Who should provide SMTP service

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xpd

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#566865 10-Jan-2012 12:36

simon14: I don't think you should offer an SMTP server anyway. You are a internet service provider, not an email service provider.

Or market yourself as an Internet Access Provider, not a service provider (as Sinesurf use to do a loooooong time ago).

Note: If you are under the age of 35, you may not know who Sinesurf were :-p

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mattwnz

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#566871 10-Jan-2012 12:47

xpd:
simon14: I don't think you should offer an SMTP server anyway. You are a internet service provider, not an email service provider.

Or market yourself as an Internet Access Provider, not a service provider (as Sinesurf use to do a loooooong time ago).

Note: If you are under the age of 35, you may not know who Sinesurf were :-p

Although I don't know any ISP that doesn't provide smtp access. Basically if you host your email witj companies that don't have a smtp server, such as orcons iserve, you wouldn't be able to use an ISP that didn't have smtp acess. Not unless you used a third party such as gmail, which then starts to get messy. I think all ISPs should provide SMTP access, as some ISP can block third party SMTP servers on different ports.

BlakJak

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#566880 10-Jan-2012 12:54

mattwnz:
xpd:
simon14: I don't think you should offer an SMTP server anyway. You are a internet service provider, not an email service provider.

Or market yourself as an Internet Access Provider, not a service provider (as Sinesurf use to do a loooooong time ago).

Note: If you are under the age of 35, you may not know who Sinesurf were :-p

Although I don't know any ISP that doesn't provide smtp access. Basically if you host your email witj companies that don't have a smtp server, such as orcons iserve, you wouldn't be able to use an ISP that didn't have smtp acess. Not unless you used a third party such as gmail, which then starts to get messy. I think all ISPs should provide SMTP access, as some ISP can block third party SMTP servers on different ports.

ISP's will (or should) only block third party SMTP on port 25. That's an antispam measure and applies to internet connections that should not be acting as MTA's (mail servers) and instead are reasonably expected to host MUAs (mail applications such as Outlook etc). Most ISP's who block 25/TCP from their customers also provide an opt-out for this block, so that customers can run their own mailservers if they choose to (this may or may not be free).

You should expect to be able to use external SMTP that's not on port 25 regardless of the ISP you're on, in my humble opinion; by this I mean use TLS or SSL. Google's is documented at http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13287 for example (465 or 587 depending on whether you use SSL or TLS).

I firmly believe if you offer internet access, you should provide some form of SMTP for your customers. Not for roamers, or temporary users, but for permanent ones. You can outsource this or do it yourself with a low spec server tucked away in a corner. So long as you're clear that it's best effort only, I don't see it being a problem; benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

No signature to see here, move along...

raytaylor

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#567103 10-Jan-2012 21:19

Funny Iserve was mentioned.
It seems almost all the calls i get are about iserve.

Basically I have decided - the smtp server is for my direct customers only, who i make a personal offer to provide them an email address with my domain. As the general opinion appears to be the email service provider is to provide the smtp. They are personally set up by me on the clients computer when i install their connection, and use smtp authentication on port 2525 anyway so they can travel without issues.

As a result, its your own fault if you use Iserve.

Ray Taylor

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