THE VALUE OF A FIXED IP ADDRESS

Shared Servers

Many websites on the Internet are hosted on "shared servers". A shared server is a web server that hosts more than one website. This is the most common and certainly the most affordable way to have a presence on the Web. The alternative is a Dedicated Server or Virtual Private Server(VPS), and this can cost many hundreds or thousands of dollars a year and is usually overkill for one website.

 

The Problem

The downside to a shared server is that websites can also share the same mail server. There's no security risk here, but if one of the other websites was sending out spam, then the mail server's IP address can end up on a "Blacklist" of IP's that have a bad reputation. This may cause some of your emails to be rejected by the recipient's mail server. This is not a good position to be in.
Being added to a blacklist is often caused by an infected computer that is connected to an email account on the same server as you, or perhaps a weak password that has been compromised or hacked. Once the problem has been resolved it can take some days to get off these blacklists and in the meantime, some of your emails may not reach their intended recipients.

 

The Solution

The easiest and cheapest solution is to use your own IP address. It's not expensive and usually easy to arrange by your hosting company. This way, if configured correctly, you can send mail from your own IP address completely bypassing the risks from other domains causing your mail to be blacklisted.
Often with blacklists they are temporary and depending on the existing reputation and how long the issue has been going on, it can clear in a day or two. However, that's not always the case and the small cost of a fixed IP address resolves the problem altogether.

Websites that have a secure certificate (SSL/TLS), for secure shopping for example, often will have their own IP address as one is required for a secure certificate.

 

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