Transactional emails ses, mxroute, mailchimp or self hosting?

raza19

I have in the past setup mail servers multiple times with dkim, spf, the whole shebang on vps.

This time for an ecommerce magento store I need to do the same but I am wondering if I should use an external service for it. Maintaining a mail server that ensures high deliverability is a pain & I am no expert. Sometimes when I read @jarland using multiple methods to ensure high deliverability it seems like a lot of work with a huge learning curve.

This ecommerce store I am setting up will have an extremely low email throughput but at times of high engagement via ad/social media camapigns the numbers can spike & I dont want to loose out on customers just bcoz emails go to spam or worse are rejected straight away during those peaks.

What are your thoughts on the matter ? I have a plethora of idling vps that I can setup as smtp relays but I fear the host deadpooling or worse changing my ip without notice only to get stuck in a blacklist. If self hosting is not the way to go then which service should I opt for keeping in view possible sudden spikes in email that need instant delivery(think email/username verifications) & cannot be cron-ed for later while having fewer than 10k emails a month I guess.

Any input is welcome.

MikeA

Honestly if it's for ecommerce and you need guaranteed delivery I'd feel the safest sticking with SES for outgoing/transactional mail. It's super cheap anyway.

I've been running Mailcow hosted on a VPS (for mailboxes and incoming mail) for my business with SES for all automated outgoing and it's been flawless, and saves money (plus mail isn't stored on an external provider). I'd not setup mail relays on random VPS personally. There's just better options that are the same price if not cheaper.

Setsura

Mxroute seems to have pretty good delivery as far as I've seen, and can get pretty cheap if you wait for a Black Friday deal or whatever. I guess the only issue is there's some sort of 300 emails per hour limit outbound which might not be enough if you have a big spike in orders or something, though apparently that's per email address. I guess in theory you can make more than one email address, however I think that's against their TOS to do solely to evade that limit, I'm not sure if maybe @jar allows exceptions to that if it's for legitimate use or not.

tototo

@Setsura said:
I guess the only issue is there's some sort of 300 emails per hour limit outbound which might not be enough if you have a big spike in orders or something, though apparently that's per email address. I guess in theory you can make more than one email address, however I think that's against their TOS to do solely to evade that limit, I'm not sure if maybe @jar allows exceptions to that if it's for legitimate use or not.

From spring offer thread:

@jar said: 300 Outbound emails per hour, per email address. It is not allowed for you to create additional addresses purely to go over the limit, it is allowed for you to break up your use cases by different emails and have them each with their own limit (ex. password reset and registration emails could each have 300 per hour limits).

caracal

Consider mail.baby as well for outbound smtp by @interservermike

Levi

Mxroute is not transactional email provider. Discussed many times.

Amazon ses had unbeatable value while free tier was generous. Now, mail.baby is the way to go. Infra similar to jars (delivery servers rotate to achieve maximum deliverability) and price is ok.

danninov

Another cheap alternative for email transaction: Zoho ZeptoMail https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail/pricing.html

You can buy credit that valid for 6 months.

xTom

We use both Postmark and Sparkpost, which are excellent services.

jar

@LTniger said:
Mxroute is not transactional email provider.

And I continue to dispute this.

MXroute does not have an interface that is commonly expected from a transactional provider, but is perfectly suited to and is most commonly used for just that case. If I were to remove all customers who happily use us for transactional email, I could drop our outbound relays to 2 IPs.

tmepy

SES would be the best choice for transactional emails. It's the cheapest and the best option available in the entire market. Deliverability is great as well. Been using it for ~8 months with no issues whatsoever. Only thing is, you have to be careful and monitor your dashboard to see if there are any fails in email deliverability as amazon takes this very seriously and, if your emails bounce too much, you will be removed.

FatGrizzly

@jar said:

@LTniger said:
Mxroute is not transactional email provider.

And I continue to dispute this.

MXroute does not have an interface that is commonly expected from a transactional provider, but is perfectly suited to and is most commonly used for just that case. If I were to remove all customers who happily use us for transactional email, I could drop our outbound relays to 2 IPs.

Fair, but 300 emails per hour kind of limits the feature of transactional email provider. Otherwise, MXR is a perfect choice.

though, at this situation, I would shill for mail.baby
Rock solid service

jar

@FatGrizzly said:

@jar said:

@LTniger said:
Mxroute is not transactional email provider.

And I continue to dispute this.

MXroute does not have an interface that is commonly expected from a transactional provider, but is perfectly suited to and is most commonly used for just that case. If I were to remove all customers who happily use us for transactional email, I could drop our outbound relays to 2 IPs.

Fair, but 300 emails per hour kind of limits the feature of transactional email provider. Otherwise, MXR is a perfect choice.

though, at this situation, I would shill for mail.baby
Rock solid service

Some things are negotiable for influencers, large corporations, etc. Customers who start with us while they’re young and grow organically into great senders are also first in line for limit removals.

It’s the first time I’ve shared that publicly, but the list of transactional senders that have had their sending limits lifted is too significant for me to pretend it’s not part of how I do business.

HostEONS

I just let the experts handle mail delivery, so I prefer to use third party for mails, been using SendGrid for over 5 yrs now and never faced issues with mail delivery so far.

raza19

@jar said:

@FatGrizzly said:

@jar said:

@LTniger said:
Mxroute is not transactional email provider.

And I continue to dispute this.

MXroute does not have an interface that is commonly expected from a transactional provider, but is perfectly suited to and is most commonly used for just that case. If I were to remove all customers who happily use us for transactional email, I could drop our outbound relays to 2 IPs.

Fair, but 300 emails per hour kind of limits the feature of transactional email provider. Otherwise, MXR is a perfect choice.

though, at this situation, I would shill for mail.baby
Rock solid service

Some things are negotiable for influencers, large corporations, etc. Customers who start with us while they’re young and grow organically into great senders are also first in line for limit removals.

It’s the first time I’ve shared that publicly, but the list of transactional senders that have had their sending limits lifted is too significant for me to pretend it’s not part of how I do business.

This kind of seals the deal for me. Frankly, I think we will get maybe less than 300 emails in a day but right now we are trying to get few influencers on insta & tiktok to endorse products on the store in special videos. Some of them have millions of followers. I dont want to miss out on the probable avalanche of customers and orders such a deal cud produce just bcoz of hourly limits.

Also @jar in order to request removal of these limits wud I need to get a specific package from mxroute or cud I get any of the upcoming BF specials ?

jar

@raza19 said:

@jar said:

@FatGrizzly said:

@jar said:

@LTniger said:
Mxroute is not transactional email provider.

And I continue to dispute this.

MXroute does not have an interface that is commonly expected from a transactional provider, but is perfectly suited to and is most commonly used for just that case. If I were to remove all customers who happily use us for transactional email, I could drop our outbound relays to 2 IPs.

Fair, but 300 emails per hour kind of limits the feature of transactional email provider. Otherwise, MXR is a perfect choice.

though, at this situation, I would shill for mail.baby
Rock solid service

Some things are negotiable for influencers, large corporations, etc. Customers who start with us while they’re young and grow organically into great senders are also first in line for limit removals.

It’s the first time I’ve shared that publicly, but the list of transactional senders that have had their sending limits lifted is too significant for me to pretend it’s not part of how I do business.

This kind of seals the deal for me. Frankly, I think we will get maybe less than 300 emails in a day but right now we are trying to get few influencers on insta & tiktok to endorse products on the store in special videos. Some of them have millions of followers. I dont want to miss out on the probable avalanche of customers and orders such a deal cud produce just bcoz of hourly limits.

Also @jar in order to request removal of these limits wud I need to get a specific package from mxroute or cud I get any of the upcoming BF specials ?

I wouldn’t care what package a user was on. Someone who grows organically while sending emails to people that are expecting to receive them is actually a net positive to IP reputation. That of course means it helps me to better provide the outbound delivery that I consider to be my strongest service.

FatGrizzly

@HostEONS said:
I just let the experts handle mail delivery, so I prefer to use third party for mails, been using SendGrid for over 5 yrs now and never faced issues with mail delivery so far.

jarAnger incoming!

Levi

@jar said: And I continue to dispute this.

How about bounce management? Transactional email providers usually have some sort of hook system where you can trigger receiver ban on bounce to avoid same incident in the future.

I don't say that your services can't be used for transactional email. Hell, you can eat soup with a fork, not a spoon.

Main concerns for me to use MXr for transactional emails:

• Small limit (but if this can be lifted, modified or burstable - it is ok);
• Easy email log parsing. This is very important when debugging bounces. For example mailgun has very nice interface for mail logs. I read them like news papper in the morning. Also I can dump it via API. DirectAdmin email logging is here, but it is disgusting ant strain to the eyes (can it be dumped via API, wonder);
• "Intended for human consumption" Policy giving me doubts that I can send my Zabbix error messages, which could burst up to 200/hour giving severity of outage;

Jar, please for Gods sake, add normal service description, policy line where it clearly says - contact for more info about transactional email service, pricing and integration.

If you ever create "mailgun" like service - I would be first pre-alpha tester. And pay 0.15 per 1000 emails.

nocloud

@jar do you have a plan for Black Friday, mxroute offers? or will it be a on the day type of thing?

jar

@nocloud said:
@jar do you have a plan for Black Friday, mxroute offers? or will it be a on the day type of thing?

I’ll very likely know what I’m doing about 30 minutes before I do it 🤣

It sounds nutty but I’ve got a few things in the air and a lot depends on how they settle between now and then.

bermudi

@LTniger said: can it be dumped via API, wonder

Essentially, anything you can do normally in a browser, you can also do with the API. Just swap CMD_name to CMD_API_name (replace "name" with whatever the browser had), and use the same variables as the browser does running directadmin in debug mode )

source: https://docs.directadmin.com/directadmin/customizing-workflow/api-all-about.html

tsoft

@LTniger said:
If you ever create "mailgun" like service

I had to write own mailgun like service. I am not a provider, but high volume sender.
Only this way were able to intercept full delivery route and achieve green reputation.

Used everything, mailgun, sparkpost, mandrill (till closure), ses.
Last time paid invoices of upper xxxx$ to sendgrid

But was not satisfied with the quality. Even got a dedicated manager. The only good stuff was, they provided actual inbox placement stats (they paid google, m$ for that, as I understand, but then stop providing these reports).

Not ideal yet, but only on own service achieved +/- stable green reputation.
This one on @speedypage

One of ips, 100 from 100

tsoft

PS the same on other proviers (linode, hetz, etc - use dozens providers).
Personally really like @speedypage
other people I suggested it, also liked.

Also @kuroit is good, others on this forum are so-so , but suitable.
reliable site is good, saw good delivery, but no vps

abangnoob

i used mailjet and alibaba directmail, so far so good