Backup MX service offers?

Question asked by Steve Reid - 11/25/2014 at 12:55 PM

Unanswered

I am looking for someone outside of our network to provide backup MX service for our Smartermail server which is only for our small company. We have very little traffic.

Do any of you Smartermail admins offer this service? I need to keep costs down so I am hoping it will be cheaper than running our own VPS somewhere.

Thanks

Steve

5 Replies

Reply to Thread

Joe Wolf Replied

11/25/2014 at 2:14 PM

There are several free backup MX services out there, but it's my opinion that such services are not needed for most admins.

If your server is located in your office that might suffer significant down time (fire, natural disaster, etc.) then it would be good to have a backup MX off site.

If your server is located in a modern data center then I see no reason to have a backup MX. These data centers have multiple redundant layers of protection. Even if you had a server failure most can have a new server up and running for you in a few hours. The RFC's require messages to be retried for up to 4 days, but most won't retry that long. There's no way to know the average, but it's probably around 24 hours.

When your primary server is up and running then just about 100% of all messages coming thru the backup MX are spammers.

A very effective anti-spam technique is to have at least 3 MX records. Both the highest and lowest priority MX records are dummies that end up to an IP Address with port 25 closed. Many spammers will skip you if your highest priority MX is closed (they think they're blocked) and those that always send to the lowest priority (nearly always spammers) will also be blocked. Only valid SMTP servers will find the middle MX record and deliver the messages.

Hope this helps.

-Joe

Thanks, -Joe

Steve Reid Replied

11/26/2014 at 6:48 AM

Our server is located in house. The problem is our area suffers from a lot of power outages ranging from an hour to a few. I am just used to having a safety net with a backup mx, also I can reboot smartermail whenever I want.

Merle Wait Replied

11/26/2014 at 9:38 AM

mmm we might be able to assist, we have 2 'centers' so we serve as our own MX backup. You can contact me via gca @ availx.com
MD Wait

Sood Soodio Replied

1/3/2015 at 9:43 PM

Try http://www.backupmxservice.com

Bruce Barnes Replied

1/3/2015 at 9:57 PM

Steve, contact me and let's make this work for you.

Bruce Barnes ChicagoNetTech Inc brucecnt@comcast.net Phonr: (773) 491-9019 Phone: (224) 444-0169 E-Mail and DNS Security Specialist Network Security Specialist Customer Service Portal: https://portal.chicagonettech.com Website: https://www.ChicagoNetTech.com Security Blog: http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/ Web and E-Mail Hosting, E-Mail Security and Consulting

Back to Community Threads

Please leave this box unchecked

5 Replies

Reply to Thread

Tags

Related Knowledge Base Articles