EMAIL from web server

Question

We have a website sending mail alerts to end users. The site has been developed in c# ASP.NET.

I want to find the best way to send the email alerts to my users. Making sure the mail is not trapped in any spam filters. I read on the internet it is best to sent the mail directly from the web server and not route via an SMTP mail service such as google apps or Postini.

Can anyone tell me if this is correct?

Answer 1

The answer is to not actually send email and let someone else deal with the problem. I'd look at postmark or Amazon's simple email service.

Answer 2

First of all

Making sure the mail is not trapped in any spam filters

Is not possible - otherwise spammers would do this. You just have to make sure you're domain isn't associated with any spamming activities and watch for keywords within the email.

I read on the internet it is best to sent the mail directly from the web server and not route via an SMTP mail service such as google apps or Postini.

This point doesn't make sense - your e-mail will never be delivered if it doesn't get routed via an SMTP server, the average message will pass through multiple on its route to the recipient.

Answer 3

We had problems that mails sent with local server often get trapped in spam filters until we implemented SPF on our mail server.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

But I am not admin, that's just what our admin said, and after that we have no problems anymore.

btw. maybe would be better to ask on serverfault.com