Hi,

I hope this is the right place to ask, even if this group seems rather
quiet recently (I never posted here before, but I browsed it before
posting).

I've been running an email service for my domain for the last 25 years,
and I have to admit -- I have enough. I have everything configured, SPF,
DKIM, TLS (with free Let's Encrypt certificates), my email server
reputation, according to some online tools, is great, I never sent any
spam, but my outgoing emails seem to be blacklisted (not rejected /
bounced, just dropped) on some large servers based on who knows what.

It got to a point where I send an email and have to call the person if
they received it (and they often don't).

I run the server (Postfix) on a cheap VPS, which might be the issue. But
the IP is mine only, and has been mine for several years before.

I have enough. I'm looking for a commercial SMTP relay. I want to keep
incoming email on my server, but relay outgoing mail somewhere else.

It has to support wildcards, as I don't use a single email address (I
create an alias per-usage, to track and fight spam).

Basically some SMTP server that will let me authorize and send emails as
any user from my personal domain.

I've been looking through such services, but they all seem to be aimed at supporting mailing lists, mailing campaigns, transactional emails, etc. I
don't run anything like that. Just a low-volume, personal email service
used only by me.

Is there anything you could recommend that's reasonably cheap and will
make me forget about problems with deliverability?

Thanks in advance.

--
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one.

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Arnold Ziffel <[email protected]d> wrote:

Is there anything you could recommend that's reasonably cheap and will
make me forget about problems with deliverability?

My ISP (Telstra, in Australia) used to allow sending mail through
their SMTP server (smtp.telstra.com) from their IP addresses. It
suddenly stopped working a year or two ago, now requiring an
account log-in (I'm not sure if it only now accepts mail "From:"
your Telstra account email address). Anyway before that it worked
as an alternative for when servers randomly blocked my mail server,
without needing to change the "From:" address (I added their server
to the SPF record). Optus in Australia also had an open SMTP server
which worked the same when I was with them (or actually a reseller).
Of course since it only worked from the ISP's own IPs, it might not
be suitable if you use different ISPs for home internet and mobile
data with a smartphone, or send mail from a work computer. But it
depends how your ISP has it set up. Worth checking anyway since
for me there was no extra cost for using it.

Otherwise, Migadu is an email provider I've heard mentioned a few
times recently, but I've never tried them:

https://www.migadu.com/

Their Micro plan is $19/year. I'm not sure how that compares to
others.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

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On 16/7/25 10:24, Arnold Ziffel wrote:

Hi,

I hope this is the right place to ask, even if this group seems rather
quiet recently (I never posted here before, but I browsed it before
posting).

I've been running an email service for my domain for the last 25 years,
and I have to admit -- I have enough. I have everything configured, SPF, DKIM, TLS (with free Let's Encrypt certificates), my email server
reputation, according to some online tools, is great, I never sent any
spam, but my outgoing emails seem to be blacklisted (not rejected /
bounced, just dropped) on some large servers based on who knows what.

It got to a point where I send an email and have to call the person if
they received it (and they often don't).

I run the server (Postfix) on a cheap VPS, which might be the issue. But
the IP is mine only, and has been mine for several years before.

I have enough. I'm looking for a commercial SMTP relay. I want to keep incoming email on my server, but relay outgoing mail somewhere else.

It has to support wildcards, as I don't use a single email address (I
create an alias per-usage, to track and fight spam).

Basically some SMTP server that will let me authorize and send emails as
any user from my personal domain.

I've been looking through such services, but they all seem to be aimed at supporting mailing lists, mailing campaigns, transactional emails, etc. I don't run anything like that. Just a low-volume, personal email service
used only by me.

Is there anything you could recommend that's reasonably cheap and will
make me forget about problems with deliverability?

Thanks in advance.

For my home system, due to my RSP (TPG) being bloody useless at email, I created free accounts with various SMTP providers - smtp2go, sendgrid,
and so on - evaluated them, and ended up with smtp2go.

We've not yet hit near the 1000/month limit, and if we did I'd have no
problem paying for it, they appear to take their reputation seriously.

Setting up authentication with Postfix is pretty easy, then I had to
look into transport maps because I use various domains for various
things (it's not like I'm the ACM! ;-) ), and use the correct relay in relation to the "From" address, and I've not had an email go astray since.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

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On 16.07.2025 00:24 Uhr Arnold Ziffel wrote:

I run the server (Postfix) on a cheap VPS, which might be the issue.
But the IP is mine only, and has been mine for several years before.

Rent a server in an AS where almost no spammers are. Use https://www.uceprotect.net/de/rblcheck.php
and check the ASN.
I use AS8820 (I dunno if they serve non-German customers) and can
deliver properly to Google, GMX etc.

Is there anything you could recommend that's reasonably cheap and
will make me forget about problems with deliverability?

All of those have the problem that spammers can also use them and they
often don't care.. E.g. sendgrid is such a service.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to [email protected]

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Gary R. Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:

For my home system, due to my RSP (TPG) being bloody useless at email, I created free accounts with various SMTP providers - smtp2go, sendgrid,
and so on - evaluated them, and ended up with smtp2go.

Thanks Gary, smtp2go was one service I consider(ed).

Setting up authentication with Postfix is pretty easy, then I had to
look into transport maps because I use various domains for various
things (it's not like I'm the ACM! ;-) ), and use the correct relay in relation to the "From" address, and I've not had an email go astray since.

I see. I have one domain with multiple aliases, will it be OK to just
forward everything to their relay, without creating each alias there?

Actually I might even disable relaying in my Postfix and switch my MUA to
use their relay directly... this way, my Postfix would be used for
incoming mail only.

--
Reality precedes perception.
Except, of course, in southern California.

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Marco Moock <[email protected]> wrote:

Rent a server in an AS where almost no spammers are. Use https://www.uceprotect.net/de/rblcheck.php
and check the ASN.

That's my case now. IP is 176.56.237.216, so AS is 198203.

https://www.uceprotect.net/en/rblcheck.php?asn=198203

Not listed anywhere.

--
A dog is a dog except when he is facing you. Then he is Mr. Dog.

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On 18/7/25 04:53, Arnold Ziffel wrote:

Gary R. Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:

For my home system, due to my RSP (TPG) being bloody useless at email, I
created free accounts with various SMTP providers - smtp2go, sendgrid,
and so on - evaluated them, and ended up with smtp2go.

Thanks Gary, smtp2go was one service I consider(ed).

Setting up authentication with Postfix is pretty easy, then I had to
look into transport maps because I use various domains for various
things (it's not like I'm the ACM! ;-) ), and use the correct relay in
relation to the "From" address, and I've not had an email go astray since.

I see. I have one domain with multiple aliases, will it be OK to just
forward everything to their relay, without creating each alias there?

What do you mean by "aliases" in this context?

Do you mean that /etc/aliases has a bunch of "xyz: arnold" lines, or
that you have multiple domains or sub-domains mapped to a single domain?

If it's aliases, that'll be fine, if you're playing with domain-mapping,
go join the postfix mailing lists, that's the deep magic. :-)

Actually I might even disable relaying in my Postfix and switch my MUA to
use their relay directly... this way, my Postfix would be used for
incoming mail only.

That's a way to do it.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

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Gary R. Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:

What do you mean by "aliases" in this context?

Do you mean that /etc/aliases has a bunch of "xyz: arnold" lines, or
that you have multiple domains or sub-domains mapped to a single domain?

The former. When I communicate with some business or something, I create
a dedicated alias in /etc/aliases on my server (that's now both incoming
one, the MX, and outgoing one, and I want it to be only the incoming one)
and send email from it, so if I receive spam later, I know who's to blame
(and can easily remove an alias). I'd like to avoid having to create it
also on the outgoing server -- I'd like it to accept everything from my
domain.

--
What people say behind your back is your standing in the community.

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On 18/7/25 16:01, Arnold Ziffel wrote:

Gary R. Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:

What do you mean by "aliases" in this context?

Do you mean that /etc/aliases has a bunch of "xyz: arnold" lines, or
that you have multiple domains or sub-domains mapped to a single domain?

The former. When I communicate with some business or something, I create
a dedicated alias in /etc/aliases on my server (that's now both incoming
one, the MX, and outgoing one, and I want it to be only the incoming one)
and send email from it, so if I receive spam later, I know who's to blame (and can easily remove an alias). I'd like to avoid having to create it
also on the outgoing server -- I'd like it to accept everything from my domain.

That's what mine does, receives mail to
defined-names-and-aliases@mydomain, and sends mail from *@mydomain, all
I do is add an alias and run newaliases when necessary.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

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Gary R. Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:

That's what mine does, receives mail to
defined-names-and-aliases@mydomain, and sends mail from *@mydomain, all
I do is add an alias and run newaliases when necessary.

Sounds perfect :)

I'll take a closer look at smtp2go.

Thanks Gary :)

--
The lawyer's credo: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle
'em with bullshit.

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In article <[email protected]d>,
Arnold Ziffel <[email protected]d> wrote:

That's my case now. IP is 176.56.237.216, so AS is 198203.

https://www.uceprotect.net/en/rblcheck.php?asn=198203

Not listed anywhere.

What's the IP address of the SMTP server which sent your message to
/dev/null?

John
[email protected]

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John D Groenveld <[email protected]> wrote:

That's my case now. IP is 176.56.237.216, so AS is 198203.

https://www.uceprotect.net/en/rblcheck.php?asn=198203

Not listed anywhere.

What's the IP address of the SMTP server which sent your message to /dev/null?

One example: 188.165.36.237 (mx1.mail.ovh.net).

Another: gmail (but only for some recipients).

--
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he
knows absolutely everything about nothing.

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