[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Recommendations for an SMTP Sending Service?
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Ask HN: Recommendations for an SMTP Sending Service?
With the Google Apps changes I am looking at moving my emails
somewhere else. One solution is a SaaS service that would cover
all my needs, but they all have limitations (except at very premium
levels of prices). I am considering hosting the incoming part
(having my MX pointing to my home server) but I do not want to deal
with the outbound part because of apparently how difficult it is to
have consistent deliveries (because of spam filtering - there were
several comments in HN about that). Is there a good SMTP sending
service that is affordable for home users (6 users sending a normal
(low) amount of emails)? I guess that what I need is a service that
will forward @mydomain emails (with the possibility to set up SFP,
DMARC, ...) and handle at least two domains.
Author : BrandoElFollito
Score : 66 points
Date : 2022-01-23 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
| daneel_w wrote:
| posteo.de and tutanota.com are both affordable. I previously used
| the former for several years. No complaints.
| patja wrote:
| Amazon SES will cost pennies for personal use volumes. You really
| need to stay on top of any reported abuse complaints or they will
| shut you down quickly, which is a good thing in the big picture.
| g8oz wrote:
| Postmark. Be sure to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
| ilmiont wrote:
| Another vote for Postmark. It works and it's a paid but
| relatively affordable service - this is a good thing in this
| area, as it keeps the spammers out, and means you have real human
| support. I've not had a problem yet. Same can't be said for
| SendGrid which is used on some client projects but has sporadic
| deliverability issues at times.
| jsisto wrote:
| I have been using mailjet to do this for years. Their free tier
| allows for 6000 emails a month or 200 emails a day
| https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/#email
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I'm using Migadu for user and transactional emails currently. The
| price is amazing, though the setup for mail on macOS is somewhat
| different than what their FAQ suggests so that's a small headache
| to have to deal with. Their approach to pricing is usage based on
| the number of messages, and NOT the number of domains/email
| addresses, that's awesome if you're into idea validation at
| minimal cost. Supports SPF, DKIM, DMARC, forwarding, vacation
| messages. https://www.migadu.com/
|
| *not receiving any compensation from Migadu in any way
| brightball wrote:
| I've considered doing the same thing many times. My vote would go
| to Sendgrid based on my last round of research 2-3 years ago.
|
| Reasons: 1. Automatic DKIM rotation. Sendgrid will setup 2 CNAMES
| so that they can automatically rotate your DKIM keys making this
| a "set and forget" situation.
|
| 2. Good delivery logs so you can see exactly why something wasn't
| delivered if there was a problem.
|
| 3. Different permission levels for different users included. You
| can create a user with only SMTP permissions to use to send with
| while not having to worry that if it's compromised someone can go
| ballistic on your account settings.
|
| 3a. Solid 2FA
|
| 4. They fiercely guard their IPs against abuse.
|
| 5. Ample free tier for personal use.
|
| 6. I believe they have an option to spam filter your outgoing
| messages so that even if the account (or machine) was
| compromised, you could prevent delivery.
|
| Those are the main reasons from my experience. Plus all the other
| more standard features like read receipts, etc if you want.
| Natfan wrote:
| I'm working through the sign-up process for SendGrid (100
| emails/day for free doesn't seem too bad), but their website
| seems so damn _slow_. I had to wait about 15 seconds for the
| signup page to load. You 'd expect they'd optimize that page
| above all others to get conversions?
| orev wrote:
| I see so much phishing from sendgrid that I just blocked the
| entire domain. I don't care if they're trying to be legit, they
| clearly can't keep control over bad actors using their
| platform. I've also done the same with Google appspot domains.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| SendGrid is hot garbage hacked together. I reported a critical
| bug (unsubscribed emails still receive future scheduled emails
| causing high complaint rate) five years ago and they told me
| they know about it, acknowledged it was a bug, and said they
| had no plans to do anything about it.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Ugh. I had the same experience with a company recently.
| Completely put me off them.
| brightball wrote:
| Replying to myself:
|
| Wow, had no idea the Sendgrid situation had gotten so bad.
|
| In that case, Mailgun.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Sendgrid can close your account and you have no recourse, no
| tickets or appeals. This happened to a friend I had set this up
| for, account was closed for inactivity
|
| Delivery wise I also heard they are one of the providers most
| likely to get flagged as spam
| nkmnz wrote:
| Sendgrid has the worst IP addresses I ever used for sending
| email and the customer support has been even worse.
| briHass wrote:
| Worse than SES?
|
| I agree, though. You need to pony up for a dedicated IP from
| Sendgrid to get good deliverability to many hosts. Small ISPs
| tend to be the worst, IME, where Google, Comcast, etc work
| pretty well with SG.
| nkmnz wrote:
| I've tried a dedicated IP from sendgrid as well, but our
| sending volumes were way too low even for transactional
| mails. It would have taken months of sending fake emails to
| warm the address up.
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| Yeah, there free tier was useless when I tried it.
| Essentially couldn't send email to anyone, including myself,
| since their fiercely guarded IP addresses were crap.
| rikkipitt wrote:
| Mailgun are pretty good. I use them on a couple of email services
| I've built.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Sendgrid, but SES also is a good choice too.
| cientifico wrote:
| I can recommend https://docs.postalserver.io/
| junon wrote:
| Migadu has been great so far.
| gfykvfyxgc wrote:
| I'm guessing all the major clouds provide this?
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Yes, but for addresses that are hosted by them.
| Aeolun wrote:
| My vote (like someone else here) goes to Sendgrid. I've been
| using them since before they were sold to Twilio and they haven't
| let me down yet.
|
| They also have a reasonable free tier that I basically never
| exceed. I'm not sure if their basic features would fulfill all
| your needs though.
|
| That said, if you need personal email I'd say just use Fastmail,
| and you won't be disappointed.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| Just wait for it ! They can close your account on a moments
| notice and there will be no way to get your data !
|
| Sure use it if you sending spam'ish email (seems most do) but
| for anything critical stay far far away !!
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| Well in my experience - I would HIGHLY recommended PostMark ! -
| Great bunch of clever guys.
|
| I would also HIGHLY NOT RECOMMEND Sendgrid.com - Used to use them
| for 5 years and suddenly closed my production account over a
| weekend when I wanted to move to paid service for better
| analytics.
|
| No I wasn't sending spam or against their terms of service.
| Mostly password-resets and ticket-notifications. More importantly
| if you look at discussion below seems I'm not the only one !
|
| Previous comments + discussion.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29297229
| schappim wrote:
| I have used both Postmark and Sendgrid.
|
| I've found that Postmark gets stuck in Barracuda spam filters
| used by large organisations.
|
| We do however continue to use Postmark.
| tiernano wrote:
| Try migadu: https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ about 20 quid for the
| year, nearly unlimited domains, and good service. I use it for a
| good few domains. Happy with them.
| marban wrote:
| Keep the quotas in mind on the cheapo plans.
| philip1209 wrote:
| I've been using Postmark for my personal email domain.
|
| I was using Sparkpost, but I had problems. Specifically, some
| email help desks seemed to reject the emails - so I was unable to
| respond to some inquiries. Many friends reported that my emails
| were going to Spam, too.
|
| With Postmark, I've had zero deliverability issues.
|
| I recommend monitoring DMARC closely to ensure deliverability. I
| use this free tool from Postmark: https://dmarc.postmarkapp.com/
| samwillis wrote:
| Can wholeheartedly recommend Postmark, fabulous service and
| support. Virtually no problems over the last 6 years and always
| incredibly responsive to any questions.
|
| Used to be with SendGrid, had a very bad experience with them
| where (at the time) they showed little interest in small
| customers and wouldn't go back. A lot can change in 6 years, they
| may well be brilliant and now care more about small customers,
| but for reference:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142728
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Wow, that's great. Suggesting you rent a dedicated IP from them
| to improve deliverability right after saying the move to new
| IPs reduced deliverability.
| yashg wrote:
| For sending emails Amazon SES is what I would recommend. SPF,
| multiple domains, SNS for bounced mails. It has it all. You have
| to gradually grow the reputation. Been using for many years now.
| Never faced any issues.
| emptybottle wrote:
| Fastmail has been great for both final deivery and outbound smtp
| for personal email.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| I'm very happy with fastmail too but I'm only paying for one
| inbox. If OP needs half a dozen users, then that's $300 a year,
| which is excessive for light personal use. I suppose as they
| only need SMTP they could set them all up as identities on a
| single inbox but that's not what fastmail is meant for.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Check out https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2022/01/email-thoughts -
| it was posted here recently
| nkmnz wrote:
| Try uberspace! Small German hosting provider that should cover
| all your needs for sending and receiving email with a pay-what-
| you-want model (>5EUR monthly encouraged). I host email adresses
| for several projects with them and never had any deliverability
| problems. Plus, they don't want any data from you.
|
| https://uberspace.de/en/
|
| Edit: they don't sell domains, but you can bring your own domain
| that you have registered elsewhere.
| kennydude wrote:
| Zoho is usually pretty cheap and reliable. Been around for a long
| time and don't seem to be going anywhere fast.
|
| Their latest blog says to expect a well priced family solution in
| the next couple of days
| freedomben wrote:
| I use Zoho for a small company and indeed the pricing is really
| good and the product is reliable. The UI is really well
| designed and they have thought about (and implemented) nearly
| any feature I can ever think of. Really great service.
|
| I plan to move my family to Zoho in the next couple of years. I
| only haven't yet because I've got so many other items on the
| to-do list.
| mxuribe wrote:
| > ...Their latest blog says to expect a well priced family
| solution in the next couple of days
|
| Oooh, now that is interesting! Reference (near bottom of blog
| post): https://www.zoho.com/blog/workplace/honouring-the-
| commitment...
| toomanydoubts wrote:
| Been using the free version of zoho for about 10 years. What an
| amazing little piece of software.
| blueatlas wrote:
| A relative new player is MailerSend (https://mailersend.com/).
| We've moved all of our transactional e-mail over to their
| service.
|
| They have a sensible onboarding and UI/dashboard. The dashboard
| makes it clear how to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC. There is a
| generous free tier for a single domain. A single paid account
| supports multiple domains starting at $25/mo for 50k outbound.
| Support has been excellent.
|
| And the biggest upside is that their shared IP range, so far, is
| clean and not blacklisted. That was the clincher for us.
|
| I have no connection to MailerSend other than as a happy
| customer.
| nacs wrote:
| I moved my 5 domains, 3 user setup with around 50K emails to
| Migadu.com after Google Workspace deprecation in the last 2 days.
|
| Cheap ($20 a year, free trial), lots of features, decent webmail
| interface and has no problem sending to/from Google servers and a
| few other email services I've tested with so far.
|
| I used imapsync (free/OSS) to move the emails.
| shimonabi wrote:
| Your comment should be on top. You really helped me.
|
| I also transfered to Migadu today (before I saw your comment)
| and was just looking for a tool to transfer the e-mails to an
| old free Gmail account. It's really a scandal that Google
| doesn't enable this in the Workspace migration wizard.
|
| You also have to enable access to less secure apps on Gmail to
| be able to use imapsync.
| 1nf_ wrote:
| I have had an awesome experience with https://mxroute.com/. The
| owner takes deliverability very seriously and I have never had an
| email go to spam. I would recommend it.
| mxuribe wrote:
| I had heard of mxroute previously, but for some reason, i only
| thought they focused around transactional email...like
| sendgrid, etc...and not what others might refer to as
| conventional mail hosts. Their price is really compelling, and
| the honesty of their documentation is refreshing! Take a gander
| at some of their commentary around hosting calendars, contacts
| for example: "...Just know, that's not where the bulk of our
| time and energy is going."
| [https://mxroute.com/docs/#/General/Do_You_Sell_Calendars]
| Granted i have the need for email as well as calendar and
| contacts, but damn that level of honesty is compelling for me
| to at least consider them for my short list. Kudos to the
| MXRoute folks for being honest!
| kijin wrote:
| +1 for MXRoute if you're just looking for an affordable
| alternative to Google Apps and not some fancy API. They bill by
| storage and not by the number of accounts, and they offer
| discounts around the year if you look around. Also don't be
| fooled by their frontend that looks like some run of the mill
| shared hosting. Their backend is absolutely professional.
| throw3847282 wrote:
| If it's for a single user, at that price, Microsoft's Exchange
| Online Plan 1 might be another option.
|
| Otherwise Migadu or PurelyMail are a lot cheaper.
| mariusor wrote:
| I second PurelyMail. Their price schema is based mostly on
| mailbox storage size, and I believe I paid under 10$ for the
| last two years of hosting some catch-all mailboxes for
| multiple domains.
| ryan29 wrote:
| My favorite thing about MXRoute is the super simple rate limits
| that you can configure when adding a user. I use it on devices
| for notification e-mails and being able to limit those logins
| to something low like 5-10 emails per day is awesome. It really
| minimizes the damage if something goes haywire, a device gets
| compromised, or a device gets stolen.
| 3np wrote:
| The most well-renowned specializing in outbound SMTP AFAIK would
| be Mailroute, Mailgun, Sendgrid, mxroute. They're all comparable;
| pick whichever you think suits you best.
|
| There's also "mail-hosters" like Posteo, Migadu, Fastmail.
| xupybd wrote:
| Have you thought about Mail-in-a-box and a cheap VPS?
|
| I've had one up for testing and am surprised at the reliability
| and ease of use.
|
| https://mailinabox.email/
| strickman wrote:
| I recommend mailjet. I can send email from my openbsd terminal
| that passes SPF and DKIM.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I know you specifically say you don't want to try self-hosting
| outbound, but I'm going to still vote for it because I think the
| reasoning you cited is a little second-hand FUD. I self-host mail
| and yes, I occasionally run into annoying delivery problems, but
| not often, and once you're configured (SPF, DKIM, and so on),
| E-mail is set-and-forget. I think the reassurance of not relying
| on the whims of yet another cloud provider outweighs the
| convenience, but definitely reasonable people can disagree! Good
| luck though. The cloud hosted solutions mentioned in other
| threads are fine choices.
| akerl_ wrote:
| I'm not sure how you can say it's set and forget if you have to
| deal with "occasional annoying delivery problems"
| defanor wrote:
| While I like personal mail servers and would suggest tech-savvy
| people at least to try them, OP mentions a home server, which
| probably involves a residential IP address, an ISP that won't
| set a reverse DNS for regular users, and likely other
| annoyances that would complicate mail delivery considerably
| more than usual.
|
| If you'll decide to give it a try, BrandoElFollito, it's best
| to have at least one IPv4 address that isn't in a residential
| range and not in DNSBLs, a /64 IPv6 subnet (since blacklists
| tend to add at least a /64 subnet for those), ability to set
| in-addr.arpa records.
| ziffusion wrote:
| I am trying iRedMail to self host an email server. What do you
| use?
|
| I've setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC. The PTR record is not possible
| for me to setup. How did you get around that? Did you get a
| static IP address?
|
| What else do you think is necessary to make this better?
| ryandrake wrote:
| My stack is exim4, dovecot, and spamassassin, running on
| Debian stable. I do have a static IP address as the machine
| is a VPS. Admittedly this makes me reliant on my VPS provider
| so technically the whole stack isn't in my control. I can
| however in theory fail over to metal on my residential IP if
| my VPS fails, although 1. I would want to request a static IP
| from my ISP and 2. I have not tested this transition
| recently.
|
| At one point in the past I needed to get a different IP
| address and suddenly had deliverability problems because the
| IP I got from the VPS provider was previously naughty. Re-
| requesting another IP was all it took to solve that.
| 3np wrote:
| I would maybe start with a provider (considering that OP is
| hosting for others and not just themselves) and use that as
| fallback as they eventually start setting up their own
| outbound.
| njhaveri wrote:
| If you really want to host your own server for incoming mail, SES
| would probably be fine for SMTP and very cheap. With things set
| up correctly (SPF, DKIM), my personal experience with
| deliverability has been problem-free. However, I've seen others
| say they've still had issues because of the SES IPs. For double-
| checking the quality of your setup, mail-tester.com is handy.
|
| If you want to migrate to a free consumer service (like a
| personal Gmail account and using aliases), a forwarding service
| that also provides SMTP is an option. I've been testing Pobox.com
| and it looks great ($20/yr for up to 20 addresses). I first tried
| using my registrar's forwarding service, and sending from aliased
| addresses via the Gmail SMTP Server, and had lots of trouble with
| deliverability, so I wouldn't recommend that.
| catern wrote:
| I use Sendgrid's free tier in this exact way, for mail from
| catern.com.
| ei8ths wrote:
| aws ses, super cheap, fairly easy to setup. I just wish they had
| better or easier things like sendgrid has for analytics and
| troubleshooting. But i am paying pennies for my low sends.
| ftrobro wrote:
| In my experience a few email services refuse to accept emails
| from AWS SES, probably because a lot of automated emails are
| sent from AWS SES.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I came to recommend AWS SES as well. I also use Google to
| handle my mail, but I use a catchall email address and Google
| does not support changing the From address of outbound mail.
| I've been extremely happy with SES, as it is easy to set up and
| so far as I know I've not had delivery issues.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Gmail? You can add sending from other address/SMTP in the
| settings
| StayTrue wrote:
| I run all my own services but just relented and setup mailgun as
| an outbound SMTP relay. It works well and solves the
| deliverability problems associated with low-traffic IP addresses.
| The only tricky thing was making sure my outbound SMTP requests
| authenticate to mailgun using domain-specific credentials
| depending on which address I'm sending from (I have 5 different
| domains).
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Been using mailgun for a long time free for 5000 emails/mo.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I use them for my infrastructure's notification mail needs.
| Written a small tool to send e-mails from command-line via an
| API key.
|
| They're a joy to use.
| brightball wrote:
| The lack of automatic DKIM rotation is the only thing that
| keeps me from using them instead of Sendgrid.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Why not purelymail?
|
| It's cheap, allows multiple users, multiple boxes, TOTP,
| Application Passwords, SMTP, Webmail, custom domains and more.
|
| Starting $10/year.
|
| https://purelymail.com/
| mkdirp wrote:
| I know you're probably not looking for a SaaS based on your
| message, however, I recently migrated from ProtonMail to
| mailbox.org because of reasons, and I really think it is worth
| using over self-hosted solutions.
|
| A big reason for not going with self-hosted setup is because of
| the exact reason you mentioned. I just wasn't in the mood to
| manage everything myself and keeping my IPs in good standing. On
| top of that, the only place I could host it is on some cloud (I
| live in a small apartment in London, so self-hosting isn't very
| feasible), or worse, some smaller provider that potentially has
| low to no accountability. I felt like I'm just moving the trust
| from an email provider (who can arguably do a better job than I
| can) to a cloud hosting provider.
|
| For me, mailbox.org has been great, better than PM. I got the
| standard package, which is EUR3 per month. It allows me to use
| both of my email domains (using a catch-all), and allows me to
| send emails from any sender (combined with Thunderbird's
| customisable send field, it's great!). It has full integration
| with any email client, as opposed to PM which requires either
| their app, or ProtonMail Bridge.
|
| The initial set up was a bit weird, and definitely not as refined
| as ProtonMail's but in the end it worked. I'm able to use one of
| my domains as a 1 email per website, and the other for
| professional communications. They've also got an option to
| encrypt all your email using a PGP key, which you can combine
| with Thunderbird's PGP integration, or MailVelope.
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| I'm assuming google gsuite ("Gmail paid" where you can use your
| own domain) is not an option bc of the 6 x users (and gsuite is
| $/per user / per month) And same goes for office365.
|
| I only Bring those two up as no one else has mentioned them, and
| I was seeing other replies that were around the $25 a month mark
| (which is close to these 2x for 6 x users). However with both you
| get many more services/features than just email (especially with
| office 365). Actually I think office 365 has a family plan that
| is around the $10 /mo mark for up to six users
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Google Workspace no longer has a minimum user count. I use it
| with just one user.
| shmoe wrote:
| Did it ever? I've always used GApps/GWS with one user.
| windex wrote:
| I use simplelogin.io for a bunch of my personal domains. They
| route it all to a catchall mailbox on gmail.
| theblazehen wrote:
| I've been using sendinblue, reliable and a very generous free
| tier. Smtp2go is good as well, with a bit of a lower free tier
| (9000 vs 1000 mails / month)
| petee wrote:
| I use the registrar Gandi, but there are a couple limiting
| catches - you have to transfer your domain to them (good service
| though), and only 2 email accounts are included per domain with
| unlimited aliases, and additional cost per address is either
| usd$0.40/per month for 3GB storage, or $2/mo for 50GB. They offer
| webmail and all that but still give you imap & smtp access
|
| So on the low end it would be $1.60 a month additional, not bad
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| One of my domains is actually with Gandi (I am French - the
| other one is with OVH). I was not aware of their offer but you
| made me realize that, maybe, I could use their SMTP while
| hosting my emails.
|
| I am not sure which checks they do (it is possible/likely that
| they filter on the email addresses that are registered with
| them) but it is worth a try. Thanks.
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