
Ask HN: Run your own email server or use 3rd party? - jpetersonmn
I&#x27;m working on a website that will eventually need to be able to send thousands of emails a day. I&#x27;m not too worried about receiving any email, just sending them. Is is worth setting up my own email server, or should I just use google or something else? Thanks for your feedback.
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patio11
Do _not_ run your own mail server. Deliverability is a full-time job for
somebody. You can share that "somebody" by using a mail service agent (MSA --
Sendgrid, Postmark, Amazon SES, etc) for roughly 1/100th of the cost of
employing them directly. Mail server software is also notoriously finicky and
every minute you spend administering it is time that doesn't move your
business forward.

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rbinv
I can not confirm this at all.

Yes, initial setup can be a hassle, but after that, my experience is that
deliverability mostly depends on the content you send, not the MTA or its
configuration (you should have SPF, DKIM etc. in place, of course).

However, if you also need (semi-)automated bounce handling (as in,
automatically unsubscribe hard bounces), then yes, you probably shouldn't roll
that yourself. But I don't really consider that to be MTA-related stuff.

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sanjayparekh
One site: mandrill.com. From the fine folks at MailChimp. I've been using it
and it rocks.

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munger
I second Mandrill. 12k free emails per month, $0.20 per thousand after that
(and cheaper for very large volumes). This is for a shared IP address with
other free tier users. You can add a dedicated IP to build just your own
reputation for $30/month. You can easily setup DKIM for your domains even on
the free shared IP tier. Libraries in many languages + restful API if needed
for others.

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jpetersonmn
Definitely sounds like it will be easier to have another service handle it so
I can focus on my main goals. What's the advantage of having a static ip for
your email delivery?

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rbinv
Your deliverability when using a dedicated IP won't be affected by the email
quality of others (on a shared IP).

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jpetersonmn
Aha, that makes sense. Thank you for the information.

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byoung2
We use Amazon SES...very easy API. You don't want the hassle of dealing with
IP address blacklists for your own server.

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rachelandrew
We use Postmark [https://postmarkapp.com/](https://postmarkapp.com/) for most
of our emails at Perch - including things like notification emails from the
support forums.

It's always been reliable and inexpensive.

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dennisgorelik
Google is not a good choice for sending out mass emails.

Even with premium Google account you cannot send more than few thousand emails
per day.

So either setup your own server (lots of up front effort to make it right) or
use something like Amazon SES or SendGrid.

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tejasm
We use Amazon SES + Sendy. Awesome combination with very less overheads.

