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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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.
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.
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.
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 $35/mo after the 30day trial.
You know I think you’re right. I might be grandfathered into an old plan. I’ve been using mailgun for over 3 years
msmtp, I’m using purelymail for all my emails.
This is the first I’ve heard of purelymail. It looks really cheap. How do you like it so far? I’m using fastmail currently for most of my domains, but have been considering moving my incoming e-mail too.
Love it. Heard about it from HN some years ago and been using it since. The guy who runs it is super friendly and aswers mails quickly too. And yes, it’s super cheap, I’m using the “usage based” pricing or whatever it’s called.
I’m also on gmail. Haven’t had any issues with it, no real desire to change.
AmazonSES and SMTP2Go are both awesome.
Thanks for mentioning SMTP2Go. It’s another I haven’t looked at yet, but looks like 1,000 e-mails/mo in the free plan isn’t bad.
Of course. The only thing I don’t like about it is the free plan only allows 5 domains.
I also thought about using AWE SES, but I decided not to use it, since I was “sandboxed”(See more here).
I decided to use MXRoute, which have worked great for me so far. It is more expensive(50$ 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?
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’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’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.
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.
Following…
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 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
Oh weird, that sucks lol
Yeah seems like they are pretty strict on what you are doing, i assume not having a business on the account affects it too. Maybe depends on who you get to reply to your ticket as well lol
This is a weird one. I have my instance in a vps 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.
