Which SMTP provider do you use to send transactional emails?

[Wildcat Media]

I’m glad it isn’t just me

Same. I can't be the only one frustrated by this.

When it worked, SES was fine. It's just that I remember how many hoops I had to go through to get it up and running, and then occasional things like this where I'd waste hours of my life on going in circles and dealing with offshored idiots who barely grasp English. Good luck actually finding your SES settings if you log in and get confronted by dozens of selections that aren't even relevant.

I'm testing out ZeptoMail right now. They only do transactional email, and costs $2.50 USD for 10,000 email "credits." And I think that given our lower volume, those 10,000 may last a couple of months. I'm only awaiting validation of my account so I can start using it with no limits.

 

[Alpha1]

Zeptomail works well for other platforms. If you can find a XenForo integration then this will probably work out well.
MXRoute is a really nice one if you can live with maximum 400 emails per hour and transactional only. No newsletters.

MXroute - Email Hosting

mxroute.com

 

[Chromaniac]

using zeptomail on a low traffic forum. works fine. one less payment to make every month. i do not have bounce setup though. i do have it set to automatically blacklist email ids after a hard bounce. i check the logs now and then and manually mark the account as email invalid. i can probably set it up with a dummy account on zoho probably.

 

[Alpha1]

It could be worthwhile to ask Zoho about XenForo integration. It would be to their benefit to get that sorted, as they would gain customers.

 

[Suzanne O]

Whichever one namecheap has in their cpanel. Works well for me

 

[Onlyme]

Changed to runbox.com a few months back. No complaints here.

 

[Alpha1]

Changed to runbox.com a few months back. No complaints here.

Runbox is a very nice inbox host service like gmail. But not a SMTP service to send bulk transactional email with reputation control. It allows max. 500 emails per day to be sent. It can work for a very low traffic website. Am I missing something or is this not a SMTP service?

BTW: MXroute has a great Black Friday deal every year which includes a lifetime deal.

MXroute Black Friday 2025

 

[Onlyme]

Runbox is a very nice inbox host service like gmail. But not a SMTP service to send bulk transactional email with reputation control. It allows max. 500 emails per day to be sent. It can work for a very low traffic website. Am I missing something or is this not a SMTP service?

BTW: MXroute has a great Black Friday deal every year which includes a lifetime deal.

MXroute Black Friday 2025

I have it setup using SMTP with postfix. 500 is enough for us, we don't send any bulk emails.

 

[Wildcat Media]

MXRoute is a really nice one if you can live with maximum 400 emails per hour and transactional only. No newsletters.

I tried to click through their online signup but they claim I am using a VPN, and that the order will fail if I try to place it. I don't even have a VPN on this computer, but the same also happened on a tablet. Nothing unusual about my connection either (AT&T Fiber).

It looks like their Black Friday sales have expired.

using zeptomail on a low traffic forum. works fine. one less payment to make every month. i do not have bounce setup though. i do have it set to automatically blacklist email ids after a hard bounce. i check the logs now and then and manually mark the account as email invalid. i can probably set it up with a dummy account on zoho probably.

I saw that they handle bounce email, but through a CNAME record. Not ideal but then again, so few emails bounce (being a lower-traffic forum) that I could check once every couple of weeks and manually deal with it on the forum for now.

It could be worthwhile to ask Zoho about XenForo integration. It would be to their benefit to get that sorted, as they would gain customers.

Agreed. I may bring it up with their support if it works out for me. My main concern is that I'd prefer automatic bounce handling.

 

[Alpha1]

they claim I am using a VPN

I dont think so. There is a general statement to warn people.

It looks like their Black Friday sales have expired.

Its seems to me on. I can add the lifetime deal to cart.

My main concern is that I'd prefer automatic bounce handling.

Zeptomail does have bounced mail tracking. I manually process Zeptomail bounced mail for other platforms. ZOHO team has created automatic bounce processing for WordPress and other platforms. I already requested bounce processing for xenforo. They consider to add it if they get more requests.

 

[Mr Lucky]

It could be worthwhile to ask Zoho about XenForo integration. It would be to their benefit to get that sorted, as they would gain customers.

Seems to work fine with xenForo here.

 

[Alpha1]

Seems to work fine with xenForo here.

Zoho has its own bounce management system with reputation and limits. If you reach those limits, you will be blocked.
Its not integrated with XF because the integration does not exist. You should receive regular emails from Zoho which lists how many hard bounces there are. This has a link to the overview of the mail server. There you can review details. With default xenforo bounce handling your bounce reputation should be somewhat moderated. Because though default xenforo bounce handling misses a lot of hard bounces. Its advisable to review the ZoHo bounces OR your soft bounces manually.
To check your email bounces, Zoho offers you an Email Bounce report by default. This report can be accessed from Reports > Email Reports > Bounce Report.

I reported the most prominent bugs here:

bounce handling

xenforo.com

 

[Wildcat Media]

Trying ZeptoMail--got my test message. I noticed that my bounce address set up in XF shows up as the sender: and return-path-Orig: headers in the email. But that doesn't mean much...

 

[Alpha1]

Sender is incorrect. return-path-orig is correct. Wrong details in headers will result in your email going to the spam box or get rejected by some email hosts. You probably already know this.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I only go with what XenForo sets when it sends the mail. In other words, I can't change it.

 

[Alpha1]

Yeah, I see it. I think you have found a bug.

 

[Alvin63]

I have to say I didn't get on with SES. I know it comes highly recommded but just seemed to be very fiddly to set up with less than user friendly support docs. maybe I should give it another try, but I just remembered at one time I got a lot of bounces when sending to @btineternt addresses.

I actually gave up trying to set it up! It was incredibly dense - I emailed them to tell them that! I'm using Google workspace but when I get over 500 members, might have to look elsewhere (limit of 500 emails in one go and I send a newsletter weekly).

 

[Chromaniac]

i can send a test message from zepto configured board for anyone to check the headers. i have it enabled for more than a year now i think and i haven't seen any issues with it so far. outlook sometimes do soft bounce mails for a short period of time. but it gets fixed automatically in a few hours.

 

[Mr Lucky]

when I get over 500 members, might have to look elsewhere (limit of 500 emails in one go and I send a newsletter weekly).

I’ve been using Postmark that seemed better than most I’ve tried, but now looking into Zeptomail which may suit me better. Dashboard seems great and so far testing seems great and you use Payasyougo so ideal for smaller forums.

You need to wait to get validated though, but that seems like a good thing once you’ve done it.

 

[Wildcat Media]

You need to wait to get validated though, but that seems like a good thing once you’ve done it.

ZeptoMail: "It'll take a few days to get validated." (Paraphrasing.)

Also ZeptoMail: Sends me a message overnight saying I'm verified.

And it's pretty easy. I simply listed the uses for transactional mail (password resets, forum notifications, registrations, etc.) and included a screenshot of a test post received in email to show the "template." That was the extent of it. Amazon SES wanted that and lengthy explanations for everything. A royal pain...but I also understand why they do that, as they want to preserve their email reputation to maintain a high level of delivery (which won't be flagged as spam, phishing, etc.).

When I had SES running, I never had issues with it--all members got all the email we sent. It's just that their backend was a pain point. There are just too many services, too many ways to get lost, in their interface. Regular corporate I.T. users I'm sure know it inside and out, as they use AWS daily. But for those of us who access it once every year or two, their interface changes so much, and their offerings grow, which makes it nearly impossible to navigate.

Back to Zepto. From what I can tell, my first 10,000 credits are free, as mail is delivering nicely and I haven't yet entered payment information.

Emails were taking hours to arrive, but what I think was happening was that there was unsent mail in XF's queue and it's catching up with the backlog. After that clears, mail should deliver within a minute or two.