Setting up external SMTP server for mailing lists

[chuckdenver]

Hi,

I want to try and set up an external mail server on a PC at home, so that I can send out mailing list updates to a large number of addresses (i.e. more than 200!), so that I don't lock my WHB account sending too many emails per hour.

I want them to look as if they have come from the domain that's hosted at WHB, but I'm not quite sure what I need to do to make it look authentic so it's not blocked by spam filters.

I already have a couple of mail boxes registered on WHB for the domain, so I don't want to change the MX record to point at my home address, and then have incoming mail go there instead - this is only for sending occasional mail outs (and I'd configure the script to use the external authenticated SMTP server, instead of the WHB/localhost one).

Can someone point me in the right direction as to what I need to do? I've got a mail server installed on my windows box (hMailServer) but that's about as far as I've got! Do I need to change anything in the mail config in cPanel? MX Records or Email Authentication settings or anything like that?

BTW, these mail outs are to registered users, not to random people (i.e. I'm not trying to spam!).

Thanks in advance,
Andy

[Sergey S.]

The server which the MX records are pointed to is responsible for both sending and receiving.
Therefore you would have to change the MX records to your home Server and process all mail through it.
You would also have to use the Static IP address for that.

[chuckdenver]

Thanks for the advice!

I've managed to sort it without changing the MX records, and just having the SMTP server set up as a relay on my home server, so that should let me send mailouts without running into the WHB server limits.

One question - the mailing list software I'm using (Dada Mail) now sends through this external SMTP server, but will be creating many connections to my home SMTP server while the mailout is in progress. There's no issues with bandwidth/resource limits for this is there?

Thanks,
Andy

[Arkadij S]

Dear Andy,

If we got your right, you've configured your home server so, that now all emails are forwarder from our server to your home one (e.g. by using some mail filters, etc.).

If it's so, mail traffic will flow through us any way, but only while receiving mail for your domain as the MX records are pointed to our server.

As for outgoing mail delivery, traffic flow and multiple connections will be created on your server only, so it's about your local ISP and your home server configuration.

We would really like you to explain your actions more specifically as we may get confused and mislead you.

[chuckdenver]

Hi,

The reason behind this is that I've set up a mailing/announcement type email list, that people subscribe to through a web front end/CGI script called DadaMail.

Currently there are a couple of thousand registered email addresses. Now when we come to send an announcement out, that number of emails would either blow the 200 per hour limit, or take a long time to send all of them by staggering the mailout into 200 per hour. That's why for the purposes of this mailing list, I've been trying to set up an external mail server to send these mails from.

The receiving of mail stays the same (i.e. handled by WHB mail server and the mailboxes on my account), but there shouldn't be that much generated by this, as it's only an announcement list.

So I think I'm right in saying that the WHB mail server won't handle any of the mails that are sent from the DadaMail script - all that DadaMail will do is connect to my home server, and send the mails from that, thus the only "traffic" that my WHB account will see is the connections to my home server for each of the emails sent.

Your quote here:

As for outgoing mail delivery, traffic flow and multiple connections will be created on your server only, so it's about your local ISP and your home server configuration.

is the bit I'm concerned about - I'm happy with my ISP handling the outgoing mail delivery, but I wanted to check about the outgoing connections from DadaMail on the WHB servers to my home server (It's set to a single SMTP session every 5 seconds I think, where the mails are actually being sent from my home server).

Hopefully that makes sense as to what I'm trying to do, and what I'm trying to avoid (so moving the processing of sending mail off the WHB server and on to mine)!

Thanks,
Andy

[Arkadij S]

is the bit I'm concerned about - I'm happy with my ISP handling the outgoing mail delivery, but I wanted to check about the outgoing connections from DadaMail on the WHB servers to my home server (It's set to a single SMTP session every 5 seconds I think, where the mails are actually being sent from my home server).

As we understood, your are going to send emails from your home server directly. If so, no connections will be created on our server, therefore you should just make sure, that such a quantity and frequency of connections will be fine for your home server.

[chuckdenver]

That's right - my home server should be fine for the job, and if it's not, then at least that's my problem to sort and I won't risk my account being suspended!

Many thanks for your help and advice

Andy

[lotto6aus45]

Hi chuckdenver,

Can you give me some hints how you managed it to send your mailing list over your own server and still use whb for your mailboxes?

I am very intrested in doing the same

Kind Regards,
Stefan