Oppose with what many said, delivery to gmail.com is easisest. Now, where it's land is another question. Their spam filtering also very quick to learn.
icloud and hotmail are the worst because no way to get unblocked. You just fill in the form and wait in the dark. If you got luckly enough, they work on your ticket and unblock the ip. And here is the thing, they outright reject connection so your email cannot event reach the spam inbox.
So when launch a new IP, you should check on https://ipcheck.proofpoint.com and https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/data.a...
Any host providers that are cheap are most liklely has their IP blocked by proofpoint or microsoft already.
My strategy was to use server on Hetzner, then try to buy float IP then I can attach to any server. I have to try like 40 before I was able to get a pair of IP that aren't blocked by proofpoint/outlook.
Then I tried to warm up and build reputation by having a bunch of inbox email each others like 100 email per day then up to 1000 email per day.
Even with that I got blocked by proofpoint for no reason time by time...
So it's hard but with right strategy you can still do it. Just take more time and plan to build up and keep good reputation of your IPs.
Last I checked (which was a while ago), APNIC has enough IPs to give new applicants two /24s with justification which will get you started without spending a lot of time/money in the IP resale market. If you're in ARIN or the RIPE regions I think you need to go to the market (but also need to justify, so you're looking for a single /24 to start). I don't know of it's accurate, but blog posts and auction sites seem to show about $15,000 for a /24, which is kind of a lot, but doable. You'll also need to arrange some hosting somewhere that you can credibly BGP with at least two networks to justify having an AS... There are some providers that will tunnel you to an internet exchange point and services like Vultr that might help you get started without a lot of investment.
And you'll need to learn BGP on the job. But I think you can do a lot with a simple unix box, you may not need a giant cisco router these days.
When forwarding email, we are receiving email from unknow domains. If we rewrite the FROM headers then the DKIM will invalid, so service will have to rewrite the FROM and clear out DKIM.
This is a well-known SES issue and project has to work around https://github.com/arithmetric/aws-lambda-ses-forwarder
``` For example, if an email sent by Jane Example <jane@example.com> to info@example.com is processed by this script, the From and Reply-To headers will be set to:
From: Jane Example at jane@example.com <info@example.com> Reply-To: jane@example.com To override this behavior, set a verified fromEmail address (e.g., noreply@example.com) in the config object and the header will look like this. ```
We want to forward email as it is and retain everything so we have to run our own postix in order to do that.
But if I can offer a suggestion, it sounds like you were blocked by proofpoint while actively trying to spoof legitimate traffic in order to avoid detection by proofpoint. That's hardly "no reason at all," despite your having the best of intentions.
Even though all the docs and technology is there, you really can't do it without the help of a big company like Amazon due to the following reasons:
- almost all residential ips are blocked.
- most data center ips are mostly blocked because there are like 100s of blacklists and every blacklist has it's own unique way of getting delisted.
- every big email provider has its own version of FBL and it's often a big black box. For example till date gmail won't even give Amazon access to its fbl(1)
- spam filtering is not an exact science and while there are things like spf, dkim, dmarc etc to ensure the authenticity of message at the end of the day it all comes down to your reputation as a sender and managing it is nothing short of a full time job.
(1) https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=257487
Genuine questions, how do companies like Mailchimp get started then?
If you were to try to start one today, I suppose you could rely on sending via another company like Amazon until you have a big enough customer base, then roll out your own infrastructure.
Mailchip is 20. Campaign Monitor is 17 (and have been buying up other email related companies/brands for years). SendGrid is about 12. Mailgun is 11.
There's a lot of competition out there, and it's not easy to overcome all the blocklist challenges - paying customers aren't willing for you to experiment with their customer's getting their email.
"Everything is hard at scale."
Agreed. I think the hardest part is getting started; folks not familiar with hosting their own email just don't have as much awareness of what to do and how to do it. But take a bit of time to learn, get a reputable ISP, don't spam people, and you can do just fine without too much effort. I got a cheap VPS specifically to host email, and the worst I've had to do is fill out a Spamhaus form one time.
The number one thing you are selling is deliverability. The second thing you are selling is the tracking (opens, bounces, unsubscribes, etc.). Next, you are selling segmentation for subscriber lists (i.e being able to send the right message to the right consumer at the right time). You have to be diligent about your customers too, because if you are letting bad actors use your system... there goes your reputation and there goes your business.
But deliverability is the key. We had relationships with ISPs so we could fix $MAJOR_CORP's million email pre-holiday sales campaign while it was sending and we staffed the teams to do that, 24/7. This had nothing to do with programming and everything to do with company mission, reputation, contacts at Google, MSN, Yahoo, ..., and the history of having done it. We were "lucky" enough to have started as the industry matured.
* I say "lucky" because the founder's really caught this vision at the right time (2000/2001) and made it happen.
The value in what Mailchimp does is not so much just sending email, but in all the things around it, like managing subscribers, tracking opens, easily creating nice-looking emails that look good in a variety of mail clients, etc.
Contrary to some of the replies you've received here, it definitely is possible to run your own mail server with good deliverability, and we routinely did this for companies, even fairly small ones, physically on-prem and in datacenters, and cloud. It is not trivial, but far from impossible, and will likely involve communicating with a human when getting a static IP to find a good one. With that being said, I do not recommend you run your own mail server starting out, that is probably not the problem you are trying to solve.
My own assumption about why the system doesn't work.
Sorry if the question is a bit noob, feel free to point me at any resources and I can do some reading myself too
Once you get big enough, you can consider buying an IP address prefix, getting your Autonomous System number, setting up peering, etc. For example Mailchimp seems to have AS14782.
You also need to monitor your customers to make sure they aren’t doing things that will get you blocked.
It will always be a dance. I own a small IT company in the UK and have always managed to run local SMTP. I've done it for about 22 years. I could not run a Mail Chimp.
For starters, I could not live with myself! I don't do spam. MailChimp is a spammer for hire by definition. Your idea of spam and mine may be different. OK: Unsolicited Bulk Email is the key phrase. At which point are you solicited or unsolicited? Opt out or opt in? Where do you get your lists and how do you monetize this beast? How do you vet your customers or do you even care? What standards of ethics do you ascribe to?
I could possibly create another MailChimp because I know rather a lot about SMTP and own a fair few IPv4s and could cycle them and I'm fairly IPv6 savvy so I'll use that to get some more mileage. I know DMARC/DKIM/SPF and all the rest and can play those little games to up the authenticity score.
Can't be arsed to spam the world. I prefer to host recipients than senders.
So asking "How do I start my own spamming service and not get spamlisted" is kind of a silly question.
Mailchimp emails are well known for having 1 click unsubcribe by default.
There has been a huge resurgence in email newsletters for companies and content creators to have a direct relationship with their audience.
Mailchimp have done well because email seems to continually survive as a medium.
I’d guess that’s for personal, product, and customer service emails respectively.