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.
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.
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.
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 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.
MXroute. They had a Black Friday deal a while back, for $7/year email hosting. I think their BF page is here: https://mxroute.blackfriday/ if you want to keep an eye on it.
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 [email protected], not my main address, but lemmy still authenticates using my main address.
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)