One of the things I don’t really want to self host is a mail server, especially for outbound mail. Currently I’m using a Gmail account, but I want to change that.
What do you all use for things like notifications sent through smtp?
I’m leaning towards AWS SES since it’s cheap, but I know there are some other options like mailgun and sendgrid.
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I’m also on gmail. Haven’t had any issues with it, no real desire to change.
There’s a proton bridge docker container out there that I’m planning to standup this weekend for SMTP use inside my home lab.
I’ve read about SMTP tokens for certain protonmail accounts yesterday. Seems to be for select business accounts + visionary accounts only (, yet, @protonmail?). Would this make the bridge obsolete (for sending)?
Yeah, if that rolls out to more account types, you would no longer need the bridge for sending.
I’d be interested in hearing how that goes. I don’t currently use protonmail, but need to look at it again sometime.
Well, got it done. I was going to write something up about this process, but it ended up being really straightforward. I’m running it in k3s and the worst part was waiting for the initial sync.
Now, something about the SMTP traffic my router sends (trying to send notifications from a Mikrotik) makes the smtp implementation mad, but all my other clients were fine.
I am using PostmarkApp. It works for me and I don’t have to worry about outbound messages.
I pay a mail provider $7/year to host all of my hobby / private mail.
Which mail provider do you use?
Another vote for smtp2go - free plan allows up to 1000 emails per month.
I use SMTP2Go for a verity of things. It’s simple and pretty configurable. If you are using it, I recommend setting up a subdomain specifically for sending mail, that way you can isolate SPF/DKIM records from your primary domain.
Had issues at scale with Mailgun, moved to Sendinblue (now Brevo) and all sorted. Mailgun’s support might as well be non-existent, took them nearly two weeks to address my issue, at which point I’d already jumped ship.
Sendgrid has a free plan, I know, but I believe you’re limited on the number of emails you can send per day.
I think it’s 100/day
Thanks, I believe you are correct.
Mailjet is working great for me.
I don’t think I’ve looked at mailjet yet, thanks! The free plan looks better than sendgrid’s free plan so far
MXroute. First, because Jar is stupid (hope someone will get the reference). Second, because they are awesome and cheap at the same time. You can go from full-fledged hosting with them to using them as relay, and for pizza money for a year.
Are you using mxroute only for outbound (notifications/etc) mail, or are you using it for all of your incoming e-mail too?
In some cases outbound only, in other cases inbound, too, with redirect somewhere else. I’m not using them to store emails right now.
SendGrid hasn’t failed me yet. I can’t speak on pricing though, I basically only use it for password resets on some self hosted services so the free tier is all I need.
If you want free options, I often use MailEnable and hMailServer in lab environments. Also a free Azure developer trial includes some M365 licenses, and it pretty much always auto-renews every 90 days (I’ve had a few tenants going for YEARS now)
Oh man, I have enough bad memories from MailEnable :D
That’s a good tip about the 365 license though, I didn’t know it could renew for free. I might try it just to learn more about azure.
I’m using mailgun and have had zero issues with it. Hard to beat since it’s free.
I might be missing something, but isn’t mailgun only free for the first month? It looked like their cheapest plan is $35/mo after the 30day trial.
You know I think you’re right. I might be grandfathered into an old plan. I’ve been using mailgun for over 3 years
Been using a zoho free account and their smtp servers . Used it for lemmy notifications
I also thought about using AWE SES, but I decided not to use it, since I was “sandboxed”(See more here).
I decided to use MXRoute, which have worked great for me so far. It is more expensive(50$ per year), than purelymail and Migadu, but for me reliabillity is very important, so I don’t mind paying a bit extra for it.
$50/yr isn’t too terrible if it’s good. Do you use it only for outgoing notification type e-mails or do you use it as your main email too?
AmazonSES and SMTP2Go are both awesome.
Thanks for mentioning SMTP2Go. It’s another I haven’t looked at yet, but looks like 1,000 e-mails/mo in the free plan isn’t bad.
Of course. The only thing I don’t like about it is the free plan only allows 5 domains.
