Seeking recommendations based on experience for Sendmail Relays

[marcusquinn]

@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.

[marcusquinn]

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.

[girish]

@marcusquinn that's some really good pricing - https://elasticemail.com/email-api-pricing . Let me quickly sign up and test.

[marcusquinn]

@girish yeah, and I must have been through testing over a dozen of these services in one way or another now. I think a lot of the things people think are their own service are actually Elastic Email resellers.

[marcusquinn]

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.

[jimcavoli]

@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).

[JOduMonT]

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, ...)

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@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:)

[marcusquinn]

@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/

[Mastadamus]

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.

[jdaviescoates]

@Mastadamus said in Seeking recommendations based on experience for Sendmail Relays:

Mailgun seems like a better deal for those not using a massive amount of emails a month.

Yeah, they are the only one I've tried because you have to use it for Ghost newsletters. But I've never paid anything for it because you can send up to 5000 emails a month for free and I don't send anywhere like that amount.