Sending Bulk Mail - Own SMTP mail server on VPS vs 3rd Party Mail Service
One of the associations I'm in (besides LUV) have been experiencing difficulties sending bulk emails to members on a monthly basis (for announcements, newsletters purposes). This is because when you are trying to send bulk emails via your free web mail account (in this case, GMail), there is a limit imposed by Google (or any other webmail service providers) on the number of email addresses we can mail out to, within a period of time - and this limit can get ever stricter as time goes by. So the whole mailout process becomes unmanageable after a while. While the Ctte is looking into various alternatives, including several of the 3rd party mail services / transactional mail services in the market, I am offering them another option: Setup a SMTP mail server (e.g. Postfix) on a VPS hosted by a web hosting company, and handle the whole bulk mailout ourselves. I am willing to help them setting up a VPS, hardening the Linux, installing & configuring all the mail software, etc, and then take care of the regular maintenance. For VPS hosting service - I had looked at one hostwinds.com (Editor's Choice of au.pcmag.com 2017) (~ US$ 14 / mth). Will check out others to compare - basically I'm after a reasonably priced and reputable VPS web hosting company. I would like to hear any recommendation, or any first-hand experience dealing with any particular web hosting company - which I'm sure many of LUV members certainly have. For domain name (.org.au) - About $48 for 2 years. Any reputable Domain Registrar that you would recommend? For SSL Certificate - I can install one from Let's Encrypt, which will be free. Any major cost/charges that I have missed? I also intend to follow all the bulk mail best practices, SPF/DKIM settings, MX records, security measures, email etiquette, etc, to make sure that our organisation normal notification/newsletter to our members, would not be treated as SPAM. The 3rd party mail service providers that I had found so far: MailChimp, MailJet, Amazon-SES, SendGrid, MailGun (and many others). Did lots of google searches, trying to compare (Advantages & Disadvantages) between managing own SMTP mail server and using 3rd party mail services. The results were mix and varied. I myself certainly have much more faith in opting for a self-managed mail server solution over the commercial mail service ones. Some of the advantages: - Have full control over most aspect of the mailing process. More flexible. Not constraint by the ever-changing rules imposed by 3rd party mail services. - Using all free & open source software - have all the freedom, and can tap into the large FOSS Community out there for various kinds of help and support. - Cost-wise, the mail server option is generally on the lower end of the price spectrum, as compared to many of the 3rd party mail services in the market. - No doubt the own mail server option would involve more work, more time to manage the whole thing - but I'm quite happy to take up this challenge, and to learn a lot from this hands-on experience. I would be delighted if any of you who are experienced in managing a linux-based mail server can kindly share with us some more real-life examples and hands-on experiences - so that I can gather more solid evidence & cases, hopefully to strengthen my case for a self-managed mail server solution. Some points that I had read somewhere that I would like to quote below to seek your comment: "*What a commercial mailing list operator does, and which you cannot easily replicate, is build and maintain a reputation as a responsible and reputable source of bulk email. If you are not going to be getting into that, perhaps you could benefit from getting help from a commercial mailer. ... * *Abuse handling, bounce handling etc are important to get right, but until you have significant experience, your reputation is going to remain zero, if not negative (which is a reasonable starting point for unknown domains in this day and age). A lot of the reputation-based stuff like SPF, DKIM etc will help only if you have a reputation to defend. On the other hand, it does send the right signals to somebody who is deciding on whether or not a sender is to be treated as reputable (or rather, their absence is not a good sign; neither, in my book, is anything to suggest you are using homegrown and/or prerelease software to send email). *..." I also read somewhere which seemed to point to a 3rd option: Still use own mail server, but direct the outbound mails to an external Mail Relay service. What do you think? When this whole project (if accepted by my Ctte) is done and implemented successfully, I intend to share my experience in this whole process, in one of LUV talks. In the mean time, I have a lot of work to do, and lots to learn ... Cheers, Wen
On Saturday, 23 September 2017 4:56:54 AM AEST Wen Lin via luv-main wrote:
For VPS hosting service - I had looked at one hostwinds.com (Editor's Choice of au.pcmag.com 2017) (~ US$ 14 / mth). Will check out others to compare - basically I'm after a reasonably priced and reputable VPS web hosting company. I would like to hear any recommendation, or any first-hand experience dealing with any particular web hosting company - which I'm sure many of LUV members certainly have.
https://www.linode.com/pricing To just send out mail you don't need much from a hosting company. I've found Linode to be very good and they have services starting at $5 per month that will do what you want. 1G of RAM should be enough for sending mail. https://www.scaleway.com/ Scaleway starts at E2.99 per month and has 2G of RAM.
For domain name (.org.au) - About $48 for 2 years. Any reputable Domain Registrar that you would recommend?
There are cheaper domains available, like .click.
"*What a commercial mailing list operator does, and which you cannot easily replicate, is build and maintain a reputation as a responsible and reputable source of bulk email. If you are not going to be getting into that, perhaps you could benefit from getting help from a commercial mailer. ... *
Don't send spam and don't use an IP address from a spam-friendly ISP and you should be OK.
I also read somewhere which seemed to point to a 3rd option: Still use own mail server, but direct the outbound mails to an external Mail Relay service. What do you think?
There's no point in that. Either run your own server or use an external company. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Hi For our VPS hosting needs in Australia we use Binary Lane. They're Australian owned as well, which I regard as an advantage (also in legal terms). Stuff just works and their support has been very prompt and technically competent. Linode is very good and we've used them for years, but they are American and thus directly subject to US legal leverage. Even if you used a Linode DC in Japan or Singapore, ultimately it would be open to US legal frivolities. This may not be a consideration for some needs, but I'm just putting it out there. Data sovereignty is a thing. Regards, Arjen.
Hi Russell, On 23 Sep. 2017 4:45 pm, "Russell Coker" <russell@coker.com.au> wrote: On Saturday, 23 September 2017 4:56:54 AM AEST Wen Lin via luv-main wrote:
For VPS hosting service - I had looked at one hostwinds.com (Editor's Choice of au.pcmag.com 2017) (~ US$ 14 / mth). Will check out others to compare - basically I'm after a reasonably priced and reputable VPS web hosting company. I would like to hear any recommendation, or any first-hand experience dealing with any particular web hosting company - which I'm sure many of LUV members certainly have.
https://www.linode.com/pricing To just send out mail you don't need much from a hosting company. I've found Linode to be very good and they have services starting at $5 per month that will do what you want. 1G of RAM should be enough for sending mail. https://www.scaleway.com/ Scaleway starts at E2.99 per month and has 2G of RAM.
For domain name (.org.au) - About $48 for 2 years. Any reputable Domain Registrar that you would recommend?
I will check out the above 2 web hosting companies you had introduced. There are cheaper domains available, like .click. They already got a .org.au domain registered some time ago. So I just need to find out where they had registered it, and then help renew it when it's about to expire. BTW, I thought I could use whois to find out the expiry date of this domain, but I noticed that the registrars in Australia (for the .au) seem to hide this date from the world. Apparently in Australia, the only way to find out this info is to contact the registrar directly. Whereas for some of the non-".au" domains, I could see the registration expiry date being displayed. May be it's some sort of security measure in Australia.
"*What a commercial mailing list operator does, and which you cannot easily replicate, is build and maintain a reputation as a responsible and reputable source of bulk email. If you are not going to be getting into that, perhaps you could benefit from getting help from a commercial mailer. ... *
Don't send spam and don't use an IP address from a spam-friendly ISP and you should be OK. Very true.
I also read somewhere which seemed to point to a 3rd option: Still use own mail server, but direct the outbound mails to an external Mail Relay service. What do you think?
There's no point in that. Either run your own server or use an external company. Thanks Russell for your input and advice. Cheers, Wen -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On 23/09/2017 4:56 AM, Wen Lin via luv-main wrote:
I also intend to follow all the bulk mail best practices, SPF/DKIM settings, MX records, security measures, email etiquette, etc, to make sure that our organisation normal notification/newsletter to our members, would not be treated as SPAM.
I use this docker container[1] to host a mail server on Binary Lane, batteries are included. It took me some fiddling to get it working but I took notes, happy to share them. [1]: https://github.com/tomav/docker-mailserver
I've had good service from Linode as a hosting provider. SPF, DKIM and DMARC took me quite a while to configure, attributable mostly to lack of experience. I need to revisit my spam problem, yet again. The current solution is still CRM114, which is keeping most of the spam at bay, but introducing too many false positives. I've tried rspamd in the past, as well as SpamAssassin, with worse results than CRM114 is currently giving. I've also successfully used Mailman on the server, but for a very low traffic mailing list.
I set up a VPS to use mailman to send out a newsletter for a community organisation. Ransom IT http://ransomit.com.au/ is my host. They are one of the cheaper options if you want your server to be located in Australia. I haven't noticed any problems, though sending a monthly newsletter doesn't take much resources. When I signed up their ToS had a clause about no bulk mail, however I contacted them and they said it was a no spam policy and they are OK with opt-in newsletters. It looks like they've since revised the ToS to make that clear. I use Gandi https://www.gandi.net/en for DNS. Reputable, low cost, supports two factor authentication, has an API if you ever want to automate anything. Let's Encrypt worked for me for HTTPS certificates. Mail Tester http://www.mail-tester.com/ was very useful when I was first checking to make sure I had all the anti-spam features set up correctly. It was my first time setting up a mail server. I found the Ars Technica guide extremely useful: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/how-to-run-your-own-e... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/taking-e-mail-back-pa... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/taking-e-mail-back-pa... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/taking-e-mail-back-pa... The guide is a few years old now, but AFAIK it is still worth reading. Email hasn't fundamentally changed in the last 3 years. I use mailman https://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html to manage mailing lists. It took a while to get it configured nicely, the default settings tend to mangle mail in a way that isn't compatible with modern anti-spam features. Cheers, Peter On 23 September 2017 at 04:56, Wen Lin via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
One of the associations I'm in (besides LUV) have been experiencing difficulties sending bulk emails to members on a monthly basis (for announcements, newsletters purposes). This is because when you are trying to send bulk emails via your free web mail account (in this case, GMail), there is a limit imposed by Google (or any other webmail service providers) on the number of email addresses we can mail out to, within a period of time - and this limit can get ever stricter as time goes by. So the whole mailout process becomes unmanageable after a while.
While the Ctte is looking into various alternatives, including several of the 3rd party mail services / transactional mail services in the market, I am offering them another option: Setup a SMTP mail server (e.g. Postfix) on a VPS hosted by a web hosting company, and handle the whole bulk mailout ourselves. I am willing to help them setting up a VPS, hardening the Linux, installing & configuring all the mail software, etc, and then take care of the regular maintenance.
For VPS hosting service - I had looked at one hostwinds.com (Editor's Choice of au.pcmag.com 2017) (~ US$ 14 / mth). Will check out others to compare - basically I'm after a reasonably priced and reputable VPS web hosting company. I would like to hear any recommendation, or any first-hand experience dealing with any particular web hosting company - which I'm sure many of LUV members certainly have.
For domain name (.org.au) - About $48 for 2 years. Any reputable Domain Registrar that you would recommend?
For SSL Certificate - I can install one from Let's Encrypt, which will be free.
Any major cost/charges that I have missed?
I also intend to follow all the bulk mail best practices, SPF/DKIM settings, MX records, security measures, email etiquette, etc, to make sure that our organisation normal notification/newsletter to our members, would not be treated as SPAM.
The 3rd party mail service providers that I had found so far: MailChimp, MailJet, Amazon-SES, SendGrid, MailGun (and many others).
Did lots of google searches, trying to compare (Advantages & Disadvantages) between managing own SMTP mail server and using 3rd party mail services. The results were mix and varied.
I myself certainly have much more faith in opting for a self-managed mail server solution over the commercial mail service ones.
Some of the advantages:
- Have full control over most aspect of the mailing process. More flexible. Not constraint by the ever-changing rules imposed by 3rd party mail services. - Using all free & open source software - have all the freedom, and can tap into the large FOSS Community out there for various kinds of help and support. - Cost-wise, the mail server option is generally on the lower end of the price spectrum, as compared to many of the 3rd party mail services in the market. - No doubt the own mail server option would involve more work, more time to manage the whole thing - but I'm quite happy to take up this challenge, and to learn a lot from this hands-on experience.
I would be delighted if any of you who are experienced in managing a linux-based mail server can kindly share with us some more real-life examples and hands-on experiences - so that I can gather more solid evidence & cases, hopefully to strengthen my case for a self-managed mail server solution.
Some points that I had read somewhere that I would like to quote below to seek your comment:
"*What a commercial mailing list operator does, and which you cannot easily replicate, is build and maintain a reputation as a responsible and reputable source of bulk email. If you are not going to be getting into that, perhaps you could benefit from getting help from a commercial mailer. ... *
*Abuse handling, bounce handling etc are important to get right, but until you have significant experience, your reputation is going to remain zero, if not negative (which is a reasonable starting point for unknown domains in this day and age). A lot of the reputation-based stuff like SPF, DKIM etc will help only if you have a reputation to defend. On the other hand, it does send the right signals to somebody who is deciding on whether or not a sender is to be treated as reputable (or rather, their absence is not a good sign; neither, in my book, is anything to suggest you are using homegrown and/or prerelease software to send email). *..."
I also read somewhere which seemed to point to a 3rd option: Still use own mail server, but direct the outbound mails to an external Mail Relay service. What do you think?
When this whole project (if accepted by my Ctte) is done and implemented successfully, I intend to share my experience in this whole process, in one of LUV talks.
In the mean time, I have a lot of work to do, and lots to learn ...
Cheers, Wen
_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au https://lists.luv.asn.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luv-main
-- Trapped in signature factory please send help
Hi Peter On 24 September 2017 3:03:59 pm AEST, Peter Hall via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
I use mailman https://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html to manage mailing lists. It took a while to get it configured nicely, the default settings tend to mangle mail in a way that isn't compatible with modern anti-spam features.
Do you have any docu on that? That'd be great. That's per list also, isn't it, so any new list would have to be set up in the right way again. Regards, Arjen.
Arjen Lentz via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
Do you have any docu on that? That'd be great.
Here's the official page: https://wiki.list.org/DEV/DMARC In my case, I turned off features of Mailman that modified the subject lines or bodies of outbound messages, thus preventing it from breaking DKIM signatures.
On Sunday, 24 September 2017 6:08:26 PM AEST Jason White via luv-main wrote:
Arjen Lentz via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
Do you have any docu on that? That'd be great.
Here's the official page: https://wiki.list.org/DEV/DMARC
In my case, I turned off features of Mailman that modified the subject lines or bodies of outbound messages, thus preventing it from breaking DKIM signatures.
https://doc.coker.com.au/internet/dkim-and-mailing-lists/ That doesn't work. Unless you can get everyone who sends to the list to use the "relaxed" option you will have Mailman header munging breaking thigns. Getting every sender to do things the way you desire isn't a viable option. Mailman also sometimes rewrites the body for a different encoding. I tried to get Mailman to pass signed messages through on this list, it wasn't possible. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
No doco, sorry. The list I run is a single sender announce list, so getting all senders to use the right options was practical for me. IIRC the main change was to get mailman to rewrite headers so that messages came from the list address. Trying to keep the original sender caused some problem that I never got to the bottom of. -- Trapped in signature factory please send help On 25 Sep. 2017 10:54 am, "Russell Coker via luv-main" <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
On Sunday, 24 September 2017 6:08:26 PM AEST Jason White via luv-main wrote:
Arjen Lentz via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
Do you have any docu on that? That'd be great.
Here's the official page: https://wiki.list.org/DEV/DMARC
In my case, I turned off features of Mailman that modified the subject lines or bodies of outbound messages, thus preventing it from breaking DKIM signatures.
https://doc.coker.com.au/internet/dkim-and-mailing-lists/
That doesn't work. Unless you can get everyone who sends to the list to use the "relaxed" option you will have Mailman header munging breaking thigns. Getting every sender to do things the way you desire isn't a viable option.
Mailman also sometimes rewrites the body for a different encoding.
I tried to get Mailman to pass signed messages through on this list, it wasn't possible.
-- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
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participants (6)
-
Arjen Lentz -
Darren Wurf -
Jason White -
Peter Hall -
Russell Coker -
Wen Lin