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 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.
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’m also on gmail. Haven’t had any issues with it, no real desire to change.
I am using PostmarkApp. It works for me and I don’t have to worry about outbound messages.
Mailgun
This is a weird one. I have my instance in a database that blocks smtp and all it’s alternative and secure ports. Is there anyway for me to get smtp out of here? Id have to fiddle with Lemmy’s functions. I imagine an API or something. Anyone have experience with this?
Does your vps provider block outbound smtp to port 465/587? Usually providers only block port 25 outbound so that the vps can’t send mail directly to a server (and can’t host incoming mail). I haven’t seen many providers block smtp altogether.
If that’s the case though, services like sendgrid do offer http apis. I’m not sure if there’s any sort of smtp-to-http relay bridge, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is one. Otherwise Lemmy would have to support the specific api to send e-mails through.
I set up a smtp relay with gsuite for outgoing mail but don’t think it is ideal; it is tied to my user. It was just expedient rather than preferred.
Totally looking forward to the answers here.
That’s pretty much my concern as well. Most of my notifications (lemmy/etc) get sent from a gsuite account or a fastmail account. I don’t really want any automated e-mails being tied to my personal accounts like that.
With my one user gsuite I setup a secondary domain in it so lemmy sends from no-reply@lemmy.gregw.us, not my main address, but lemmy still authenticates using my main address.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I actually setup SES for my Lemmy instance. I was evaluating SendGrid but less than 24 hours after signing up they closed my account with zero explanation so…yeah lol.
I was sandboxed in SES initially but I created a support ticket asking for production access and I was good to go. No issues with SES thus far.
Lucky SES rejected my request lol
