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Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions are provided below. Click on a topic to view the questions and answers.
You can view the various Whaledrop service offerings on the product page.
No. They do not have to get an Asset Courier account to receive mail, but if you send them a secure message, they will have to create a password associated with their email address so we can verify only the owner of the email address can view the message.
When you reach your account limit, you will have to either upgrade to an account that allows more messages, or wait for a new month to begin. If you have a question about upgrading, please contact Customer Support.
To create a group of users you must be using the Asset Courier Business service. You can upgrade a free account to a business account by contacting Customer Support. With the Asset Courier Business service, you can add and manage multiple user accounts. The group management options allow you to set branding for all members of the group, or to allow members of the group to set their own branding. It also allows you to manage quotas for all members of the group.
If you have a free or Pro account, and you exceed your limits, you will be notified and you must either upgrade your account or wait for a new monthly cycle to send more messages. If you have questions about bandwidth, please contact Customer Support.
Yes. The Asset Courier is a premium mail delivery service. You can use it with any email address. Only outbound mail goes through the Asset Courier. Your inbound mail will work as it does today.
Not today. At this time, we do not offer Whaledrop email addresses for inbound mail. If you would like to use Whaledrop for inbound mail as well, please let us know by sending an email to Customer Support.
Yes. You can use Whaledrop to send mail to any valid email address.
Yes. You can add multiple email addresses to your Asset Courier account, and send mail from any of those addresses. To add an address to your account, go to your profile page and edit your settings. When you add an email address to your account, we will send you a verification email to confirm the address.
You can use any email program that allows you to configure your SMTP settings for outbound mail. The most popular programs are Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail. If you currently only use a Web client to read your mail, you may have to install a mail client to send mail using the Asset Courier. If you are not currently using a mail client, we recommend you download and use Thunderbird, which is free.
When you create your free account you will be logged into the Asset Courier. Click the Help link at the top of the page and locate instructions for configuring your favorite client. You can use the Asset Courier for all mail accounts, or specific accounts from which you want to send large or secure messages.
If you only use a Web interface for accessing mail, and you do not use a mail client, you can either use the Asset Courier's Web interface to send mail, or you can configure a mail client. Apple includes the Apple Mail client, Windows includes the Windows Mail client, and you can download and install any email client for your operating system, such as Thunderbird. You cannot configure Web applications like Yahoo or Gmail to send outgoing mail through Whaledrop, but you can use a mail client to send mail through the Asset Courier for your Yahoo or Gmail address.
Installing and using a mail client to send and receive mail does have its advantages (such as viewing and composing mail offline). The free Gmail service supports POP3 and IMAP for accessing mail from a client. The Yahoo free service does not support POP3 and IMAP, but the Yahoo Plus service does. See the Yahoo web site for more information on using Yahoo Mail. See the Gmail web site for information on configuring your email client to work with Gmail. When you setup your client to work with a Web service, remember that you will configure the SMTP settings for the Asset Courier. You should see the Asset Courier online help for information on configuring SMTP settings for popular mail clients.
The Asset Courier was designed to be highly flexible. If you have a special need to interface to the Asset Courier engine, manage your own message store, or even run dedicated Asset Courier servers, please contact Customer Support to discuss your requirements. Whaledrop has a professional services team that can integrate the Asset Courier into any business, service, or application.
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. When you get an email account, you get access to both a mail box, where you receive mail, and an SMTP service to send mail. All standard email is sent using SMTP. The Whaledrop Asset Courier provides an SMTP interface to make it easy to send mail from any email client.
When a message contains a large attachment or secure information, or when you include an SASE link, the Asset Courier appends a notice to the end of the email message. You can view sample emails by going to the send demos page of the Asset Courier. The demo emails contain Whaledrop branding, which you can personalize once you create an account. They illustrate how emails look with Whaledrop notices, and how a recipient views content sent through Whaledrop.
All mail sent through the account you have configured for the Asset Courier is processed by the Asset Courier. If a message does not need special handling, it is sent without modifications as a pass-through message. You can still view delivery tracking information for pass-through messages, but you will only be able to confirm when the message was delivered to each recipient's SMTP server.
By default, all messages are stored for 90 days. If you have a special need to store messages for longer or shorter, please contact Customer Support. Although a message is stored in your Whaledrop store for 90 days, a recipient can only view messages the number of times you configure for your profile. See the Asset Courier online help for more information.
Your messages are securely stored in a Whaledrop store dedicated to your account, using the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) in the Amazon Computing Cloud. All information is only available to you, when you log into the Asset Courier, and to the people you share it with by email. When you send an email through the Asset Courier, you are granting the recipients the right to view your message. You can define how many times recipients can view a message in your account profile. If you send a secure message, only recipients who have access to the original recipient email address can view the message. If you have a service or application with a special need to use your own Amazon S3 store for storing messages, please contact Customer Support for more information.
When you send a secure message, only the original recipients can view the message, and only after they generate a password by verifying they have access to the email address. If you send a non-secure message, that message can be forwarded to others by the recipients (just like a normal email), and the new recipients can also view the message up to the maximum number of times a message can be read based on your profile preferences. See the Asset Courier online help for more information.
The Asset Courier limits messages to 1 GB by email, but a practical limit is based on your bandwidth, and the email client you are using. If you have a slow Internet connection (and upload speeds are typically slower than download speeds), it will take hours to send a 1GB file, and in that time your computer or email client may fail. We have found that Thunderbird, using POP3 (when using IMAP, copying the outgoing message to our sent folder can be a problem with files over 500 MB), can reliably send very large messages if you have the bandwidth. Microsoft Outlook typically can send messages up to 200 or 300MB, but it was not designed for sending large messages so it has a poor user experience (sending blocks other features in Outlook, and it may become unresponsive until it completes). You will have to test sending messages with your client on your bandwidth to know just how big you can really go using the Asset Courier, but you should be able to reliably send messages up to 200 MB with most clients and average bandwidth.
If you have a special need to send lots of really large messages, please contact Customer Support to discuss your requirements. We can work with you to host dedicated services or integrate the Asset Courier with your applications and environment.
The Asset Courier has delivery tracking, which means that every message you send through the Asset Courier has a log of events, and you can view that log to understand what has happened. See the Asset Courier online help for more information.
Yes. The number of message views per recipient are set under your account profile. See the Asset Courier online help for more information.
You can send a SASE notice with any email message, which allows each recipient to send you a secure response, including uploading large files. When someone responds to a SASE request, you will receive an email notice with a link to their response.
Click the link included in a SASE notice sent to you when a recipient sends a reply.
You send a secure message by typing <secure> in the subject line of the message. Any message marked as secure will require the recipients to create a password and validate their email address (once they create a password, they can use that password to retrieve any secure message sent to that email address). You can use the deliver tracking to view when each recipient has viewed a secure message. See the Asset Courier online help for more information.
If you have special needs to integrate secure messages into your organization or workflow, contact Customer Support to discuss your requirements. The Asset Manager can be customized to meet the needs of any application or service.
The password allows us to verify the user has access to the recipients email address, making sure only the intended recipients can view your secure messages.
Yes. You can customize the profile image that is sent with the message notice, to help your recipients recognize that the message is from you, and increase the chances that they will click the link to view your content.
Yes. You can customize the profile image that is displayed (the same one sent with the message), you can upload a background image, and you can create your own tagline to be displayed in the header. You can also choose between a blue or white color scheme to best match your background and profile images. See the Asset Courier online help for more information on personalizing the Asset Courier.
The best way to learm more is to create a free account then view the Asset Courier online help.