This document summarizes a presentation given to an IT professional group about MessageFlow services. MessageFlow was founded in 1998 and offers hosting, email, and reseller services. MessageFlow's services help companies with on-premise email servers address issues like downtime, spam, and IP address changes during office moves or broadband provider changes. It does this through store-and-forward messaging and real-time blacklisting, valid user, and content-based spam filtering. MessageFlow also offers a reseller program where IT professionals can sell its services. The presentation outlines MessageFlow's benefits and pricing, and provides examples of current and past clients.

1. Presentation to
London SMB IT Pros group
Monday 14th October 2013

2. Room101 – the story so far …
• Founded 1998 as web development workshop
• Launched first datacentre presence 1999
• Hosting & supporting PC/Mac email users since 2000
• Reseller services to IT Support Companies since 2003

5. Which of your clients
will MessageFlow help?
• Company with a Microsoft® Small Business Server in house
(2003, 2008, 2011 etc…)
• Receives incoming mail directly via SMTP
• Single MX record pointing to the fixed IP number of an ADSL
line or leased line
• Company receiving too much spam
• …whose broadband goes down from time to time
• …who has an upcoming office move
• …who is about to change broadband provider

6. Example potential client
• Domain: acmewidgets.com
• Single MX record: priority 10 mail.acmewidgets.com
• mail.acmewidgets.com resolves to 62.3.235.48 (Tiscali)
But what’s wrong with this setup?
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Best practice is to have TWO MX records
They have to open port 25 to the world, including spammers
What if the ADSL line goes down? Or is heavily congested?
What if the IP number needs to change?

7. The MessageFlow answer
• Domain now has two MX records, each pointing to
MessageFlow servers
• We relay messages via SMTP to the specified IP number(s)
You can therefore firewall off port 25 to listen only to us
• If the ADSL goes down, we can store-and-forward
• If the IP number of the ADSL is changed, our system relays to
that IP number with immediate effect (no DNS propagation
delays)
• You can specify more than one IP number
• Keeps annoying spam traffic away from your Exchange Server

8. So what’s the benefit of all this?
• MessageFlow can help cut down on spam
• Increasing broadband security and performance

9. Broadband down? Big problem!
In the current economic climate, what impression does it give if you
email a company and the message bounces back as undeliverable?

10. Broadband down? No problem!
• Store-and-forward means no more
embarrassing undeliverables / bounce-backs

11. The Two Towers
This hardly ever happens!
….but when it does, MessageFlow remains UP

12. Migrations made simple
• Either physical server relocations or switching
broadband provider, result in a change of IP address
• Change the relay-to IP number with immediate
effect. (Change back again if your new config doesn’t
work straight away)
• Specify more than one IP number in priority list
ideal for out-of-hours office/provider migrations

15. Trapping Spam
- three methods
 Real-time Blackhole List filtering
 Valid user filtering
 Content-based filtering

16. 1.) Realtime Blackhole List Filtering
• Subscription lists of IP numbers from which
spam has recently originated
• Queried in realtime by MessageFlow servers
• Advantages?
Very efficient
Tunable
• Disadvantages?
Ignores the content

17. Our current partners

19. Sunny spells and scattered showers

20. 2.) Valid Users filtering – why needed?
• Departed members of staff
• Guessed addresses
• Internal-only email accounts
• High-privilege accounts (eg Administrator)

21. 3.) Content-based filtering
• Most spammers send millions (or billions)
this can take them several days to complete
• Aim to get a sample asap using spam-traps
• Update MessageFlow content
database in real time

22. What to do with suspect emails…
• Discard
• Forward to webmail
• Pass-thru with tagged header
• Pass-thru (ie disabled)

23. Competition – how do we stack up?

24. We charge a ‘per company’ fee with
no‘per user’ fees - so if client hires
extra staff, fees are the same.

25. The Reseller model
• End-user price £250 + VAT per annum
(incl. 1 master + 4 alias domains)
• Reseller price £175 + VAT per annum
• Additional pack of 5 alias domains - £50 + VAT
• Addition of Outgoing Auth-SMTP - £35 + VAT

26. Your client, remains Your client
• What happens if we’re contacted direct
• What we expect you to do
IT Support!
Drive the MessageFlow control panel
• What you can expect us to do
Support you (but not your clients)
Track and trace using our logfiles
Marketing support (promo material, trade shows etc…)
Free Trials (30 days)

27. Example clients (past & present)
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Server vendor
Town council
Marketing agency
A South-London based local magazine
Insurance broker
Veterinary clinic
Insurance broker
Car dealership

28. The Roadmap
Relay to different IP based on
username@ part of email address
Spotting malware-hosting web site
URLs in spam messages
Scoring system for spams
(for tag-header users)
Notify you if client SMTP relaying is
down for > 5 mins

29. Our Special Thanks to ….
Alex Stanier
Anthony Goold
Alan Barnett