Seeking recommendations based on experience for Sendmail Relays
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Feedback on reviews of all the above so-far - all very well documented and self-guiding to setup and with competitive pricing I don't think you can go too far wrong with any of them.
- Elasticmail
- Absolute lowest costs possible & extremely comprehensive documentation, guides, interface & API (seems to be automated approval).
- PepiPost
- Next lowest cost and active live-chat and good documentation with direct Mailtrain & Mautic support and guides. Only one offering encrypt-at-rest for email lists too - which is very handy for mailing-list security and GDPR protection from that vector. (manual approval process).
- Sendinblue
- Application and service supplied with lots of marketing extras for a hybrid approach to use Mailtrain/Mautic/SendInBlue tools (seems to be automated approval).
- turboSMTP
- Manual approval process and can't see anything yet. Might be a bit more tolerant for imperfect email lists from anecdotal reviews but they will all be strictly against excessive spam reports.
Bonus, Elasticmail guides taught me more about how to manage multiple sendmail providers on a domain and has this very useful DMARC voodoo generator and guide:
Overall, I think all 4 would be great integrations for Cloudron to have and lower cost than everything except self-sending compared to current options.
Will report back more as I find out more.
Worth noting, Mailtrain only has SMTP setup, no API for anything other than Amazon SES - but if you need to send high volumes in a short time (ie: to hit optimal localised delivery times), then you really want API sending as SMTP won't handle the volumes.
- Elasticmail
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@JOduMonT Thanks for the numbers!
Elasticmail for 1.5M emails would be $135/month Standard and +$30 for Pro, so $165/month for comparison. Basically, $515 to $665/month cost-savings on the table, or $6,180 to $7,980 a year.
The research kinda pays for itself a few times over once you get above say 10,000 emails a month.
You do need to bring your own client though, like Mailtrain - but then it will support a hosted HTML page generated anywhere if the GUI templates aren't pleasing to the design team.
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FYI: Apparently, Amazon SES is blocked by the major German email services and a couple in France in Brazil: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=323992
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What are the best options to have a reliable email relay for a privat domain - I don't have huge amounts of mail (5-10 a day) and don't need tracking, analysis, etc.
I currently have my domain at Namecheap - should I just buy their mail option? -
Elasticmail gets immediately rejected by the Provider "mailbox.org"
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@necrevistonnezr For low volumes like that I'd just use the Cloudron SMTP.
Namecheap's email is good too, tried that and it worked well but I ended up retiring it in favour of Cloudron's SMTP.
Lemwarm is good for building a trust reputation on a new sendmail service with any provider.
Amazon services I avoid, Google I'm starting to think similar. Just easier to stick to EU services for GDPR and their generally more pro-privacy claims at least.
We're not here for a long time - but we are here for a good time :)
Jersey/UK
Work & Ecommerce Advice: https://brandlight.org
Personal & Software Tips: https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn said in Seeking recommendations based on experience for Sendmail Relays:
@necrevistonnezr For low volumes like that I'd just use the Cloudron SMTP.
My Cloudron is at home with a dynamic IP from my ISB - that won't work for building reputation, I guess.
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@nebulon said in Seeking recommendations based on experience for Sendmail Relays:
Not sure what that AWS forum entry exactly indicates, however I am using SES for my personal Cloudron just fine and most of my contacts are within Germany.
I had several mails rejected today for GMX and Web.de accounts - and others have too, see the AWS forum entry.
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@necrevistonnezr If it were me I'd go with Mailgun free tier, which is the only supported sendmail service from Ghost websites if you use that (I recommend it and use for my personal blog, blog.cloudron.io does too).
If you want to pay and have sort-of-privacy, I think Namecheap lowest tier for email is decent value and service.
If you thought you might need more mailboxes and want to build an IP sendmail reputation, you could create your own Cloudron tiny sendmail server on Hetzner / Netcup for < €3/m and the free Cloudron subscription.
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Just to update on this thread: elasticemail.com is proving a winner, happy with everything about it, pricing, features, hand-holding through all the deliverability setup stuff. Happy to recommend this one.
The others I'm aware of, and they all have something unique but they all take time to setup and test. So, for now at least I can confirm any effort anyone needs to put into this area, Elastic Email is decent enough and good value.
We're not here for a long time - but we are here for a good time :)
Jersey/UK
Work & Ecommerce Advice: https://brandlight.org
Personal & Software Tips: https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn that's some really good pricing - https://elasticemail.com/email-api-pricing . Let me quickly sign up and test.
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Adding a note on experience in this area:
ALL of these relay services seem to be presumed to be untrusted by Microsoft mail received (@outlook.com @live.com etc), the same for Cloudron. You either get a large number of bounces, or they are categorised as promotional.
From what I can tell, the only services that Microsoft mail servers trust more are their own services are other similar services, like GMail, Yahoo, Protonmail, Posteo, etc
The way around this is most-likely double opt-in email subscriptions, so the receiver has to find, mark as not spam and read, and click the link to opt-in to mailing lists. If it's normal email, it might be for the receiver to send you an email first and you reply to it.
If you are using any mass-mailing for cold-email, it looks like the only way to avoid issues with Microsoft service deliverability is to use a Microsoft mail services or Google Workplace, those do seem to get through fine from the beginning, presumed trusted until proven otherwise.
Just thought I'd update with the experience as it takes ages to figure all these things out.
We're not here for a long time - but we are here for a good time :)
Jersey/UK
Work & Ecommerce Advice: https://brandlight.org
Personal & Software Tips: https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn Yep. Running mail severs sucks. Running a cloudron mail server sucks measurably less. I'm presently fighting with DMARC and Gmail deliverability (via SendGrid) and so far using. I've had issues with MSFT service delivery before because on new IPs they're super sensitive to any volume and had to go through their whole SNDS service to iron it out and monitor status - https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/index.aspx for those who need it. Google's Postmaster tools are in a similar category for their clients - http://postmaster.google.com. Pretty much required registrations for anyone trying to deliver mail to either of these services and wanting to stay proactive and on top of deliverability. Having your own IP from any of these relays really helps with that (though it's not cheap).
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This EmailToolTester do monthly deliverability test
https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/email-deliverability-test/
if you did into their website they even evaluate where your email will land (aka mailbox, forum, promotion, ...)
@marcusquinn said in Seeking recommendations based on experience for Sendmail Relays:
(and Trustpilot ratings are hard work to maintain!)
Interesting, I never Trully Trust TrustPilot, you just added a little bit of Trust for them:)
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@jodumont said in Seeking recommendations based on experience for Sendmail Relays:
Interesting, I never Trully Trust TrustPilot, you just added a little bit of Trust for them:)
Yeah, prob with all these "Trust" websites is they are protection rackets! The other prob is you can't really escape using one of them in many online businesses, so you end up picking one unless you have the tech to reproduce what they do.
Once upon a time I wrote more about this here: https://healthshop.net/i/transparency/reviews-feedback/
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I've tried sendgrid and mailgun. 1. They were both similiar in ease to configure. 2. Mailgun seems like a better deal for those not using a massive amount of emails a month.
