So with Mandrill going premium, what are some alternatives?

[SuchMuch]

I have been using Pepipost for a while. Everything is ok, but their bounced system works by API only, this means bounced emails couldn't be handled automatically by Xenforo installation.

Is there other services with free plans (like Pepipost) and bounced system that works by emails?

 

[ichpen]

I have been using Pepipost for a while. Everything is ok, but their bounced system works by API only, this means bounced emails couldn't be handled automatically by Xenforo installation.

Is there other services with free plans (like Pepipost) and bounced system that works by emails?

Sendgrid

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Everything is ok, but their bounced system works by API only, this means bounced emails couldn't be handled automatically by Xenforo installation.

Mine are handled automatically just fine, using pepipost on 2 forums and not using the API

 

[SuchMuch]

Mine are handled automatically just fine, using pepipost on 2 forums and not using the API

How did you setup pepipost to send bounced emails to dedicated email box?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I'll look it up later but there is a setting to forward bounce notifications to a specific email address and then I think another switch you need to flip

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

The only issue I've run across is their blacklist process. You can have an email bounce and trigger it to be placed on their blacklist but if your XF settings aren't right or doesn't properly recognize the bounce as hard and knock the account to bounced (which it frequently does not do properly) then it appears from the ACP that an account email is valid but Pepipost won't send the email and won't tell XF that it didn't. So it will appear to the user that something is broken and it won't appear to the admin that anything is wrong until you check the blacklist.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Huh....strangely enough, they seemed to have removed the method by which I set up the bounce email handler. Either that or I don't remember it correctly. But it's still working. I may have just told them explicitly (through chat) to configure a copy of each bounce message to be forwarded to the dedicated bounce address, but it seems to me that I recall actually setting it. Their chat is offline so I can't ask...

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

@Dibya Prakash @Sachin Tiwari your advice here is dead wrong

http://support.pepipost.com/knowledge_base/topics/xenforo

Step 4: Configuring your bounces.

• Bounced Email Address: By default bounces are been parsed and suppressed on Pepipost. By in case you want to receive the bounces on your email address also, then please mention your email address on which you would like to monitor the bounces.
• Rest of the options you can keep it to default settings of Xenforo. As mentioned earlier bounces are been monitored on Pepipost and hence there is no need to additionally configure the rest of the bounce parameters.

...because the point of the bounce handler system is to 1) stop XF from sending out to problematic email accounts and 2) notify the USER that their email is not working right for whatever reason. Not configuring the bounce handler to work right in concert with Pepipost short-circuits the XF system. Emails get sent out and bounce but they don't come back to anything on the admin end. This is a huge issue.

Even if an admin does not configure the bounce handler, they should be monitoring bounces and manually taking action. You remove the ability to monitor by suggesting that "there is no need to additionally configure the rest of the bounce parameters." and now I have discovered that you have actually removed the ability for your customers to set an email address for bounces to be pass through to. My 2 sites are configured to do so, but now I can't find the option, so it's "hidden" but active.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

By in case you want to receive the bounces on your email address also, then please mention your email address on which you would like to monitor the bounces.

....mention, to whom? Did you make this something that you have to request via chat? Why would you do that?

 

[Sim]

I'm using SparkPost - but I had to build a custom addon to set the sending parameters correctly (otherwise outbound emails are treated as newsletters rather than transactional emails) and I had to build a system for listening to webhooks to deal with bounced emails - they don't have the ability to forward bounced emails to a mailbox for auto-processing.

I'm also starting to experiment with using Customer.io for triggered emails and for newsletters. It's not cheap (free for up to 15,000 user records, but then starts at US$100pm beyond that), but it's quite powerful and flexible in what you can do without programming once you have the user data synchronised in.

 

[SuchMuch]

Pls share any link to tutorial how to set sendgrid to work with Xenforo?
I have already whitelisted my Domains and Email links. What else and where should I set up? Inbound Parse?

It would be great if someone could share screenshots with non sensitive settings...

 

[SuchMuch]

Finally I have succeed setting sendgrid, their set up isn't user friendly.
Emailed all existing members by means of sendgrid: 25 valid emails were bounced including emails from whitelisted domain and my own email, 171 were sent successfully.
Well, it's not a result I really want

Falled back to Pepipost and Emailed members once again.
No bounces, all 196 email were processed.
Pepipost's setup is really friendly and easy to do.

I'm staying with Pepipost. I hope they add bounced email feature in future

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

They have it, I use it! Open a chat with them on their site and they'll probably set it up. Not sure what they changed because it used to be an option

 

[Dibya Prakash]

Huh....strangely enough, they seemed to have removed the method by which I set up the bounce email handler. Either that or I don't remember it correctly. But it's still working.

@Floyd R Turbo The feature is still there, actually we are upgrading this to improve the user experience to minimise the implementation time and of course to minimise the interactions over chat support

Backend changes are released but during that time the frontend option was not available for some time.
Within next couple of days, we will be enhancing the UI also to make it more user-friendly.

Now, the feature is available. You need to first setup the custom envelope for your sender domain (Here is the doc: http://support.pepipost.com/knowled...ope-sender-slash-return-path-address-and-dkim). Once this done, you can setup your email address on which you want the bounces to be notified Settings -> Customize -> Bounce Notification

If someone is stuck somewhere, then of course we are just a chat away.

 

[SuchMuch]

Now, the feature is available. You need to first setup the custom envelope for your sender domain (Here is the doc: http://support.pepipost.com/knowled...ope-sender-slash-return-path-address-and-dkim). Once this done, you can setup your email address on which you want the bounces to be notified Settings -> Customize -> Bounce Notification

This is to confirm the feature exist. Have just enabled it

@Dibya Prakash whilst registering to pepipost there is a field "Business Email ID". What should be added there?

 

[SuchMuch]

@Dibya Prakash
+ Question:
Will pepipost function normally if XF's feature "Enable variable bounced email address values" is enabled?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Will pepipost function normally if XF's feature "Enable variable bounced email address values" is enabled?

That is the point of adding the bounce email address in the field they just added back in

The one other thing to note is that by default, Pepipost emails will show up (in clients like gmail etc) with a "via Pepipost" tag next to the email address. You can eliminate this by configuring a sub-domain and the associated zone file settings which if you are unfamiliar with that process can seem kind of daunting but it's pretty simple and Pepipost is very helpful and responsive. They've addressed all my issues and concerns well.

 

[Dibya Prakash]

whilst registering to pepipost there is a field "Business Email ID". What should be added there?

@SuchMuch During signup, we recommend adding an email address which is non-Gmail, yahoo etc. e.g. something@yourcompany.com instead of something@gmail.com

 

[Dibya Prakash]

You can eliminate this by configuring a sub-domain and the associated zone file settings which if you are unfamiliar with that process can seem kind of daunting but it's pretty simple and Pepipost is very helpful and responsive. They've addressed all my issues and concerns well.

Here the documentation on how to create a sub-domain and what all DNS configuration to be done: http://support.pepipost.com/knowled...ope-sender-slash-return-path-address-and-dkim

 

[SuchMuch]

Here the documentation on how to create a sub-domain and what all DNS configuration to be done: http://support.pepipost.com/knowled...ope-sender-slash-return-path-address-and-dkim

Once sub-domains are created, is it safe to remove txt records or should they be kept?