Is there a free generic public SMTP address? 1

[35mph]

Is there a free generic public SMTP address that would work from any PC?

As a tech support guy, I frequently try to set up email notifications from popular programs like BackupExec (and SQL Server, but that's a whole 'nother story).

Most of my clients don't have Exchange Server or IIS, and setting that up is beyond the scope of my involvement... but I WOULD like to set up some email notifications.

Is there an easy, somewhat generic, way I can set up a way to send mail without knowing their email settings, etc.?

 

[sab4you]

If setting up IIS is beyond the scope of your involvement at their companies, you can always just install it on your computer.

Install IIS on your home computer and set it up. This way your clients can sent SMTP mail to YOUR home computer, which would then just send it to you.

Then you would be the free SMTP service

 

[35mph]

Aaaah... what a great solution... and probably so obvious to those that know more about IP than me...

Thanks!

 

[Frankenherder]

Why not just use their ISP's SMTP settings. All you need to know is their account name and password and the ISP's SMTP address.

Matt

 

[35mph]

The problem with this is that these are small businesses we are dealing with... most of them don't know anything about who their ISP is, or their account name or even their password... usually somebody else (oftentimes a long-gone IT person) set this up for them. And even if they DID know, here are the sceanrios:

Scenario 1: "Dear Client: We would like to set up email notification for you... can you tell us your SMTP address, login name and password?" Client: "Don't know it, and don't have time to find out... and that's not something I'm willing to pay you to set up for me. We'll just check the backups ourselves every day."

Scenario 2: "Dear Client: We have ALREADY set up email notification for you and you'll be getting an email each morning." Client: "Cool! That's why we use you... because you take care of us."

 

[35mph]

sab4you, we opted to try your solution, but have gone quite deeply down this path, and I'm hoping you can tell me if we're on the right track.

We found that in order to get SMTP service on our system, we had to start setting up a mail server... POP3 service and all... (we tried setting up IIS, but that didn't seem to have anything to do with configuring SMTP)...then we had to go to our ISP and set up an MX record... and that's where we are now...

First of all, are we going in the right direction, or are we way off track? If we're going in the right direction, for now we're having a problem setting up POP3 server.

We created a server called mail.ourcompany.com, then went to our ISP and set up the MX record pointing to our IP address (not static, but it hasn't changed in 2 years...?) We can ping mail.ourcompany.com and it returns the IP address we pointed it to.

In POP3 when we try to add a mailbox, it says "can't find domain." We have port 110 open and pointed to that POP3 server...

Suggestions?

(Thanks a LOT for the advice.)

 

[sab4you]

I think your going down the wrong track.

I am not sure what OS you are running at your house. Lets say your running Windows XP Pro.

Click start/control panel. Then open add/remove programs. Click on Add windows components. Scroll down to the IIS and double click it. This will open the IIS components. Just click SMTP service and it will automatically check the other items required to support it. Then hit OK out of that and install SMTP and IIS parts together.

Then you need to worry about configuring SMTP to relay mail messages. I dont have it in front of me or accessable right now, but from what I recall I did it on Windows 2000 and it wasnt too difficult - not much to configure. Once you get it going and understand, you will want to harden it so other people dont use it (i.e. for spamming everybody)

Once that is done, from all your customers, you can tell them to SMTP to your IP address. I wouldnt bother with setting up MX records and crap like that. Just open port 25 on your home firewall to allow inbound SMTP mail to hit your new SMTP server.

Your customers will be sending an email to your email address and use your IP address as the SMTP mail outgoing address. The mail will be sent to your computer, which will take the email and then relay it to your email address at your ISP. You then check your email, and all good.

 

[35mph]

Gotcha... let me work on that a bit, and I'll get back to you. By the way, this is all being done on a Windows 2003 server, and I've got a T1, but I'm in a shared office environment, so I don't have TOTAL control over ports, etc. I DO have my OWN Linksys router... more later.