Forté Gains Better Support and Value with Rackspace

Rackspace Email, Professional Services, 1-10

Forté helps businesses create a strategic market advantage with design, development, and consulting services in a wide variety of businesses.

• Challenge
  Better spam filtering and reliable message delivery
• Solution
  Rackspace Email with premium spam and virus filtering
• Results
  Easy Control Panel management, increased product value, and Fanatical Support^®

Securing a Critical Line of Communication

Forté describes itself as a “commando team” for technology. Their services include design, development, support, and consultation services. As a result of the client relationships they develop, they are often asked to manage their clients’ email.

“We’ve used several different companies to host email but found most of them weren’t very capable,” says Todd Hower, Computer Technician at Forté. “One provider’s spam filters were so bad that we’d get 200-300 pieces of spam a day. We had another provider that blocked everything coming from BellSouth servers because of a spam issue, and 75% of our clients’ email came from BellSouth users.”

Forté’s clients use email to transfer documents, send AutoCAD files, and send sales proposals. As a critical line of communication, Todd’s search for a new email provider focused on finding reliable service and smart spam filtering.

Rackspace Email Emerges as the Best Choice

After searching online for providers, he found Rackspace. Todd was able to easily reach a sales representative by phone to get the information he needed to confidently make his decision.

Rackspace Email provides Forté and their clients with an affordable way to maintain business-class email and fulfills functionality demands. For just $1 per mailbox, Rackspace Email users can take advantage of contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes features, in addition to an easy, intuitive email interface. Rackspace Email integrates with any POP/IMAP client, so loyal Outlook^® or Mac^® Mail users can still use the same client they’re used to.

Once signed up, he was immediately impressed with our Control Panel. “I’ve used other email management tools, and yours is easier than all of them,” says Todd. From the Control Panel, he can manage spam filtering on the user and the domain-level. With Rackspace Email, spam is a thing of the past with layered spam and virus filtering from Cloudmark, CommTouch, and ClamAV on every piece of incoming email.

Unlike his experience with previous providers, Todd now has Fanatical Support^® for immediate assistance with email issues. He can access support via live chat, email, or phone 24×7x365. “I prefer to talk to a person; it’s faster and easier than expressing a problem by typing it in. I’ve never had a problem getting someone on the phone when I need help.”

Better Service and Support for Less

Todd recalled receiving up to 300 pieces of spam a day. With Rackspace, “We hardly see spam anymore,” according to Todd. During his time with Rackspace, “Pricing has gone down instead of up. Now, we have more free features, like mobile sync. The value has only improved over time,” says Todd. Forté now hosts all of their email mailboxes with Rackspace, plus email for five of their clients, totaling over 100 mailboxes.

According to Todd, the Control Panel eases email management. “The Control Panel is perfect. I’ve seen it grow with new features and redesigned functionality,” Todd reports. Control Panel options allow him to manage BlackBerrys^®, message forwarding, and spam handling from one centralized, web-based interface.

The Rackspace culture of Fanatical Support reaches beyond around-the-clock, expert assistance. Our newly redesigned System Status page provides up-to-the-minute information about system availability. “I really like the proactive support. When there’s a problem, we can find out system information without picking up the phone. With other providers, it could take hours to find out that there was a problem, and even longer to get a clear picture of the resolution time frame,” says Todd.

With Rackspace value and support, Todd and the commandos at Forté can focus on solving their clients’ technology problems instead of grappling with spam and deliverability issues.