Email Server

[cesar98026]

Hello! I am starting a webmail company and got my email server set up (pretty basic at the moment). However, I ran into a problem My ISP blocks port 25! I can send mail but not receive it... My setup is Courier, Postfix, and Roundcube on Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS. I followed this how-to: http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/ I'm have a Dell PowerEdge 2850. Is there anyway to get past this block? My site at http://www.emailyourafriend.com/ Make sure you like it

[HermanAB]

You ordered the wrong account type from your ISP.

Ask them for a 'small business server' account. It will cost a few dollars more and all the ports will be available.

[lisati]

I had a similar problem because my ISP blocks port 25 by default for normal home connections. What I ended up doing was ordering a static IP address, after which port 25 could be unblocked. One thing to be aware of is that depending on your ISP, this can cost extra each month.

[a2j]

Some ISPs offer a relay servers. Works great with a residential Internet account.

[SeijiSensei]

If yuu're starting an Internet-based business, then you need a business-level account from your ISP. It's as simple as that. Depending on the cost of upgrading your connection, you might be better off renting a virtual server from some place like Linode at $20/month and hosting your services there.

While I have your attention, I don't see anything in your list of software that includes spam and virus scanning for email. You are planning on filtering all the mail for spam and viruses, right? I use MailScanner in combination with ClamAV and SpamAssassin, with a lot of custom rules for the latter.

If I were your customer, and you delivered an email to me with an attached executable, I would not be your customer any longer.

[nbetham]

I know Bright House Networks offers relays servers and it is pretty easy to setup outgoing mail to access them, you just have to do some google-fu to find out where they are. If I remember correctly, unless you have a properly setup domain some mail servers won't accept mail from providers that aren't properly listed or aren't proven not to be spamming servers. Another option you could use is an external relay service like http://dyn.com/email/ They will provide a certain number of relays a day for decently low cost. It really all depends on what you want to pay and how you want the system setup.

[cesar98026]

I think I might go with a business account, but it seems expensive (I don't have a big budget ). But virtual servers seems more promising to me. Does anybody have experience with Amazon EC2? Also I do have some spam scanning ninjas too

[sandyd]

I think I might go with a business account, but it seems expensive (I don't have a big budget ). But virtual servers seems more promising to me. Does anybody have experience with Amazon EC2? Also I do have some spam scanning ninjas too

Their micro instance CPU allocation is jittery. Don't use it if you can avoid it . The small instances, and everything else is fine tho

Either use rackspace cloud, or look up reputable providers at somewhere like WHT

Hivelocity is doing 1GB RAM instances for 35/mo. https://www.sparknode.com/order/cart/&step=3
Gigenet does $20/mo instances http://www.gigenet.com/cloud-servers/pricing/
Future Hosting does $30/mo instances http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1171442

There is a lot more here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumd...ted&order=desc

btw, you could simply just use Google Apps (community edition) or Windows Live Domains for mail.

[SeijiSensei]

I really, really, really like Linode. Their prices are competitive, their staff is competent and helpful, and they have a variety of online tools you can use to access your machine. Even if you make an iptables error, for instance, you won't be locked out of the machine because you can use their web-based shell client. You have your pick of hosting locations as well. I have one server in New Jersey and one in California. Both do DNS so I'm protected against outages in one location or the other. (Not that I've experienced even a moment of downtime in two years.) There are other locations available outside the US as well.

[d4m1r]

If you are on a real budget, 123systems.net has linux VPS available for $3/month that should be more than powerful enough to run an email server....I personally use them for my own website and couldn't be more satisfied