Frequently asked questions

Will Email Center Pro make my life easier?

We certainly think so. Email Center Pro solves a common problem in small business. It helps you run your business better by making it easier for you and your team to manage group email accounts like sales@yourcompany.com or help@yourcompany.com. Group email accounts are often mismanaged. One client's email slips through the cracks. Another client gets three unrelated replies with different messages. These are the sorts of real-world problems that we struggled with before developing this system for our own internal use.

With Email Center Pro, your staff can turn inbound email into a great customer experience:

Can I use it for existing accounts like sales@mycompany.com?

Yes, in fact, almost all of our customers come to us with established email addresses. Email Center Pro can download messages from POP email accounts, like most mail clients, or you can forward mail into the system. Configuring Email Center Pro to check an existing email address is quick and easy. You can even test-drive the service with a free account.

What about the rest of our email? Can we keep our individual accounts in Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.?

Yes, absolutely. Email Center Pro is just for group mailboxes that need shared access. For individual accounts, such as yourname@yourcompany.com, you can continue using Outlook, Thunderbird, a web interface, or whatever mail client you prefer. When new messages arrive in your Email Center Pro inboxes, you can get alerts sent to your personal email box to keep you informed.

That's what we do here at Palo Alto Software. Our customer care and marketing teams use Email Center Pro to manage group email inboxes like sales@paloalto.com and marketing@paloalto.com. Each staff member still uses their own email client of choice (mostly Outlook) to check their individual emails, but they get alerts about shared messages that need their attention.

You are welcome to use Email Center Pro in any way you’d like. We’ve built it to be flexible so it can fit your needs.

Is Email Center Pro a replacement for our mail server?

No, Email Center Pro is not an email server. It is not designed to replace the mail server you are using now through your Internet Service Provider or hosted webmail provider. Email Center Pro is not a replacement for tools like Exchange Server or Zimbra. You will still need to keep your existing mail infrastructure to serve your regular company email.

Email Center Pro is a Web-based email management service that will help you manage shared company email boxes. To use it, you can simply forward messages from your mail server, or use POP access to retrieve messages directly from your hosted server.

We get a lot of email every day. Can Email Center Pro handle it?

Yes, Email Center Pro can handle hundreds or even thousands of messages per day. Your account type will determine the number of messages you can receive or send using Email Center Pro. For example, you can receive and send 5,000 messages per month if you subscribe to our Standard account. If you subscribe to our Standard account and you find your needs growing you can always upgrade to our Premium account.

Does the monthly email volume include spam? I don't get charged to receive junk mail, do I?

Of course not. Our pricing is based on legitimate email only, excluding spam. If our spam filter, or yours, misses a piece of the nasty stuff you can always manually mark it as spam and we'll deduct it from your incoming mail volume.

Much of the mail to our shared email boxes is spam. Can Email Center Pro help with that?

Depends, most of you will already have some kind of spam protection in place for your shared email addresses - if that's the case you probably won't see a big difference in the amount of spam you're receiving once you start using Email Center Pro. If you don't have spam protection in place, or you have poor spam protection in place, you'll see a noticeable drop in your spam. Email Center Pro uses SpamAssassin to help protect your Inbox from the nasty stuff. Remember, spam does NOT count towards your incoming email volume.

How do I start receiving mail in Email Center Pro?

We have made it super simple to get started. Using our setup wizard, you have two options. You can set up POP access and download email directly into your Email Center Pro account, or you can forward emails into Email Center Pro. We will walk you through the process so it is as simple as setting up email in Outlook.

How do I know when new mail arrives in Email Center Pro? Do I have to check it constantly?

When you log into Email Center Pro, the home page gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything in your shared inboxes. You will see how many emails are in each box, how many are assigned to you, and so on.

If you are a less frequent user, you'll love the email alerts feature. You can choose to get a notification email sent to your personal email account when something requires your attention. You have complete control of whether you want alerts and when you want to get them - new mail, only mail assigned to you, etc.

Can I tell when an email has been answered and see what the response was?

Yes! That is one of the best reasons to use Email Center Pro. You can make sure that all your customer and client email is answered promptly and correctly. At any point you can see how many messages are in each inbox, and how many messages have been responded to. You can see each response and even know who responded to each message. Email Center Pro archives all messages so that you always have a history of every email that has gone through our service, unless you choose to delete it.

Will my emails be backed up so I don't lose them?

Yes, we offer regular, automatic backups for all paid accounts. Free accounts do not include backup data.

How many users and mailboxes can I have on my account?

The number of users that can access the system and the number of mailboxes supported by the system depends on your account type. Click here to see the available plans.

How many emails will you store?

We will store up to 50 GB of email, depending on the plan you choose. That's enough for several million messages. See our plan options.

What about security? Is my email safe and secure in Email Center Pro?

Yes. All emails are hosted on secure servers. Our Deluxe and Premium level accounts also include options to connect to Email Center Pro via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology using 128-bit encryption.

If I start using Email Center Pro, but then decide to quit, will I be able to retrieve my email?

Yes, it's your email. Email Center Pro includes an export option that makes it easy for you to pull your email out of the system should you decide to stop using it.

Can I try Email Center Pro without committing my business to it?

Of course. With the free account, you can try our service on a shared inbox or two with up to 250 emails per month. If you like it, we have more robust account options starting at $19 a month.

Email uptime is critical. Will Email Center Pro be available when I need it?

Yes, we understand the importance of uptime. In addition to our commitment to you, we rely on Email Center Pro ourselves for our customer base of several hundred thousand people. That's why we have partnered with Amazon.com to deploy Email Center Pro on the world's most advanced hosting platform. Called Amazon EC2 for "Elastic Compute Cloud," it is the same back end used to power Amazon's vast online businesses. Email Center Pro also uses Amazon's S3 storage system for lightning-fast data access.

Do you offer technical support?

Yes, we do. Our in-house customer care team, based right here in Eugene, Oregon, can help answer any questions you may have. They are available at (800) 229-7526 from Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time. Or you can also use the contact form, and we will respond within 24 business hours.

Take a minute to learn more about Email Center Pro and its features.