I want my emails to work

January 2, 2012 1:57 PM

How do I pick a web hosting service that has an email server that is not blacklisted?

I've been using a deep-discount web hosting service (I don't think the name is relevant and I don't want to be accused of promotion) for hosting a few assorted files, a single web page, and hosting my email needs for a single domain name I own. In short, I don't have particularly challenging demands for a provider. About five years ago, I picked one solely based on price. Recently, my emails have been increasingly returned - or worse, simply not acknowledged at all by the receiving server - due to the host service's email servers being on spam blacklists. The apparent reason recently has been hosting trojan spamming PHP scripts. I am annoyed by having emails returned and am particularly concerned about unacknowledged emails and want to switch providers. However, I have no idea how to pick a provider that provides un-blacklisted email service.

Does anyone have recommendations on a low-price (with low-demand) hosting service that satisfies this desire? Alternatively, are there un-blacklisted SMTP servers I can "rent" for sending email while still using my provider for receiving emails? I have a strong desire not to have the email address changed on sent emails (like Gmail SMTP servers do) and not to have any advertising appended to the end of the email.

posted by saeculorum to computers & internet (7 answers total)

You can use an email service such as Mailgun or SendGrid where you send mail programmatically.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:06 PM on January 2, 2012

What's the budget you are looking at?
posted by deezil at 2:11 PM on January 2, 2012

Google Apps for Your Domain will do what you want, I think. That's what I use. If you trawl through the mail headers, it is clear that I am using Google Apps, but it's not changing my address.

My web-hosting service has really lame web access to their self-hosted e-mail, so they've instituted a one-click system for changing your MX records to Google Apps. Works for me.
posted by adamrice at 2:28 PM on January 2, 2012

While you can use Google Apps for Business for this kind of thing, there are some pretty significant sending limits that might prevent you for using it for this kind of thing.

You might also consider Amazon Simple Email Service.
posted by me & my monkey at 2:59 PM on January 2, 2012

To be more clear, this is for my personal email (maybe two or three emails a day), not business email, and certainly not advertisements. The blacklisting appears to be from other people that are spamming (inadvertently or deliberately) through my web host's servers.
posted by saeculorum at 3:31 PM on January 2, 2012

I use Roller Networks for outbound SMTP and they've been excellent for $5 per month.
posted by nicwolff at 3:40 PM on January 2, 2012

You can stay where you are and edit your MX record to point to Google or Zoho for email. Your web page will stay as it, domain email will get delivered to Google or Zoho and you won't have the issue of "on behalf of..." showing up in the email headers.
posted by COD at 4:19 PM on January 2, 2012