Announcement Further Improvements to the shared hosting platform.

[Matt]

For the past 18 months, I've been routing all outbound email from the shared hosting servers via Sendgrid, and their SMTP relay service. This has enabled the old IP's to remain clean, and prevent them from being black listed by the RBL lists.

I've just signed up for a new service, provided by Mailchannels. This is specifically aimed at ensuring the best delivery rate, along with the ability for me to identify abusers / spammers / compromised accounts etc, and maintain the integrity of the hosting platform.



I've initially switched CP1 over to this new service, and I've been monitoring and setting it up over the last 24 hours. So far, VERY impressed!

I've configured all the accounts with the correct SPF value where I have access to the DNS servers, so all the correct routing and authentication for the domains is in place.

This is an additional cost to myself, and it's not a cost I'm passing over to you, the customers. Hopefully, you will see a benefit from this, as email deliver-ability will be pretty consistent now.

The only issue I've found has been where in XF, you have a bounced email address configured, or the sending address ISN'T on the same domain (such as a hotmail or gmail account). The way the address is formatted causes the mail to be blocked by the receiving party (and would have been previously), but I wasn't aware of this until I had access to the additional reporting by this new service. I've fixed the XF installs that were set up like this.

I'm going to run with the single server on this for a month, and all being well, will migrate everything else over in the new year.

Any questions or issues, please let me know.

 

[viper357]

Sounds good, I assume this won't have any effect on those of us that use Amazon SES to send our emails?

 

[Matt]

Sounds good, I assume this won't have any effect on those of us that use Amazon SES to send our emails?

Correct, as the software is using a direct SMTP connection into AWS, so bypasses the servers MTA.

 

[Pete]

If we are using Amazon SES, would you advise we stay with it or switch back to default, ie Is this likely to be better than using Amazon SES - I sometimes get bounces from btinernet an AOL with SES. (Also have a small wordpress site using Pepipost SMTP which I'm not completely convinced by.

 

[Matt]

If we are using Amazon SES, would you advise we stay with it or switch back to default, ie Is this likely to be better than using Amazon SES - I sometimes get bounces from btinernet an AOL with SES. (Also have a small wordpress site using Pepipost SMTP which I'm not completely convinced by.

I use SES here, and have no issues with it at all. I would personally recommend sticking with SES. As for Pepipost, get rid.

 

[Matt]

CP2 has been configured to send all external email via Mailchannels now.

 

[Matt]

CP2 has been put back to Sendgrid. There are a lot of issues with forums incorrectly configured and sending from email addresses not on the actual domain itself, which get's automatically blocked because it fails the SPF check.

I'm possibly going to route everything back to Sendgrid based on this, will decide next week.

 

[Matt]

CP1 is also now back on Sendgrid.

 

[Pete]

As for Pepipost, get rid.

Any specific reason?

As you know I'm trying mailgun on another forum - I have had a couple of small problems with email recently

SES sometimes gets bounced by BT internet
mailgun gets some bounces every now and again when a shared IP gets blacklisted (then they switch it over to another)

I looked into dedicated IP for SMTP, and it seems both SES and mailgun do not recommend it for "small" amounts of email, ie best for 5000+ per day (my daily send is about 100 at most)

Sop also something I can't justify expense of.

 

[Matt]

Any specific reason?

Integrate Pepipost with XENFORO Community and start sending emails

@Sachin Tiwari - you might want to look at the code used on your control panel. It's loading the HTTP version for some of the files MattW, Thanks for reporting the issue. We will check and fix the same.

xenforo.com

 

[Alfa2]

I looked into dedicated IP for SMTP, and it seems both SES and mailgun do not recommend it for "small" amounts of email, ie best for 5000+ per day (my daily send is about 100 at most)

Without a dedicated IP you cannot join feedback loops. Which means that Yahoo is likely to greylist your email, which means you are essentially blacklisted. Same goes for a few other email domains. Im not sure about BT.

 

[Alfa2]

CP1 is also now back on Sendgrid.

Your email always goes to spam in protonmail.

Check this:

mattwservices.co.uk Domain Health

mxtoolbox.com

 

[Pete]

Without a dedicated IP you cannot join feedback loops. Which means that Yahoo is likely to greylist your email, which means you are essentially blacklisted. Same goes for a few other email domains. Im not sure about BT.

This is what I thought, but then small forums like mine cannot afford ¢59 a month (mailgun) or $24 a month even (SES),especially when advised not to by those very companies:

Using Dedicated IP Addresses with Amazon SES - Amazon Simple Email Service

Describes how to use dedicated IP addresses with Amazon SES.

docs.aws.amazon.com

Do I Need a Dedicated IP Address?

The answer to this depends on several factors; having a dedicated IP can be the perfect (or even necessary) setup for your account. Shared IPs are essentially like large public highways; most of th...

help.mailgun.com

AHA unfurling on 2.1 nice!

 

[Matt]

Your email always goes to spam in protonmail.

Check this:

mattwservices.co.uk Domain Health

mxtoolbox.com

I cant fix anything related to Google.

 

[Alfa2]

This is what I thought, but then small forums like mine cannot afford ¢59 a month (mailgun) or $24 a month even (SES),especially when advised not to by those very companies:

For amazon the description is:

you should send several hundred emails within a 24-hour period at least once per month.

The minimum 5000 per day suggested by mailgun makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[Matt]

and SES is fully validated for forum mails

 

[Pete]

For amazon the description is:

But they also say:

Benefit	Shared IP addresses	Dedicated IP addresses
Good for high-volume senders	Yes	Yes
Good for low-volume senders	Yes	No

This is what I get in the bounces from bt (this is on my WP WooCommerce store, but it was often same issue with Xenforo). Seems to be due to the Amazon IP, nothing to do with the sending domain on CP1

An error occurred while trying to deliver the mail to the following recipients:
xxxxxx@btinternet.comReporting-MTA: dsn; a27-116.smtp-out.us-west-2.amazonses.com

Action: failed
Final-Recipient: rfc822; xxxxxx@btinternet.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554 4.4.7 Message expired: unable to deliver in 1440 minutes.<421 Policy (1.2.6.3) Too much SPAM received from 54.240.27.116 on 2019/01/19 14:03:49 GMT, if you share a mail server consider moving to a dedicated mail server not sending SPAM. Guide for bulk senders www.bt.com/bulksender>
Status: 4.4.7


From: Taming The Saxophone <xxxxxxxx@tamingthesaxophone.com>
Subject: Your Taming The Saxophone order from January 17, 2019 is complete
Date: 18 January 2019 at 13:17:23 GMT
To: xxxxxxxxx@btinternet.com

 

[Pete]

As for Pepipost, get rid.

Ha, just got a newsletter/marketing email from Pepipost was marked with a spambar ++++ so seems they can't even configure their own sending account properly.

There are a lot of issues with forums incorrectly configured and sending from email addresses not on the actual domain itself

Presumably it's OK for me to be doing what mailgun recommend, ie send from a subdomain ? If not I will switch the mailgun domain to the root domain

 

[Matt]

Presumably it's OK for me to be doing what mailgun recommend, ie send from a subdomain ? If not I will switch the mailgun domain to the root domain

Yeah, the issue is when people try sending the email from a different TLD, such as gmail.com or outlook.com