If you're setting up a system that sends transactional emails (like ticket, status, or alert systems) or you're setting up a new device that needs to send emails (like a scanner, an MFP, a NAS, or other app) do yourself a huge favor and use a purpose-built SMTP solution. I think that they're a much better than using a shared mailbox in your primary email tenant, and definitely much better than setting up a free example-scanner-email@gmail.com address for the Brother printer to send from. Here’s why.
Transactional emails are not like regular email and not like email blasts. SMTP providers are highly interested in their customer’s emails getting delivered. They know how to make sure that your emails don’t end up in spam folders or blocked outright.
Transactional emails look more like spam than regular mail and you don’t want your regular SMTP server to get caught up in a blocklist that might block your transactional emails. You can always whitelist the SMTP service for your clients, you can’t whitelist your primary email system for new sales leads.
Using an SMTP service makes it very easy to set up a scanner, NAS, alert device, without needing to worry about tunnels, static IPs, simple authentication, or extra licenses in your regular email system.
You don’t need to worry about what email service is being used, if there’s a spare license, or who has the admin credentials. As long as you can point a DNS record for SPF, you’ve got outgoing email in 4 minutes.
Some older devices/services will only send out mail on port 25 or with insecure SMTP. You can safely set those devices up without having to turn on insecure authentication for your entire domain, or expose your one shared transactional email account credentials. Make a set of credentials just for that device and if those credentials leak, there’s little risk elsewhere.
As above, you’re likely to put those SMTP creds into devices and systems that are less than totally secure (admin/admin on copiers that you can’t change) or not entirely in your control. If the one SMTP user creds are stolen, all they can do is send a limited amount of email, not read historical email, and not receive replies. You can expire those SMTP creds, make new ones, and go on with your day without worrying about what kind of foothold they might have gotten in your primary email system through that compromised account.
MFA and modern authentication methods are being required more and more across all accounts in business productivity suites like Microsoft 365 and G Suite. Simple SMTP authentication is on the chopping block and enabling it could be contrary to cyber insurance or regulatory needs.
Dedicated services will have monitoring and analytics to give you visibility into things like bounce rate, open rate, click-though rate, etc.
Regular SMTP services don't want you sending bulk or transactional mail through their servers. They will limit the number of messages you can send and the number of recipients. If something goes wrong, you can't count on them wanting to help you out with it. Dedicated SMTP services have customer support teams to help you resolve your issues quickly and without friction.
SMTP2GO: https://www.smtp2go.com/
PostMark: https://postmarkapp.com/
SendGrid: https://sendgrid.com/
MailJet: https://www.mailjet.com/
turboSMTP: https://serversmtp.com/
Amazon SES: https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
My personal favorite is SMTP2GO for its generous free tier, the price/volume once you upgrade, reporting, and ease of use.
There’s a few reasons why you might want to use an email account in your primary email service anyways. They might not apply in all use cases, but they might apply in yours.
This free set of opinions is provided by Datalys IT. Need high quality IT support & service in Houston, TX? Give us a call.