What free SMTP service could I use to send emails using Yahoo and Thunderbird

April 19, 2007 11:02 AM

I would like to use the new release of Thunderbird (2.0) with my Yahoo account and am looking for a free SMTP service. I know Gmail lets you use its servers but apparently changes the 'From' field of the message to [e-mail] for all messages. Is there any other service that I can use, apart from my ISP's (I shuffle between work, school and home).

Also, I was looking at a few free STMP server programs like Free SMTP Server and PostCast Server. Are they any good? My understanding is that a lot of times, email doesn't end up going through to the receiver if one uses such 'free' programs, due to spam filters at the receiver's end.

posted by sk381 to computers & internet (6 answers total)

The firewall here at my work prevents me from digging into this too far, but what you are looking for is known as an "open relay public smtp server"

A Google search for that turns up some adequate results, but unfortunately I can't sift through them right now. Might be worth looking into.
posted by Industrial PhD at 11:09 AM on April 19, 2007

I'm not sure that's true of Gmail accounts any more. I followed a "new features" link of mine recently and read:

How do I change my default 'From:' address?
If you would like to change your default 'From:' address, just follow the steps below. Default From addresses are not available in the basic HTML view.

1. Log in to your Google Mail account at http://mail.google.com.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Google Mail page.
3. Open the Accounts tab.
4. In the Send mail as section, locate the email address that you would like to set as your default From: address.
5. Click make default next to the email address.

Once you have completed these steps, you can choose to send all replies from the email address that you have set as your default or from the address to which a message was sent. If you choose to send messages from a default address, you can still select another address from which to send individual messages, too.

Note : when you are sending with a different From: address, your Google Mail address will still be included in your email header's sender field, to help prevent your mail from being marked as spam. Most email clients do not display the sender field, though some versions of Microsoft Outlook may display "From [e-mail] on behalf of [e-mail]."

If I haven't misunderstood, will that do?
posted by Abiezer at 11:16 AM on April 19, 2007

To add on to Abiezer's info, ther gmail address will be included in the headers, but most mail programs will just show the from address (in this case, your Yahoo account). The notable exception to this is Outlook which will display something like "from [e-mail] on behalf of [e-mail]"

(This also applies to outlook web access, etc)
posted by chrisamiller at 11:18 AM on April 19, 2007

Gmail adds a line to the header. It will look something like this:

From: you-at-yahoo.com
Sender: you-at-gmail.com
posted by COD at 1:00 PM on April 19, 2007

I meant to mention that Thunderbird 1.5 shows the additional header line by default.
posted by COD at 1:06 PM on April 19, 2007

I used to use PostCast Server, but I had some of the troubles you mention. Mail that I sent to hotmail and yahoo accounts was blocked and couldn't be properly sent. I think there were fixes if you used the pay version but not the free one. At the time, I had a lot of friends with such accounts, so I stopped using it and got a Gmail account.
posted by bluefly at 1:07 PM on April 19, 2007