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Need vm advice from smarter people then myself
Question asked by Stephen Smith - 1/9/2025 at 7:44 PM
Unanswered
Please know that I am not an expert technician, either server nor smartermail.   I have been administering a Windows server based Smartmail for 15 years and am familiar. We have only 10 client domains, 100 boxes, less then 1000 emails per day.
We have attempted to buy a new SM  license and have SmarterTools staff install on a Vultr, Debian VM instance.  After Vultr unblocked port 25,  the entire installation (by Ray Burd), seems to be working well.   

Maybe.  I am now finding that the reputation of the IP assigned to us is good,  but other IPs in the same block are ranked on many spam blacklists,  and this has resulted in nearly all of the mail sent from this new install goes straight to spam folders due to the vm's associated IP block.

Can anyone offer advice on what I can do about this? 

Changing the IP is not viable, since it is possible the new IP could have associated spammers two months from now.

Is the only way to guarantee your IP reputation is to have your own independent box and IPs?  For our very small amount of mail, the cost of a dedicated server for SM seems overkill on an annual basis.

Open to any suggestions,
Stephen

5 Replies

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J. LaDow Replied
Look into SMTP2GO as an outbound gateway provider. That's what we use for certain domains and for some of our more transactional stuff that we need guaranteed delivery on.  Been with them for several years without issue.

For your situation, it'd probably be the simplest, and most cost-effective solution.  You still handle your inbound - they just smart host the outbound.
MailEnable survivor / convert --
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Kyle Kerst Replied
Employee Post
The best way to avoid these types of issues is to "prime" the IP ahead of time by incorporating it into your SPF and other results ahead of it's official rollout as that gives providers time to get those records into their caches and thereby associate it with your domain/organization. That isn't always possible though as you've seen so in that case: 

1. Make sure you have SPF published, DKIM and DMARC for any domains that use that IP, etc. These will go a long way in assuring third party providers that your usage of the IP is legitimate. 
2. Send messages to test accounts you have on Gmail, Yahoo, etc and hit the Not Spam/Not Junk button on it a few times. This helps prime the internal block lists they use. 
3. If all else fails, relaying your outgoing email through a known good relay service as J. LaDow pointed out should get you going in the right direction sooner rather than later. 
Kyle Kerst IT Coordinator SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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Stephen Smith Replied
Both of you, thanks for your advice.  We have VERY low mail volume with our clients, so this outside SMTP services are going to be only a few dollars each month.  Can you tell me what the DISadvantages to going this route are?  It seems to good to be true.

Stephen
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The main disadvantages are that they could block your service in any of these cases:

1 - you exceed the maximum limit of emails provided for by the contract
2 - one of your users mistakenly sends some emails that are detected as SPAM
3 - one of your users sends some emails that are detected as malicious (virus or other)
4 - someone around the world reports the emails of one of your users as spammer
5 - you do not perfectly respect the policies provided for by the contract (read it carefully!)
6 - maybe other cases too...

To me (with another provider, but they are all similar...) both case 2 and case 4 happened.
Of course they can warn you (you have to tell them who to contact and how in case of warnings) and you can then fix it and have the service reactivated, but if it happens you waste a bit of time.

For the rest, I would say that there are no other major disadvantages
Gabriele Maoret - Head of SysAdmins at SERSIS Currently manages 6 SmarterMail installations (1 in the cloud for SERSIS which provides services to a few hundred third-party email domains + 5 on-premise for customers who prefer to have their mail server in-house)
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Douglas Foster Replied
It sounds like a non-problem stirred up by the UCEPROTET* blacklists.

The list are discredited and should be ignored.   You will only be dinged for the IPs of your server farm, and it sounds like they have good  control

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