How could I use Google Compute Engine (or a similar service, like AWS) to send email on behalf of users via their SMTP server?
I am interested in building an online email client which allows users to enter their SMTP and POP servers and send/receive email, like they would with their desktop clients. GCE blocks all SMTP ports to prevent abuse and recommends using a mail service like SendGrid instead. However, after researching dozens of these services, they all seem to only support transactional email using their own SMTP servers, or possibly a pre-cleared smtp server. I simply want to send email using the user's SMTP server (ex smtp.mail.yahoo.com), just like they would if they were using a desktop client.
I realize I could host my own servers but I am not interested in maintaining the infrastructure. I would like to host everything on a cloud service. Is there any way I can work around Google's restrictions with an existing service?
As I'm sure you are aware, you would have to have the user enter their SMTP server information and account credentials. You would then use that information to connect to their SMTP server.
By default AWS EC2 instances have SMTP traffic on port 25 rate limited. To remove this limitation, you would need to fill out and submit the following form:
https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/html-forms-controller/contactus/ec2-email-limit-rdns-request
If you're looking to send mail as a Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo user, you'll probably want to call the service's API to have the server send mail on the user's behalf. There are several benefits of this:
You'll need to get authorization from users (usually via an OAuth flow)
in order to access their mail. This means that users shouldn't be
surprised that you're sending mail from their accounts, and they'll
have some control over your access.
The mail will be signed and come from the appropriate IP addresses to
comply with the various spam-control mechanisms set up by those
companies. Without this, it's likely that the mail you send will end
up in the bit-bucket of the recipient.
By using the API, the service should be able to keep a copy of the
sent mail in the user's outgoing mail folder. This will let the user
see and search for the original message sent if they want.
Unfortunately, this may also mean that each mail service you want to send from will need separate integration, and that you may not be able to send as the user's email address from smaller providers.
Note that the App Engine mail API allows you to send mail as the currently logged-in user (when logging in, users have a similar consent screen to the OAuth process mentioned above).
Related
Am trying to set up an outbound mail connector and rule within https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com/#/connectors to route messages FROM a particular user, out to a 3rd party delivery service such as SparkPost, Sendgrid etc.
These services accept SMTP mail on port 25 or 587, with TLS, and expect username and password credentials to be presented on SMTP connection establishment. Messages are relayed on (with DKIM signing etc) to the final recipient.
This help article describes similar, but it's oriented around delivering mail TO a particular user.
There doesn't seem to be a way for O365 to have a connector to services like this.
The connector setup requires a mailbox identity to verify against; not a username and password.
Further, the limit on mail flow thru an O365 account looks to be 10,000 per day, which is a lot for a human user but small for apps generating mail.
Looks like they'll need to keep Exchange running on-prem to fulfil this use-case, unless anyone knows otherwise?
I spoke to Microsoft tech support and there appears to be no way to set up such a connector.
Also they do discourage folks from using O365 for bulk mail, but sometimes grant enterprises exceptions.
I have a web application that utilizes several CRM types of emails for notifications, appointment reminders, attachments for digital sales and such. My clients can use my own admin domain email account to send these emails (no-reply email), or they can provide credentials for using their own SMTP server or relay service so that any emails that are replied to are sent to them (vs a no-reply admin email).
However, I'd like to try for a 3rd option where I can create an email mailbox on my a domain like so:
client1#mydomain.com
client2#mydomain.com
...
And then I would apply a forwarding rule on each one to send any replies to their personal email accounts so they wouldn't have to have their own SMTP service.
Now I can do this using providers' interfaces, but I'd rather do it with an API so I'm not having to manually create mailboxes and setting forwarding rules.
Currently I'm using AWS SES for my domain emailing, but I've searched for hours and the "solution" to create mailboxes and create rules to forward are ridiculous.
Are there any other email providers out there that make this easier? I don't need anything fancy except the ability to create a bunch of email mailboxes via API (preferably with a high limit of mailboxes) and the ability to create the forwarding rules via API.
Or can anyone recommend a good email provider that allows for a lot of mailboxes and makes forwarding really easy (and of course cheap).
Like "cringe" GoDaddy Email or something similar??
After a lot of research, this procedure doesn't really make sense these days. There are a lot of relay email providers that make it easy to set up "Senders" so that emails can appear to come from any kind of email account (personal or domain based) for ease of use with applications
I have a domain which uses Google Apps for Business to handle email. I already have it mostly set up--MX records point to the correct location and my domain is verified.
I'm now writing a python app (with Django) that will need to serve mail from my domain. What's the correct way to do this with Google? Should I create a Google Apps "user" for the organization as a whole, and then authenticate via SMTP as that user and send mail from there?
The Gmail API says that it
is the best choice for authorized access to a user's Gmail data.
and that
Automated or programmatic message sending
is a typical use case. However, I'm not trying to access a user's data or send mail on behalf of a user, but on behalf of my domain. What's the correct way to proceed?
Any help much appreciated!
You could use SMTP or the Gmail API based on your description. In both cases, you'll need some sort of service account to send mail from. With SMTP, as you mentioned, you'll be authorizing via the instructions you linked.
If you choose to use the Gmail API route, you'll be authorizing the API usage with the account. The Gmail API has many other use cases (e.g. to access user's data) but you're only using it to send emails on behalf of a service account you control.
For a project I need to setup either a mail server (like Open X-change, Kolab) or I can use email service as Saas from providers like Mailgun, Sendgrid etc. But my prime requirements are:
Create new email addresses using (Rest) API or any other API programmatically.
Ability to create huge number of email ids (more than 10,000)
I have researched and found some like mailgun provides facility of sending / receiving messages through APIs. But nothing was mentioned about creating new email ids using APIs.
Does anyone know any mail server / SaaS which provides the aforementioned facilities?
To have a mail id, you need to be able to accept messages at that location, which would be a full mail service such as Gmail.
If you just need to send "as" addresses, you can use an SMTP service such as SendGrid. You'd just need to make sure the domain is legitimate and can receive mail, and that you set the Reply-To value to something that you can accept mail at.
Here is my issue, I'm creating a website with a little login and resetting password. It's basic stuff, when user forget the password they can click the link and my application will send an email with a link to reset the password. Now, I'm using Google App to send/receive email so I created a new alias like noreply#company.com.
And I just got a confirm email from Google that I'm not allowed to use Google Server to send out email by JavaMail, because they do not support JavaMail as a mail client, the issue that I'm having is I'm getting AuthenticationException back from smtp.google.com.
Moreover, I'm using Amazon EC2 to host the application as well, and amazon provides SES service to send out emails. So, the question would be can I use Google App to host our company email for every employee, but can I still use Amazon SES to send out emails by JavaMail within the same domain name as we are using with Google Apps?. So, the emails that we'll be sending out would be noreply#company.com but will be from Amazon SES.
I'm not sure if I'm making this clear enough, my concern would be we redirect email MX Record to Google App already, I think we cannot redirect to Google and Amazon at the same time?
The application we are writing is based on Grails, so the email would be from Spring Email
Cheers,
Based on my usage of Amazon SES, you should be able to use the configuration you are suggesting without any issues. You do not need to add/change any MX record when using SES, because SES does not allow you to receive emails. It is only a service for sending (relaying) email messages, i.e., as far as I understood your needs, it will serve you perfectly, and your source email address will be the same as you use today.
When you sign up for SES and want to start sending test messages, you need to verify your source and destination email addresses before actually sending emails. You can achieve this verification through either scripting (ses-verify-email-address.pl) or API (VerifyEmailAddress on AWS SDK). After sending the verification request, you should receive an email address on the verified account. Just follow the message instructions and you can safely send some test messages.
When you are satisfied with your testing, you should request production access, and after this step, you no longer need to perform verification on destination e-mail addresses.
In order to call the API, I think you can use the AWS SDK for Java without problems in your application.
See more on:
http://aws.amazon.com/ses/
http://aws.amazon.com/sdkforjava/