I am building a web application that will also allow my users to register/transfer a domain and manage email addresses through my application. However, I'm not exactly sure how to do that yet. I think there are services with APIs that will allow me to register domain names. However, working with DNS, MX records, email addresses and running an email server is something I've never done before. What do I need to know about automating this process of managing email accounts, and what sorts of solutions already exist?
for the email address part, have a look at How to communicate with a mail server through a web application
the dns part is pretty much the same, but you need a dns authoritative server with a database backend, such as powerdns (database configuration docs)
if you don't want to run the dns servers yourself, powerdns also offers hosting with API access
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I'm switching from a shared hosting provider to GCP. I have a domain name (domain.com), and on the shared hosting I just had to create a new email address in the directadmin panel, and use squirrelmail to send/receive emails.
The problem is: I don't know how to achieve this on GCP.
I have added a new zone in cloud DNS for the domain name, and I have changed the nameservers of the domain name at my hosting provider (where the domain name is parked).
Now I'm looking for a solution so I can use the domain name (coupled to a VM) but also send/receive emails in an easy way.
Is there a (paid/free) solution I can use which isn't very difficult to install/maintain? I was thinking of creating a mailserver with postfix/postfixadmin, but GCP blocks outgoing mail so I have to use a service like sendgrid or mailgun to send email + I still need to install postfix for receiving email. But to be honest: I've never done this before and I don't find any good tutorials about this.
I have a mailgun account and I tried following this (https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/tutorials/sending-mail/using-mailgun) tutorial, but the emails I'm sending are not delivered.
Is there an online service or something like that where I can couple my domain name to, to send and receive emails? I tried to google it, I googled on "external mail server" and "free mail server" but I didn't find any (good) results.
Thanks in advance!
Mailgun sounds like a good option to use, if you're still planning to use it on GCP, check that you've created a firewall rule to allow outbound traffic [1]. This step might be the reason why you're not receiving the emails.
If you need a good guide to set up a Postfix server, you might find this guide useful [2].
I've read that you're already using G Suite [3], this option is great and will ease the process a lot.
I'm somewhat new to this problem so sorry if this is an obvious question. I am building a website for a client which is hosted on Heroku. The client previously had the old website hosted on HostGator. The Domain name was purchased from GoDaddy. The client has a custom email domain (ex. #client.ca). Today I transferred the new website domain from HostGator to Heroku, and everything seems to be working well except the emails. The "#client.ca" emails no longer work. From what I gather, I have to point Heroku towards the Host Gator IP Address in order for the emails to work. I'm not exactly sure how to do this. Does anyone have a solution for this? Thanks!
You need a DNS service like dnsmadeeasy or others mentioned on heroku. From there you need to distribute the different records, e.g. ANAME and CNAME to heroku, CNAME to external asset hosts like cloudfront, MX (and A) to email host.
Am myself in the process of dealing with the "email problem":
(easier) The registrar (domain name provider) offers email hosting, but does not offer ANAME or ALIAS records (common): You can point the nameservers to the DNS service and then point the email back to your registrar. Found registrars quite helpful in general with helping if you need config details.
(more annoying) The registrar does not offer email hosting in the first place or has an all or nothing policy re nameservers (everything with them, or nothing with them, like e.g. easily). In this case you have to find an independent email host. Any recommendations? The setup is analogue.
(perfect) Your registrar offers ANAME or ALIAS records and email hosting. Lucky you!
When messing around with different mail hosting options I noticed a very aggravating pattern with my Android phone. Neither the built-in mail app nor the gmail app supported email auto-configuration.
When using most mail services such as Namecheap, Zoho, Rackspace, etc. this became a real issue. I would enter my email address and password then instead of it just working like magic, it would invariably fail as it attempted to set the mail server to mail.example.com instead of mail.privateemail.com or smtp.zoho.com
I can configure a CNAME entry for my domain to redirect to these servers and successfully connect to mail.example.com.... up until I try to enable secure e-mail (STARTTLS or TLS wrapper). When I do this the domain name on the certificate does not match up to the domain name I am using to access and the whole thing fails.
Of course setting up my own mail server could be an option, but it could take months or years for my IP address to build up enough reputation to not get auto-blocked by major providers like Gmail or Yahoo. This whole past month DreamHost has been unable to send emails to any address owned by AT&T, which has been nightmarish to get resolved. Not wanting an issue like that, I would like to go with a big name for e-mail hosting.
While looking into Amazon SES to see if it would be easy to set up, I noticed this page on secure tunnels to AWS SES
I'm not super familiar with mail servers and I honestly have no idea what I'm reading on this page. Like I can follow the steps to install and configure this program and run it, but it doesn't accurately say what the purpose is of doing this. Am I right in believing that this might solve my SSL issue and allow me to send mail to mail.example.com without any issues? If so, is there any additional setup that I will require which is not adequately explained by this article?
I'm currently using 1&1 and they have a system for managing emails. I need to make sure I don't lose access to my business site's email addresses. What can I do?
When you have application running in Windows Azure and you want to access your application with real domain name i.e. yoururl.com you actually don't transfer your domain. Your domain stick with the same domain registrar whoever it is (in this case 1&1) however you just use DNS or CNAME setup in Windows Azure application so your domain name point to actual application running on Windows Azure.
As far as I know if you are just setting your domain name via DNS/CNAME, pointing to Windows Azure application, there is no changed to your domain and it will intact with your domain registrar and will not impact anything else.
At last, I do have a question what are you doing with Windows Azure as you don't have better understanding about how it is impacting your when you are making decision, so you may need little more info/knowledge about what and why you are using Windows Azure and how it is going to impact your current setup.
Azure has no email system equivalent to that bundled with web hosting by many entry level providers (including, presumably, 1&1). You are either going to need to continue hosting your email with your existing host, or transfer your email domain to someone who offers pure email hosting. Another option might be to run your own mail server on a Windows Azure VM, but according to this post, this isn't yet possible due to networking restrictions: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/WAVirtualMachinesforWindows/thread/18da4da3-ebf3-48c7-9462-12fa4317175b
I have an application that uses Prosody and XMPP to communicate with Google Talk users. I want the app to be able to communicate with Goole Apps users, but according to this document:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34143
having Google Apps users talk to any xmpp client outside of #gtalk.com requires creating SRV records.
My question is: How can my app talk to Google Apps users /without/ requiring them to create DNS records for their domain? (This is highly technical and no one does this.)
Is there some way to trick my server into talking to Google's XMPP server instead of looking for a non-existent XMPP endpoint?
This may require a creative solution.. hosts file, firewalls, special DNS settings... anything? Is it possible??
Have your XMPP server configured to talk to a local DNS server that serves up whatever SRV records you want. I suggest dnsmasq, with a configuration like this:
# Never forward plain names (without a dot or domain part)
domain-needed
# Never forward addresses in the non-routed address spaces.
bogus-priv
# A SRV record sending XMPP for the example.com domain to
# xmpp-server.l.google.com port 5269
srv-host=_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com,xmpp-server.l.google.com,5269,5
srv-host=_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com,xmpp-server1.l.google.com,5269,20
srv-host=_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com,xmpp-server2.l.google.com,5269,20
srv-host=_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com,xmpp-server3.l.google.com,5269,20
srv-host=_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com,xmpp-server4.l.google.com,5269,20