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SMTP AUTH and ODMR Providers for Personal SMTP Service?
no_such_user asks: "After a few years of successfully running a personal mail server at home via my residential cable modem, some organizations (i.e. AOL) and spam filters are now denying SMTP connections originating from residential/dynamic networks. Additionally, my ISP will likely block incoming SMTP traffic at some point. While I applaud these attempts to fight spam, I enjoy the freedom I have running my own mail server, and don't want to switch to a mail hosting provider using POP/IMAP/Webmail. What I need is a provider which does both ODMR (on-demand mail routing) and SMTP AUTH. Unfortunately, the only provider I've found is outside my country (US) and is more expensive than I was hoping for. Without switching to 'business class' internet service, what are my alternatives so that I can continue to run my own mail server without spending a fortune? I don't mind being subject to reasonable daily transfer limits or speed limits to prove I'm not out to spam anyone. Perhaps these is something like a DynDNS service for mail? Or perhaps someone provides permanent IP addresses which I can add to my server via VPN?"
But, back to the topic at hand: running one's own mail server (and, in my case, sinking one's own email). They let me do this, as a matter of course: it was a standard part of their AUP that I could run whatever server I wanted as long as it wasn't "abusive". In this context, this meant no open relay (well, duhhh!), and, of course, no high-traffic web sites. I had ssh, and smtp open.
I had no trouble with originating my own email -- of course, I had a static IP address out of the ISP's repertoire (no, they didn't charge extra for it -- these guys were cool: when I expressed concern that they'd go PPPoE, they mentioned, "our techs looked at it, saw it was disgusting, and rejected it". Naturally, I responded, "sign me up!").
Back in Canada, I find I can't get a static IP from any cable provider (surprise, surprise), and a static IP from the only decent DSL provider will run me around CA$100 a month. Of course, at that price, I can sink (and, within reason, serve), whatever I want.
I'm afraid you'll have to go with a business service.
You could've hired me.
Your problem is twofold:
(1) Sending email.
(2) Receiving email.
Part 1 is not a problem: You merely have to relay your outgoing email through your service provider's SMTP server. This is the way that you should your outbound email configured anyway, you're incorrectly configured if you're not passing mail upstream through your ISP.
ISPs that know what they're doing from a technical standpoint allow you to send mail through their servers with whatever "from" address you want - so long as you're within their network, they know who you are anyway and can still monitor spam attempts. I have Earthlink DSL and they let customers do this (they've allowed this since way back when I was a dial-up customer). For example, I can send outbound email through Earthlink's servers with the "from" field being my Yahoo or work email address. Of course, I can't do this outside their network (500 access denied messages up the whazoo) - when I'm at work and want to send mail "from" my Earthlink account, I use my work's SMTP server.
Part 2 is more tricky. If direct SMTP connections are disallowed to your home system, perhaps the trick would be to get it delivered to an external server that you can then poll every 10 minutes (or get it forwarded to the email address your ISP provided for you, then poll that?) There are a number of companies that can relay mail for you and forward it to another account from your domain - Yahoo being one of them.
Also: You mention DynDNS - Dns2go.com had a mail relay service at one point (I've not used their system since it went commercial) that may be exactly what you're looking for in terms of receiving mail.
Personally though, I like keeping my DSL connection free of automated transfers and manually pull mail from my ISP's POP servers, Yahoo's web mail (search for the "fetchyahoo" perl script) and Hotmail (search for "gotmail" script) to local mail storage. The last thing I'd want is for all that to be triggered and start downloading spam while I'm trying to play a game online.
Wow, what a coincidence, I've been researching the same topic recently.
Here are two providers that I've found so far:
Both of these providers seem to meet my needs and have reasonable pricing, under $20/year. There were some other business-class services out there that I ruled out due to $100+ monthly costs.
Half of the problems with destination mail domains not allowing SMTP to relay is that originating mail servers such as yours do not have AT LEAST an A Record registered in DNS.
Most mail servers today will not allow relay or send transmission if the destination mail server is not able to find an A/MX record on the originating mail server.
Also, SMTP is a protocol not an e-mail server like Sendmail/Exchange.
Dolemite
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Save the World! Use a Quote!
This is pretty much the problem that forced me to set up my first colo box, and wanting to save other folks the effort resulted in domainMX.net. I don't do ODMR, but I find that alternate port SMTP to a dynamic IP works pretty well, especially if you add SMTP AUTH (for *incoming*, ie I authenticate to you and requeue if I can't) to avoid the "my IP has been reassigned" problems.
As has been pointed out, many (most?) ISPs can handle your outgoing mail regardless of what sender address you use, but I do offer outgoing as well as long as you can use a sendmail-supported SMTP AUTH mechanism.
Oh, and at least one of my boxes is physically located in the US (Washington, DC). The others are in Canada (Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton).
- Scott