Looking for a way to send instant messages (similar to forum PMs) between users in my asp.net application. Like many others, I am using a webhosting service to host my site. After searching for a while, I have not been able to find a suitable solution that fits my system. One idea I had was to create a JavaScript function that would call an .ashx handler every 30 seconds to check the message status of users (returning true or false if correct credentials are provided). However, I wonder if this approach may be seen as spam due to frequent calls to the handler, or if it could impact performance negatively. My goal is to provide users with real-time messaging without them having to refresh the page constantly.