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Tom Gullen
Asked: 2012-01-07 16:56:10 +0800 CST

SMTP server for Windows Server 2008?

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We had smarter mail installed, but it kept wiping/corrupting all our email. This was problematic to say the least.

Anyway, finally we decided to move and are now using Gmail. We have all our DNS setup and are using Gmail just fine! It's brilliant and we love it.

We then uninstalled Smartermail.

Now we have a couple of mailing lists, some with just over 2,000 people on them. We can use Gmail to send mails out, but this exceeds the 2k daily send limit.

Is it possible to install another SMTP program on the server to send mail? We don't want to receive, just use it to send. I'm a bit clueless as to what to do here, we're using ASP.net and C#, can we use our server to send email without going through Google?

windows windows-server-2008 asp.net iis-7.5

3 Answers

  1. You probably could, but it depends. Does your internet have a static IP? If so, what i would suggest doing one of the following:

    1. Outsource your mailing blasts (highly reccomend)
    2. Setup postini for both inbound and outbound filtering. Then you can send mail through postini The added bonus here is you get better spam filtering. You's still need to setup a Windows 2008 SMTP server, but at least it won't be your server doing the sending to the outside. You'll basically send mail locally through your server to Postini, and then postini will deliver it to your recipients.

    If you need further direction, let me know.

    Here are basic instuctions for Windows 2008 SMTP setup. http://www.itsolutionskb.com/2008/11/installing-and-configuring-windows-server-2008-smtp-server/

    Here is a link to Postini http://www.google.com/postini/index.html

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  2. Solved!

    First add SMTP server by right clicking Computer and pressing Manage. Go to add features.

    Once that's all setup, send an email as follows:

    try
{
    MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();
    SmtpClient SmtpServer = new SmtpClient("localhost");

    mail.From = new MailAddress("[email protected]");
    mail.To.Add("[email protected]");
    mail.Subject = "Test Mail";
    mail.Body = "This is for testing SMTP mail from localhost";
    SmtpServer.Port = 25;
    SmtpServer.EnableSsl = false;
    SmtpServer.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.PickupDirectoryFromIis;
    SmtpServer.Send(mail);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    context.Response.Write(ex.Message);
}

    It's important to specify delivery method as pickup from IIS or it will not work. This doesn't seem to conflict at all with anything else we have on the server.

    Also important to note the SMTP service will be set to "Manual" you will probably want to set this to automatic.

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  3. By GMail I hope you selected Google Apps rather than GMail for individuals.

    I had a similar problem to you.

    If your server has R-DNS, static IP and is secure, you can use http://www.hmailserver.com/. It's really easy to manage.

    Otherwise I'd highly recommend you migrate your mailing lists to http://mailchimp.com/. It's free under some circumstances, will automate your SPF & Bounce Backs and is really easy to use.

    The other option is to turn on Google Groups for Business inside Google Apps. Groups acts similar to mailing lists and any e-mail you send to the group will be forwarded to everyone subscribed.

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