SendGrid is over, what to use instead?

[bazinga]

For few years I've been hosting my Cloudron on Azure. I've been using SendGrid (with their free plan) to send me emails, and everything worked fine. Recently I got a notification from SendGrid saying that they discontinue free plans, so I'm trying to understand what my options for email sending are.

I would appreciate any advice from the community here. If possible I'd prefer something with as little tracking / snooping as possible, but then again, not sure if this is relevant any longer in our times.

I don't think I can use the built-in Cloudron email server to send emails when hosting in Azure. Well, I think technically it is allowed, but there are limitations and potential issues afaik. Cloudron doesn't support Azure Communication Services for email relay - at least I don't see it in the list of available outbound relays.

Thank you all in advance!

[ccfu]

I have heard positive feedback from people who use Postmark. Azure blocks port 25 (unless you have an enterprise subscription), so it is not even technically possible to send mail directly from Cloudron.

[sixguns]

I pay 9.00 a month for

https://www.brevo.com

for transactional, been happy with it, lots of add on upgrades available too

But I think Coudrons built in email will provide transactional emails and therefore may be worth subscribing to, "if" I'm correct, need that verified.

[ccfu]

@sixguns said in SendGrid is over, what to use instead?:

But I think Coudrons built in email will provide transactional emails and therefore may be worth subscribing to, "if" I'm correct, need that verified.

Cloudron's mailserver is absolutely fine for transactional emails but only if your server provider does not block port 25.

[bazinga]

@sixguns Thank you for mentioning that provider. Why are you paying for it - it seems they offer a "free" plan? It that to remove their "branding" (I'm guessing here, but that's the only reason I can see based on their plans comparison).

I also presume you've configured it via "External SMTP Server" option in Cloudron?

[bazinga]

@ccfu Thank you for the suggestion. Sigh, it seems there are no free providers for personal email sending anymore - Postmark is $15/mo ;(

[bazinga]

Never heard about "transactional" emails before, but reading up a little on that now it seems that all these providers have TOS mostly for marketing campaigns plus the "transactional" emails, which are automated emails in response to some actions or stages in a customer initiated transaction with a business.

So, does using these services for "interpersonal emails" violate their TOS?

Also found this on reddit:

Keep in mind that "transactional mail" is very different from "interpersonal" mail and you need different providers for that. MailGun, SendGrid, Mandrill etc. are designed for transactional mail. They provide insight and analytics into the messages sent by doing things like intercepting clicked links, injecting tracking pixels etc. They can inject features like "unsubscribe" links into the messages. They can do things like scheduled campaigns with automated name insertion. They can detect bouncebacks and rejections from mailservers and keep track of blacklists of people or servers who shouldn't receive emails. This is good for automated messages, notification emails, newsletters, marketing campaigns etc.

These features aren't appropriate for "interpersonal" mail, and in particular you don't want to have things happen like "mail bounces for one user that one time and now it's on the automatic blacklist, and nobody in the organization can send mail to that domain anymore".

For interpersonal mail, you need an anti-spam gateway that also handles relaying outbound mail for you. E.g. Office 365's "Exchange online protection" service, Barracuda, Proofpoint, Mimecast, etc.

[sixguns]

@bazinga said in SendGrid is over, what to use instead?:

Why are you paying for it

When I started my Discourse instance I used the invite option, sent a lot of emails and maxed the free tier out, guess I should look into downgrading to save some cash now so good question

@bazinga said in SendGrid is over, what to use instead?:

"External SMTP Server" option in Cloudron

I'm not yet using Cloudron for my Discourse, only tested the free tier for Mastodon and other apps

[ccfu]

@bazinga Is there a reason you want to stick with Azure for your VPS hosting? Seems very expensive. Maybe look for an alternative that enables you to host email yourself rather than looking for an email provider you would also have to pay for.

[bazinga]

@ccfu Well, I don't pay for that hosting, so that's the main reason. I wouldn't be on Azure otherwise - way too expensive for personal Cloudron instance. Last time I've looked for a 2 cores / 8 GB RAM / 100 GB disk it wasn't that cheap anywhere reliable - like $30+ / month.