thanks!
I'm not sure I completely got your problem here... Why don't you just write a message at support [at] link-assistant [dot] com and talk to the LinkAssistant guys about it? I've written a ton of messages to them, they always respond fast. Maybe I'm missing something here, but what does it all has to do with your hosting company? Warkot
Yes, I actually did send an email to the LinkAssistant support, and got the following reply (reposted with permission): I guess I didn't quite explain my problem accurately, but I'll try again: LinkAssistant is used to find the email addresses of the webmasters of related sites. After getting the email address, we then send an email to the webmasters from some email address asking for a link exchange. The problem is that I cannot use any email address on my EV1Servers.net dedicated server, because it is against their AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). Here is the transcript of a support chat I had with them: After this, I sent the following message to (forwarding the transcript of the chat): And I received the following reply from them: So basically, since LinkAssistant obviously does not have an opt-in system, I cannot use it on their server. Does anyone know of a place where I can get an email address that I can use with LinkAssistant? I would really like to get that software, but I don't want to get it if I would risk losing my hosting account.
Oh, now I get it. OK, I've taken a look at your hoster's AUP and here's what I think... Actually, pretty much any hoster nowadays will take a firm stance towards anything they think is spam. For instance, if they receive repeated complaints from other people about you. And this is totally understandable, considering how many spammers are walking around out there, and how we all hate to receive junk emails. So they rightly include this into their AUT: "Unsolicited commercial e-mail / Unsolicited bulk e-mail (SPAM) Use of the EV1Servers service to transmit any unsolicited commercial or unsolicited bulk e-mail is expressly prohibited." What they are saying in their AUT basically is that they'll give you holy h*** if enough people will report you as a spammer. But I don't believe you will run into trouble with LinkAssistant, assuming, of course, you will be using it right (of which I'm sure ). I don't even think the problem has anything to do with LinkAssistant, or SEO Elite, or MS Outlook, or any other software that can send/receive mails. It doesn't matter what email software you use, it's how you use it -- here I'd agree with what Viktar said. You can use MS Outlook to send spam, but that doesn't mean that's the purpose of the software. Now let's get to link exchange. You surely need a way to contact Webmasters with nice personalized emails. I assure you that if you write a polite, personalized email and only write this person again if she allows that, no one will ever call you a spammer. And -- again -- this has nothing to do with what software you use to do that. The AUT also says you can't send anyone a message unless a person has previously agreed to receive it (opt-in). Well, since the hosting provider can't check it, you could only run into trouble if people will report you as spammer. And why would a person do that if what she gets is just 1 (one) nice personalized email? I've been using LinkAssistant with no trouble for about 10 months, I always put some effort into writing my emails (which LinkAssistant facilitates a lot, by the way), and no-one ever called me a spammer. Also, the email feature is just one of the many LinkAssistant's capabilities. You could ignore it and used the rest, but since sending emails to people without an opt-in system is against your hoster's AUT, you basically can't go into link building at all. Sounds a bit rich to me... I completely understand you wanted be on the safe side so you went ahead and asked your hosting company for advice (I would've done the same), but I'm sure if you write a nice personalized email to a Webmaster once without bombarding her, you'll be totally in the clear. Use LinkAssistant or Outlook for that -- doesn't matter. For the record, I used Gmail once for one of my projects. Google has a very good and secure mail (free, by the way), and LinkAssistant happens to work with it as well, I tried it. Hope this helps, Warkot
Thanks for the help! I'll probably end up getting this software after all, and just use it carefully. I just really don't want to get my hosting account suspended, so I was going to get it checked out beforehand.