Email hosting recommendations

[tonerpeople]

I have a small email hosting account with fasthosts using exchange. I have had some emails returned as undelivered this week due to lack of DMARK setup on the domain. I know how to set this up now and my problem is that I'm unable to send emails with DKIM signing, which is requard to set up DMARK.

The problem is that Exchange server does not nativley support DKIM. I did some research and Office 365 does support it. So I set up an account to test. When I sent an email it got returned as the IP address from Microsoft outlook was identified as a spam source and grey listed.

So I turned to SmarterMail which has ActiveSync and works well with mobiles and is Enterprise standard. But Im not able to find much information with hosting companies if they support the DKIM feature.

Can anyone give any recommondations of hostings companies in the UK where they have gone through this and have got it working well? (at a reasonable cost).

 

[Darren_Ssc]

What do you call 'reasonable cost'?

I find just using Gsuite for my main email and then whatever option the hosting company offers for less important mail works OK for me.

Like yourself, I'd be happy to hear about a UK based hosting company that takes email seriously at minimal cost but, also like yourself, I haven't noticed any?

Hope you get sorted.

 

[Graham Tyers]

Have you thought of hosting your own mail server?

£50 per month will get you a decent cloud instance and a clean ip address or two away from all the spammers.

That way you can have every feature you want and your deliverability isn't in anybody else's hands ever again.

It's not for everyone but I've hosted my own for 20 years and wouldn't go back.

 

[tonerpeople]

What do you call 'reasonable cost'?

I find just using Gsuite for my main email and then whatever option the hosting company offers for less important mail works OK for me.

Like yourself, I'd be happy to hear about a UK based hosting company that takes email seriously at minimal cost but, also like yourself, I haven't noticed any?

Hope you get sorted. And, when you do, add a DMARC policy record just for good measure.

What do you call 'reasonable cost'?

I find just using Gsuite for my main email and then whatever option the hosting company offers for less important mail works OK for me.

Like yourself, I'd be happy to hear about a UK based hosting company that takes email seriously at minimal cost but, also like yourself, I haven't noticed any?

Hope you get sorted. And, when you do, add a DMARC policy record just for good measure.

Thanks Darren. I have just tried G Suite. It was looking promising until I found the outlook sync restrictive as it only does one email address by mapi. Can't have more and I run multiple email accounts in one profile. Thanks for your input.

 

[tonerpeople]

Have you thought of hosting your own mail server?

£50 per month will get you a decent cloud instance and a clean ip address or two away from all the spammers.

That way you can have every feature you want and your deliverability isn't in anybody else's hands ever again.

It's not for everyone but I've hosted my own for 20 years and wouldn't go back.

I might look in to that a little more. I'm realising that hosted accounts are quite limiting. Can you tell me what you use for an email server and recommend a provider to research?

 

[WaveJumper]

Used several people over the years transferred over to 1&1 IONOS last year have to say they have been excellent, very good customer service too

 

[Graham Tyers]

I might look in to that a little more. I'm realising that hosted accounts are quite limiting. Can you tell me what you use for an email server and recommend a provider to research?

I'm a Sendmail fan. It's not the simplest MTA to configure but it's solid and will handle many thousands of emails per hour without problems. Postfix is just as good. We use Dovecot for IMAP and pop3

Having your own mail server means you can set up feedback loops with Microsoft and AOL and get good visibility of what is going into inbox from your DMARC reports.

You can set up mail responders exactly as you want, Out of office notices, spam and virus checking and even your own custom blocklists and spam filters. We treat mail from the UK differently to mail from places like Argentina, Brasil and China.

All the mail in and out of the business is archived and searchable.

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[arnydnxluk]

It seems given your requirements that Office 365 is the best solution. I would double check your configuration. The error you describe doesn't make sense as emails should be sent via Microsoft's servers and therefore your own IP address shouldn't come into consideration for spam filtering.

Also, consider in the case of your rejected email from Fasthosts that the recipient's spam filter may just be poorly configured (overzealous) if you've not had such issues before, although DKIM should always be configured.

I think you'd be making a huge mistake to set up your own mail server while there are enterprise grade services available from Microsoft and Google at very low cost. You wouldn't be able to match the same level of service, for example high-availability spread across multiple regions (to name just one of many advantages).

 

[Dominic Taylor]

I run most of my mail through Gsuite but have some domains that I run on zimbra instances.

I've been using Spamexperts and Mailchannels for a while after having so many issues with IP reputation back at my old job (Paragon) and with personal servers at cloud providers where there might be a 'bad neighbour' effect.

I guess it's a case of the likes of Sendgrid, Spamexperts etc having a huge pool of IPs where they know definite ham and either just don't let spam through or have good reputations with Hotmail etc.

It's not cheap but it works well and I can't remember the last time I had to deal with a delivery issue - next best thing to Gsuite I think

 

[EmC007]

So we have been setting companies up with Office 365 Exchange Online and a separate cloud based spam filter. We pass the mail through the filter and setup DKIM. It works really well. So many hosting companies are ignoring DMARC and DKIM and it is poor. In some cases SPF is missing.

 

[Optegris]

Office 365, the big G, you would be hard pressed to find anything better for email only to be honest. Once you're setup though chuck an email through this site: https://www.mail-tester.com/ as they will highlight any problems for you. Particularly good if you send newsletters...

 

[webhostuk]

Most of the Cpanel Web hosting providers do offer DKIM support, have you tried to check the marketplace of this forum, many of the providers are listed in offer section.

 

[stugster]

If you're not hosting your email on Office365 or Google Apps, you're missing out. None of the other providers or open-source alternatives come close. Kerio is probably the one that comes closest to usability and reliability, but even then it's not as good as Office365 or Google Apps.

Those who are telling you to host your own mailserver simply don't appreciate (or are unwilling to convey) the risks that entails, the downtime you'll experience, and the time you'll lose to such a project.

For a few quid a month, outsource it to Microsoft/Google and let them manage it with their purpose-built platforms.

 

[HostXNow]

I have DMARC working with cPanel, Cloudflare and G-Suite just fine.

You should not get the error you mention.

 

[itsnathanhere]

I can vouch for Namecheap's own service if you're on a shoestring budget. Not the most feature-packed but it's been far more reliable than any cpanel-based host I've ever used.