What are the pro and cons of using the SMTP host option of my choice?
Do sending mails from localhost require a specific SMTP host?
Is there any discernible difference on the receiving end between a mail sent via the server where the site resides and a dedicated mail server?
thanks
Luca
This depends if localhost refers to a public server with a proper DNS and reverse DNS entry, or if localhost is a machine you operate from a residential Internet Service Provider.
If localhost is a real server, outbound mails may be delivered a little faster if sent from the same server, and configuration in PHP & others is generally a lot simpler to setup.
If it isn't a proper server though, especially having proper DNS entries, the likelihood of much mail from it actually reaching recipients is low. Most receiving SMTP servers will reject mail if they cannot validate the source via a reverse DNS entry.
If you use a dedicated mail server, you get the benefit of all the inbound & outbound logging being on the same machine, and when receiving SMTP hosts lookup your domain's MX record in DNS, it will already be configured as the mail server rather than the web server. But this just requires a little more configuration on the web server, especially if the mail server requires authentication from the web server rather than treating it as a trusted relay sender.
Related
I am sending mail in PHP, but I use a remote mail server.
I have three questions:
1) In my PHP mail code, should I use the server settings for the local mail server or the remote mail server and is there a difference?
2) If I use the remote mail server, won't the mailserver domain IP address not match the real domain's IP Address (potentially going to Spam folders)?
The problem I am having might be specific to my host, mail server, version, or mail plugin.
I am trying to use a plugin called Swiftmailer to send mail through my local mail server, which works on port 25 with no SSL. When I switch the port to 465 (per my host's recommendation) and change it to SSL, I get a refused connection. (I believe this is because I don't have SSL added to this server yet)
3) Does SSL really matter? Should I just use port 25 without SSL and save myself the trouble? (I care about security, not server requirements)
This is an issue I've encountered several time and haven't yet found a decent solution for:
Sending an e-mail from a webserver on e.g. "domain.com", to info#domain.com which is hosted on an external mail server e.g. Google Mail
In my case I always send from PHP over Apache and often on shared hosting, but I can imagine this is the same case on other frameworks.
These e-mails always seem to be delivered to the local mail server, even if I set the MX records on that server to point to the right external mail server.
A solution for this is to use an external SMTP server, but this isn't always easy when you're working with clients that either need to set-up a new e-mail account on their server and provide the SMTP details or sign-up for a third-party SMTP server.
What is the solution for this? Is there no way around SMTP?
Most emai/MTA server "autoconfigure" themselves. They guess list of local email domains (doimans with locally hosted mailboxes).
In sendmail case you can turn it off adding the following line in sendmail.mc:
define(`confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES', `True')
Documentation : cf/README - confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES
I have had the same issue many many times (in my case using PHP on a LAMP stack).
Try/check the following.
If you are using cPanel or similar, set the MX records to the external mailserver (Google apps etc).
Set up an SPF record to allow your hosting website to send email (this way no need to configure SMTP).
This may not be applicable but if you are using something like phpmailer. Set the property $mail->isMail(); so it tries to use your SPF allowed local mail() function to send the email. Sorry for going off into very specific advice, but might help in your particular situation.
Worth checking there are not similarly named local mailboxes on your hosting box.
Hope this helps!
I have a local server which host PHP applications. My applications send emails to different addresses. However, I am noticing a problem that I am unable to figure out. It send emails to internal addresses but it won't send messages to external addresses.
I also have an exchange server on the same network. so for example I have these 2 "internal domain"
domain1.com
domain2.com
if I execute this php function from my application it gets delivered with no problem
mail("name#domain1.com","Test Subject","Test message");
However, if I try sening a message to gmail, yahoo or any external domain it does not send it
mail("name#gmail.com","Test Subject","Test message");
My server is running on Windows 2008 Server R2 with PHP5.3.19 installed on it via IIS6
How Can I correct this issue?
mail() on Windows needs extra config in php.ini because Windows does not have Sendmail or anything similar.
The first is the SMTP setting which should point to your ISP's outbound server which is not necessarily the same server that you retrieve your mail from. When I worked in support there were a lot of issues like you describe because an inbound server will still accept mail, but only for the domains that are local to it.
The second is the sendmail_from setting, which is what the gimpy little mailer PHP wrote for the Windows distribution uses in every SMTP transaction regardless of what's in the headers. On *nix Sendmail will read the headers and get the From: address itself, on Windows PHP will always use what's in php.ini. If this is a "garbage" address like example#example.com or something with a non-existant domain many mail servers will reject it outright. What I recommend is to change it to something decent in PHP.ini as well as adding the following line to your mailing scripts:
ini_set('sendmail_from', $from_address);
Alternatively, just use PHPmailer since it simply works much better than PHP's horrid little mail() function.
I'm building a site on my home computer using MAMP. The code I'm using employs the PHP mail() function to send emails, but whenever I test it, the mails aren't getting sent.
My computer is connected to the net, but I'm wondering if there's something about local hosting that prevents mails from getting sent. I'm not getting any kind of error message.
Any ideas?
PHP can send mail in one of two ways.
The first, and the default on non-Windows systems, is to use the local mail transfer agent installed on the system. This would be "sendmail" or an application compatible with it, the most popular probably being postfix.
The other is to connect via SMTP to some mail server.
You will either need to install a mail transfer agent on your local system (and set it up correctly), or edit PHP's configuration to specify an SMTP server address and port.
Yes, there are things that could block locally hosted mail. For one, your ISP could block SMTP to servers other than the ISP. ask your ISP support if they block SMTP... Or try telexing so someone's MX port 25 and do you get a response?
If your ISP blocks smtp you can still send the mail, but first you must relay that email through a hosted email server like your ISP mail server. This process is called 'smart hosting' and you can search for more info.
Even if you are not blocked on port 25, many sites will refuse or lose smtp traffic that originates from a dynamic or residential IP address, so again the smart host suggestion.
Also I suggest not using the built in mail() function in PHP... Use something that replaces and improves it like http://pear.php.net/package/Mail or http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmailer/. Again, use the SMTP method as it is way more reliable than direct sending or calling Sendmail.
It is important to confirm this problem, doing SMTP manually over telnet. That way you isolate the problem from PHP. I did ISP support for years and saw this question lots. Most people setup php and mail correctly but get stuck on a background network issue with SMTP.
If you have Wireshark installed, it can record network traffic and you might see the actual SMTP traffic, for example the remote server may be refusing your connection. Wireshark is helpful but not required to solve this though. Good luck.
You need to setup SMTP server in order to be able use mail function, or you can use PHPMailer class, with it you can avoid using mail function and setup problems, PHPMailler need socket extension to be loaded in order to function correctly.
I need to send a newsletter to several thousands of subscribers with PHP.
The hosting service I am using allows me to send 300 mails/hour tops with their SMTP server.
They told me that if I send email with PHP without authenticating or using the SMTP server I won't have any problems with limits.
Is that even possible? Doesn't the mail() function in PHP use SMTP to send mail?
The mail() function will use whatever php.ini tells it to use which may be sendmail or may be an external SMTP server.
You have a few different options:
If they're not time sensitive, use their SMTP server and throttle yourself;
Alternatively, if they are time sensitive, it may make sense to authenticate against your own external SMTP server;
Finally, I'd suggest looking at a system like MailChimp or iContact. They'll let you send to anyone on your list and will handle bounces and unsubscribes for you. Even better, their servers have been whitelisted by ISPs, etc, so you're much less likely to have your messages flagged as spam.
My 0.02
On unix/linux, mail() is almost always configured to just use the local sendmail facility.
Technically speaking, you're still using SMTP servers, but not at your ISP. Sendmail communicates directly with the SMTP server responsible for incoming mail for each recipient.
While it's possible that your host has sendmail to route all mail through their SMTP server, it's unlikely.
I'd say just use plain old mail() and give it a shot.
The hosting company probably provides you with a SMTP server you can use, and it is that server that probably has the limitation. You can avoid the limitation by using another SMTP server (one that they aren't providing.)
All e-mail is traditionally "sent" using SMTP. You would need to configure your machine to use an external server.
http://email.about.com/od/emailprogrammingtips/qt/Configure_PHP_to_Use_a_Remote_SMTP_Server_for_Sending_Mail.htm
For a good general discussion of successfully sending e-mails from code, see this Coding Horror post. I noticed one of the comments mentioned the Postmark app as a paid alternative to using your ISP's SMTP server. I've never used it, so I don't know if it's worth the price.