Alternatives for outbound email service

[Tom Metro]

Rich Braun wrote:
> Lately I'd say 30% of my outbound messages are getting trapped by spam
> filters...

How have you determined that?


> The obvious alternative is to buy commercial-grade home ISP service,
> which is unnecessary...

It may be a small incremental cost, plus you'll probably find other
benefits to having a static IP. It'll offer maximum control, though
after hardware and electricity costs will probably end up being more
expensive than some of the other options.

The trick would be finding an ISP that lets you set PTR records. Many -
even with business class offerings - don't.


> ...now-failing DynDNS MailHop Outbound

I'm surprised to hear that, as I've had good experiences with their
other services, and they generally seem to be competent. Unless you
think the problem is beyond their control. Have you tried sending
yourself a message through their relay and examining it? Anything wrong
other than the issue you mentioned with the received lines? (Which I
doubt would explain a 30% rejection rate.)

There are certainly other mail relay services you could try. And many
hosting providers that offer it as a component of some hosting package.
Given that you don't really need any customization on the outbound side,
it shouldn't be hard to find a suitable provider.


Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> You need forward &  reverse dns entries that match.

True, though this is largely frowned upon as an anti-UCE measure, as it
will reject a lot of ham. The most significant user of this criteria
I've ran across is craigslist.


> You need a SPF record.

True. Missing SPF used to be a soft-fail, or failing SPF treated as one
of many factors, but it is relied on more these days. (I recently
experienced Yahoo Groups ignoring emails sent from a Gmail alias and
relayed through a non-Gmail SMTP relay to avoid Gmail's broken header
rewriting (see other message in this thread). Switched to a Gmail hosted
domain with a proper SPF record, and even though all servers were
identical, it worked.)

What happened to Yahoo's Domain Keys? Has that not been embraced?


> You need a valid signed TLS certificate.

For SMTP outbound? Why?


> You need to react promptly if you somehow get added to a blacklist.

Know of any automated services for monitoring that?

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/