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Mail Transport


Edward
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I have a question i am about to start using Swift Mailer, i decided to leave my email stuff until later on however what is the recommended mail transport system I should use for my eCommerce website?

 

I will probably have to contact my server company to get anything done other than using the standard php mail() function which i have read seems to suck.

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Good question! Arguably, the ideal is to use a third-party to send out emails. For example, I use Mailgun for the Yii site. There are a couple of benefits to this approach:

 

- It doesn't slow down your server.

- Dedicated mail systems have a much higher success rate (in terms on emails getting through).

- A lot less work for you setting up and maintaining it all.

- Problems with your emails going out won't affect your primary site, server, or email. 

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I should add, that I think I'm at the base plan for Mailgun, which is $19/month. I went with them because they let me also send out group emails (like a Yii update that goes to 1,500 people). There are other options, though, some of which are free for up to X number of emails per month.

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Thanks for all the useful information. Its very interesting because when i was hosting with RackSpace we got to use SendGrid and now RackSpace have their own MailGun.

 

So i calculated that if you Larry spend $19/month with MailGun you send out 48,000 emails a months, OMG.

 

MailGun Vs SendGrid

 

MailGun - 700,000emails - $316.50

SendGrid - 700,000emails - $399.95 (A nice round figure :) )

 

Summary: MailGun is the winner that works out 21% cheaper.

 

Now if i was sending out 10,000,000 emails a month with MailGun i need to pay $1699, another nice round figure...

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Oh, no, I send out like anywhere between 100 and 3,000 emails per month, depending upon the month. When I signed up for Mailgun, $19/month was the smallest plans that allowed you to send out  bulk emails. They don't seem to have that listed anymore. 

 

Also, when making a decision, I'd base it upon the number of emails you're sending out today. No use in spending more than you have to and you can always change later, if, for example, it'll save you $75/month and you think it's worth the effort to change.

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Well i just need to send out some development figures, 10,000,000 emails a month was what i was hoping for after 10 - 15 years of my site being up. Any back to reality i want to ask something if we use MailGun do we still need to implement Swith Mailer, or just use MailGun alone?

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You'd use MailGun alone (or use an extension for it). The Mailgun API offers up some of the stuff Swift Mailer does, so I don't think there'd be any benefit, and certainly there'd be some downsides, to using both. I'd also check if there's a Mailgun extension for Yii. Or, if not, create your own!

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Larry like i said i have my domain with NetworkSolutions(NS) but where exactly should we add these TXT, CNAME and MX records given to us by MailGun?

 

I got the MailGun settings to work when my IP was with NS but when i pointed the A Records to my other server where the domain should be pointing to, the setting failed.

 

The problem is though with my VPS I can only find MX records and no TXT or CNAME places to update.

 

I am just wondering what you did, i seem to be in some kind of loop right now where the wheels on the bus go round and round.

 

Update ive spent the whole day on this got no where with it. I will wait for your advice.

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Its whichever server is hosting the DNS according to MG. I hate this stuff its so boring making it hard to absorb, coding is 1000's times easier for me.

 

Well its done now server company added the records for me so that's where they were supposed to go.

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I have just gotten mailgun configured now, finally after 2 days, well it was worth it, its really good. The Yii extension that was made is also great works like clockwork. Well i am very happy now. I did send you an email by the way, did you get it?

 

I feel much more confident now just having stuff on the server, i have gone back and fixed all my layouts and stuff to Bootstrap 3, it works really well when you mix and match things about. And the buttons look great on mobile devices, it took me a while but now i love them more than those on BS2.

 

Thanks for your support.

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One thing i am noticing when testing MG is it can make it through to Gmail but not Outlook. In the logs MG reports mail was accepted and delivered for both. I will try testing it on another few email hosts and see what happens.

 

Ive made my first email template also the problem is when i send it to Gmail it doesn't interpret the HTML just leaving the raw HTML on the page? So how does that work do you have to be friends with Gmail before they interpret your HTML or am i doing something wrong?

 

Edward slipped on a Banana again, i got it working rending the HTML, just the problem with Outlook.com receiving nothing. I think ill contact MG and see what they have to say about it.

 

Things are starting to get unbelievable here, Ive now got 17 browser tabs open at one time with all this coding related stuff. Its crazy sometimes i don't know where i am at and have to think for a minute. Then there is Dreamweaver with up to 10 scripts at a time, talk about multi-tasking.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've got the mail gun Yii extension up and running now it's great. It was coded by a Russian guy he made a good job of it. All the standard mail gun functions are there. It's definitly worth using this rather than standard php mail functions because all the mail will go through. It works well with Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail and the new Hotmail Outlook. I think this is one of the best extensions for Yii.

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