Roller Network

For a few years now we’ve had a stealth ActiveSync push service available. It’s existence has been buried in the forums, if you were looking. But now we’d like to give it a wider announcement. ActiveSync support is available with hosted email boxes. The main reasons why we’re not charging for access to this feature are:

1. We’re simply using the open source Z-Push project to provide ActiveSync support.
2. Z-Push is stock: we haven’t made any Rollernet specific changes to the original source code.
3. You could just load Z-Push on your own server, we’re just hosting it on our infrastructure.

Since we’re not making this a extra cost feature that also means it doesn’t have any special support to go with it. If it doesn’t work for you there’s probably not much we can do about it other than clean your ActiveSync profile from the server. We are aware of it working successfully for many customers with complaints limited to things Z-Push simply doesn’t support.

In the future if we do any of our own development work or Rollernet specific enhancements to Z-Push it will most likely become a paid add-on feature. Or if it becomes popular enough that we need to dedicate infrastructure resources to it (since infrastructure isn’t free). But for now, it’s available at no additional cost for all paid accounts.

If you’ve read all of this you’re probably wondering how to use it. It’s simple; just add a new ActiveSync/Exchange account on your device with the following settings:

Server Name: activesync.rollernet.us
Domain: (leave blank)
Use your IMAP mail box login name and password as normal.

The related topic in the forums is: Push Email Support for Cell Phones

We have regretfully removed support for Spamhaus from our mail service DNSBL filter. Our paid account structure model unfortunately doesn’t correlate with how DNSBLs like Spamhaus (and SURBL and URIBL) charge for their data: they assume user counts, but at Rollernet we don’t count domains, mailboxes, valid users, features, etc. This is somewhat unique. Most similar providers charge for these items individually or have package limits. In our case our uniqueness of not tracking per-user stuff (which means we aren’t charging for things like total number of mailboxes) and allowing full customization to DNSBL settings (where customers can exclude DNSBLs entirely) is incompatible with other subscription services that assume this cost has been accounted for.

To bring services like these back in the future we may consider adding a special subscription option to allow use of these DNSBLs so that we can track their costs and only apply them to that accounts that are using them. This will allow us to match their pricing models without raising our prices across the board or switching to a per-user model ourselves. If it pans out we’ll post an update. But for now, the removal of support is final.

Our office will be closed on Friday, July 4th 2014 in observation of Independence Day (US Federal Holiday).

Customers requiring emergency assistance during this time should refer to their welcome sheet for contact information.