SMTP relay services are crucial for high deliverability and security for bulk email campaigns. While it can be complex to set up on your own, there are a few services that can make this much easier. Below are some of the best SMTP relay services on the market today, with details on their features and […]
What is an SMTP Relay?
SMTP relays make bulk delivery much more reliable, but configuration and complexity can make setup difficult. Below, we’ll explain what an SMTP relay is, how it works, and how you can quickly set one up for yourself. An SMTP relay is a service that helps send emails from one server to another. It acts as […]
What is an SMTP Server?
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is the standard communication method for sending email over the Internet. This protocol allows email servers and clients to exchange messages securely and efficiently. It serves as the foundation of how emails are routed from sender to recipient. Without SMTP, email transmission as we know it wouldn’t […]
The Best Free SMTP Servers
Looking to start your email campaign, but are on a budget? Below are some of the best free SMTP servers that allow you to send completely for free, and grow into your email budget. 1. MailerSend MailerSend is a standout free SMTP server thanks to its simplicity, robust features, and focus on providing value even […]
The Best SMTP Servers for Email Marketing
Dedicated SMTP servers help email marketers take control of their deliverability and email reputation. However, finding the right SMTP server with the pricing and features you need can be a challenge. Below are the top ten SMTP servers for email marketing we’ve found to be the best. The Best SMTP Servers for Email Marketing 1. […]
The Best SMTP Servers
Owning your own SMTP server can help improve your deliverability, sender reputation, and security. However, picking the right one can be challenging. Below are some of the best SMTP servers we’ve tested. The Best SMTP Servers 1. MailerSend MailerSend is a standout SMTP server choice because of its developer-friendly design and robust email infrastructure. With […]
Buying an SMTP Server? Here’s Everything You Need To Know
Whether you’re launching an email outreach campaign or managing a corporate email system, having your own SMTP gives you great flexibility and control over your deliverability and security. Below, we’ll break down everything you need to know when looking to buy an SMTP server and touch on some of the best solutions available today. What […]
The Best Email Encryption Services
Emails are one of the secure ways to communicate professionally. Yet, is it one hundred percent secure? No, at least not, unless and until you set up an email encryption system. There are high chances that any unauthorized person couldn’t access your mail without encryption. After all, you don’t want the whole world to see […]
The Best Email Security Software
Email is a common channel for cybercriminals to hack into a system because it was originally designed to be open and accessible to everyone. Of course, those were the nascent stages of the Internet when such sophisticated attacks were unheard of. But as the Internet grew, it became a popular vector for attacks as hackers began […]
Business Email Security Best Practices
Email is the most popular and preferred channel for business communication today. It is estimated that about 63% of business professionals prefer to use emails for their business communication, and each employee sends an average of 40 emails per day for business purposes. But there’s also a downside to this widespread usage, and that’s unauthorized […]
Clean up spam with Pine
Outlook is nice and all, particularly when dealing with, oh, 90 percent of the email clients out there. The same thing that makes it nice, also makes it insecure. Some of the email accounts we monitor have been quite public, and receive not only a lot of spam, but also a lot of viruses. If […]
Avoid Unwanted Email
The opportunists who send unsolicited bulk email (UBE) use tools that do not follow standards. This can work to an advantage in that improper configuration can allow quite a bit of filtering to be done on inbound email. For instance, the following entries in main.cf for postfix will dramatically cut down on email from misconfigured […]
Masquerading with Sendmail
If you have a sendmail server that has a hostname that isn’t resolvable, you may need to masquerade as a different host. This is often the case if you are running sendmail on your internal workstation. We also ran into this while bringing up a Squirrel Mail web based mail system. Simply add these lines […]
Blue Security DDOS
There is an excellent discussion of the Blue Security DDOS attack here, including a copy of discussion from those behind the DDOS here. There is more information on Blue Frog and related issues on Wikipedia here. If you somehow missed this, it is probably in your best interest to be aware of what is going […]
Update those Sendmail DNS Blacklists
All of the DNS blacklists we used a couple years ago are defunct. There are, however, a slew of new DNS-based blacklists that can help protect your users from spam. Understand that with any blacklist there is a chance that legitimate email will be blocked. Balancing this against the cost and annoyance of spam is […]
Clearing Bad Messages Out of the Postfix Mail Queue
If you have bad messages in your Postfix mail queue, you can list them with the postqueue command: [root@svr-1 mail]# postqueue -p -Queue ID- –Size– —-Arrival Time—- -Sender/Recipient——- 4C63F2300BA 876 Mon Jun 5 09:31:54 user@somedomainsomewhere.com (connect to example.com[192.0.34.166]: Connection timed out) differentuser@example.com — 1 Kbytes in 1 Request. You will need the Queue Id to […]
Formmail abuse
Make sure that you are not running an old version of formmail.pl. Check your cgi-bin directory to make sure. Even though the fix for formmail has been out since last August, we are still getting scanned for this on our webservers. Old versions of formmail.pl can be used to send spam. For more info, check […]
Rejecting Email Based on Headers With Postfix
Postfix has the ability to reject mail based on regular expression matching in the header of the incoming mail message. To enable this, add these lines to main.cf: header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/header_checks header_checks = pcre:/etc/postfix/header_checks We stuck these after the alias line. Add the header content matches and actions to header_checks (usually in /etc/postfix) and restart […]
Reading winmail.dat Attachments
If you are using an email client besides Outlook (gasp!), you have most likely run into the attachment winmail.dat. Supposedly this can be prevented on the client side by sending mail in plain text; however, this doesn’t appear to work with attachments. We ran across a cool utility at Fentun that will extract attachments out […]
Tips on Running a Google Apps Pilot
When migrating from an internal email system to Google Apps, it’s nice to have the option of running a pilot program including a few of your users to try it out, and then to move the rest of the users over when problems with the transition have been identified and addressed. This is pretty easy […]
