Other Email control panel

Quick poll to understand how much everybody knows.

I've probably worked more on email than any other section of running servers. No email = no validated users.

If you do vote, share what you do know already. If you have had any difficulties or have any questions about how email generally works.

My own skill level is taking an existing email package and trying to get the best out of it. And from a sys admin pov monitoring ingree/egress of email for problems.

Biggest difficulty is always the success of delivery.

If your email succeeds great but how quickly is just as important. If you or I wait for email to be delivered we usually get frustrated trying to validate a new account.

Comfortable with most of it. Setting up Dovecot, Postfix, OpenDKIM, etc.

What are your opinions, if I may ask, on using MailChimp or Amazon SES?

Alex. said:

What are your opinions, if I may ask, on using MailChimp or Amazon SES?

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Expensive for MailChimp. It does work.

SES yes very popular for messaging and low cost. I find most email I recieve is marked as spam from ses.

Postmarkapp - a good option too. Don't know where pricing is today but I think they moved from credits to a subscription.

I used postmark and MailChimp. But don't use them any more.

If your sending important email and if you want to know it was opened using MailChimp or sendgrid is fantastic for that.

If your worried about your mailserver being blacklisted using vps's you can spin up and burn almost instantly is an idea. Or if you you can "buy" additional IP addresses just need to have your DNS all setup so you only have to update one entry.

Do you use a mail delivery service?

pierce said:

Postmarkapp - a good option too. Don't know where pricing is today but I think they moved from credits to a subscription.

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I use Postmark, credits are still a choice and my preferred one.

I have a dedicated server (KnownHost) for several domains, each using their own IP and cPanel. Email flows back and forth pretty evenly, with no real problems I am aware of. However, with this server and just about every other server, shared, VPS and dedicated, I've used in the last 10 years, I have trouble keeping my email from being bounced from any Microsoft email address (Hotmail, Live, MSN, Outlook, etc.). I can get them cleared, but it doesn't take long for them to start bouncing again. I gave up even trying about a year ago.

I send no newsletters, no spam and have not experienced a server breach. I have sent mass emails only a few times when I have had a contest or made a server move/upgrade to warn users of a prolonged outage (more than 3 hours). Otherwise, it's only email notifications being sent by my forum and any personal email I send to friends and family, which is pretty infrequent since the advent of texting.

Any suggestions?

pierce said:

Expensive for MailChimp. It does work.

SES yes very popular for messaging and low cost. I find most email I recieve is marked as spam from ses.

Postmarkapp - a good option too. Don't know where pricing is today but I think they moved from credits to a subscription.

I used postmark and MailChimp. But don't use them any more.

If your sending important email and if you want to know it was opened using MailChimp or sendgrid is fantastic for that.

If your worried about your mailserver being blacklisted using vps's you can spin up and burn almost instantly is an idea. Or if you you can "buy" additional IP addresses just need to have your DNS all setup so you only have to update one entry.

Do you use a mail delivery service?

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Hmm. I knew SES had issues back in the day because of how simple it was to send out spam email, but I would have thought that loophole had been closed since then. I had to do some research after doing your post and I see it's still a problem.

I haven't heard of the other services you mentioned. I might have come across sendgrid because it sounds familiar but I'm likely wrong. I'm familiar with AWeber which has shot up in price over the last five years. Though they offer unlimited emails at a set price point. They used to be cheaper than MailChimp, but now MailChimp is "cheaper" if you're a large site.

For some large-ish blogs I own, I used to use a mix of AWeber and Mailchimp, but found the open/read rate so low that I saw no point in continuing to use their services. I suppose if I were targeting a much older demographic, I'd have a higher rate.

Also, as I was typing this post up I realized I mixed up the names. When I said MailChimp I was referring to Mandrill, their transactional email service. I'm familiar or rather was with Mailjet many years ago, too.

Alternatively, I suppose you could be sneaky as an admin and set up daily summary emails up to cut down on waste. I haven't touched vBulletin since 2010, but at the time it had granular support for each individual subscribed thread. Whereas IP.Board from a few years earlier had the ability to send out "instant" emails for all replies in a thread. That's about all I remember, unfortunately.

And as I finish this post up I did look up sendgrid and found their pricing really good, unless there's someone else who offers more for less. I'm more familiar with their parent company, though. Mailjet seems to have multi in one pricing, in other words whatever your use case is, you pay X amount and get X emails per month. Though for now I don't think it matters much. I'm considering building up a blog and then introducing a forum later so as not to eat the cost of a forum if it doesn't take off.

Jim McClain said:

I have trouble keeping my email from being bounced from any Microsoft email address (Hotmail, Live, MSN, Outlook, etc.). I can get them cleared, but it doesn't take long for them to start bouncing again. I gave up even trying about a year ago.

I send no newsletters, no spam and have not experienced a server breach. I have sent mass emails only a few times when I have had a contest or made a server move/upgrade to warn users of a prolonged outage (more than 3 hours). Otherwise, it's only email notifications being sent by my forum and any personal email I send to friends and family, which is pretty infrequent since the advent of texting.

Any suggestions?

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If it makes you feel better, I get locked out of my Outlook account almost every other month or when I haven't signed in for a while. It's verified to one of my cell phones as well. Microsoft has always had this issue with bouncing emails. In fact I remember Hotmail being problematic all the time and many boards I've signed up for over the years have disallowed anything by Microsoft. I have no idea what they're doing in Redmond, but it isn't right and they've never been able to fix it. I have two contacts at Microsoft who don't use their own email service for their personal use. That should speak volumes about the quality as they're very high up on the food chain there.

Gmail isn't a problem. Never has been. Google even offers tools to help webmins get their emails through. I know this doesn't help you at all, Jim, but hopefully it gives you insight that it isn't something you're doing wrong, but rather Microsoft being that kid who licked glue.

Jim McClain said:

I have a dedicated server (KnownHost) for several domains, each using their own IP and cPanel. Email flows back and forth pretty evenly, with no real problems I am aware of. However, with this server and just about every other server, shared, VPS and dedicated, I've used in the last 10 years, I have trouble keeping my email from being bounced from any Microsoft email address (Hotmail, Live, MSN, Outlook, etc.). I can get them cleared, but it doesn't take long for them to start bouncing again. I gave up even trying about a year ago.

I send no newsletters, no spam and have not experienced a server breach. I have sent mass emails only a few times when I have had a contest or made a server move/upgrade to warn users of a prolonged outage (more than 3 hours). Otherwise, it's only email notifications being sent by my forum and any personal email I send to friends and family, which is pretty infrequent since the advent of texting.

Any suggestions?

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For sure the most frustrating, and anybody who uses microsoft as their email provider (like isp's) has the same issue!

This page: https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/pm/troubleshooting.aspx

There is a link for JMRP

Its a drawn out process but you can say you own the ip, and you are responsible for it. It helps build a reputation (sometimes).

https://www.sparkpost.com/pricing/ sparkpost is another

Respect for postmarkapp's https://status.postmarkapp.com/ status page showing deliver ability and latency to delivery.

I also use their dmarc app from postmarkapp (thats a mouth full) to make sure spf and dkim is correct: https://dmarc.postmarkapp.com/ you get an email on mondays saying how many emails and their results.

I used to use mdaemon (windows app) for sending email but found it limited.

After a bit of research i switched to mailcow.email and have not turned back. I also considered mailinabox too.. but went with mailcow.

Get some nice graphs from rspamd


A little bit of learning into the docker environment no harm there.

Tried setting up self-hosted email before, didn't go very well.. Plus there's free services like Mailgun with amazing email delivery so I don't see why I have to make things harder for myself. ‍

bilbo baggins said:

Tried setting up self-hosted email before, didn't go very well.. Plus there's free services like Mailgun with amazing email delivery so I don't see why I have to make things harder for myself. ‍

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+1. For my servers I properly configure outbound mail delivery so it doesn't end up in spam boxes - even wrote a guide for my Centmin Mod LEMP stack users https://community.centminmod.com/th...ver-email-doesnt-end-up-in-spam-inboxes.6999/ or if needed setup postfix relay to Amazon SES 3rd party smtp servers if you want to protect your server's origin IP address (i.e. behind cloudflare). But for inbound email, I just use zoho and google apps for @owndomain emails.

I could setup self-hosted i.e. mailcow, but I have better use of my time than to manage email related tasks like anti-spam, anti-virus and ensuring uptime/availability and monitoring email blacklists etc. Think about it apart from your site data, email uptime and availability are crucial as email is linked to alot of services surrounding your domains i.e. domain registrars, web hosting, advertising/affiliate accounts, uptime monitoring services, social media/forum accounts etc. Instead, Google apps and you're done

eva2000 said:

+1. For my servers I properly configure outbound mail delivery so it doesn't end up in spam boxes - even wrote a guide for my Centmin Mod LEMP stack users https://community.centminmod.com/th...ver-email-doesnt-end-up-in-spam-inboxes.6999/ or if needed setup postfix relay to Amazon SES 3rd party smtp servers if you want to protect your server's origin IP address (i.e. behind cloudflare). But for inbound email, I just use zoho and google apps for @owndomain emails.

I could setup self-hosted i.e. mailcow, but I have better use of my time than to manage email related tasks like anti-spam, anti-virus and ensuring uptime/availability and monitoring email blacklists etc. Think about it apart from your site data, email uptime and availability are crucial as email is linked to alot of services surrounding your domains i.e. domain registrars, web hosting, advertising/affiliate accounts, uptime monitoring services, social media/forum accounts etc. Instead, Google apps and you're done

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I'm going to say updating mailcow is very easy. It's update.sh twice and your done.

Backups? Backup all and your done.

Ses emails are marked as spam.

Using external providers is good if it works but can become quite expensive. Also you have 0 control if they don't deliver on time or decide to terminate your contract