Third Party Email Senders

Question

I am sending email from my asp.net application, and I wanted to see if anybody could recommend a third party that will actually send the emails. Ideally they should have some sort of web service available that I can send a request to.

Answer 1

Does your ISP/hosting provider provide an SMTP server? If no, what about just using that, by way of the System.Net.Mail libraries? It's not a web service, but it's trivial to use.

Answer 2

Mike,

Check out some of the following. They have API's that may or may not be of use/interest to you that your application could interface with. I am sure there are others, a few months ago I went through about 5-10 providers and these are the three that stuck for me.

They send out emails to your list for you and provide you with a list of what got through, viewed, subscribed, unsubscribed, etc. The best part of their services is that they have whitelist agreements with the major email providers (hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc) so your emails don't end up in the Junkmail box.

If you wanted to automate the sending of an email through these I am pretty sure you could write an http agent to do the interaction with the website if it isn't quite there in the API how you would like.

www.constantcontact.com www.icontact.com www.mailchimp.com

Each have their subtle differences that should give you a starting point for what you're looking for. Good luck!

Answer 3

I have used http://www.authsmtp.com in the past for an SMTP server. This was especially effective when sending from Amazon EC2 instances. It was great to have someone else manage blacklist issues etc. You should be aware of though with their service there is a limit on number of unique "from" addresses used (upgradeable of course).

Very easy to use the standard System.Net.Mail API's and just specify an smtp server in web.config

 <system.net>
    <mailSettings>
      <smtp deliveryMethod="network">
        <network 
          host="mail.authsmtp.com" 
          port="2525" 
          defaultCredentials="false" 
          userName="ac55555" 
          password="your-password-here" />
      </smtp>
    </mailSettings>
  </system.net>

Answer 4

Mike

I think you have to look at what kind of mails your are sending from your application. If it's only the mail with a password when user signing up for a website, or is occasional sending a reminder from a desktop application, then stick with your business ISP and there SMTP server. Just write your own mailer using the System.Net.Mail.

At the other hand are you mass mailing thousands of people regularly then you have to be concerned about at least two things:

1. Not getting your URL blacklisted.
2. The percentage delivered mails

And just those two things a professional mailing provider can do much better than any one else. On top of that the provider gives you a lot other benefits, so as reports, click through rates, etc. I'm using www.Aweber.com for my own business and have so for years with great satisfaction. For a client I have implemented the service from www.Getresponse.com and they are also great.

I believe those two are the best of the trade, used by a lot of marketing people and Getresponse I know have a api you can program against.

And if you want to support me - here are my affiliate links:

www.Aweber.com

www.Getresponse.com

Answer 5

CakeMail is, as far as I know, the only solution that meets all of your criteria.

Typically, it is used to create email campaigns and send them, and as such it offers all the features you would expect from an email campaign manager. For sending individual emails, you would simply create a new campaign, add the recipient to that campaign, and send it out. You can resend the campaign if necessary. All managed through the API.

It works on a per-recipient basis, instead of fixed mailing lists as the other solutions mentioned require. There is also no sending fee outside of the credit costs, which you would experience with a comparable solution such as Campaign Monitor.

We will be using CakeMail in exactly the same configuration in the near future.

Answer 6

I think I understand what your problem may be. I have a software program that I market and I want to send out newsletters to several thousand people.

Originally, I purchased Spd E-Letter from Pensaworks. It is an ASP script using Access or SQL Server. I installed it with my website and because all the ASP was provided, I was able to add customizations as I desired.

The great thing about a solution such as this is that you are in control of your data. You are not storing your data in someone else's database. If for any reason, they cut you off, a third party will not give you your data back.

It worked very well for me for several years ... until I changed webshosts and the SMTP limits at the new webhost were too low. The ISP limited batches to 50 emails (I think that's the number) at a time and wouldn't let me send out more than a couple of hundred emails an hour.

I looked at dozens of 3rd party providers of this service, from ConstantContact to Bravenet to everyone else. If you were to go with one, the ones that most of the Marketing Gurus use are AWeber and GetResponse. They all charge monthly rates that increase as your volume increases and it will end up costing you a chunk of change, so you better be making good revenues from the mailings to make it worthwhile.

Switching to such a service may be frustrating. Many of them don't let you just add your existing list, but require that you contact all your people and get them to opt in again. Many will also require you always use double-opt-in signups, where they have to respond to an email before they get added. You'll have to consider this in selecting a service.

What I was going to do was find an SMTP service that I can use to send my mailings to. I looked around for awhile but this was not a service that was easy to find. Basically, I wanted someone to accept my e-mails and send them out. Simply an SMTP server.

It so happens, I found out that Plimus, the service I use for selling my software was a partner of a webhost that provided SMTP services for them. The webhost was DewaHost, and you can get a hosting account specifically for their servers dedicated to SMTP. You do need to contact DewaHost directly to sign up with them, but their monthly rates are reasonable, up to about $40 a month for unlimited emails.

There are, of course, others. You can look up "SMTP Server Hosting" on Google but I can't vouch for the others. You'll notice DewaHost quite high up on that list.

In your comment on your own question, you say you'd like "some sort of nice neat online interface which shows all of the emails we sent, and allows me to resend them if the user requests". I think you're running into trouble trying to get a service to do that. If you're already using your own ASP.Net program to generate your own emails and maintain your list, it should be your own program or an add-on to it, like the Spd E-Letter that I used.

If you want an ASP.Net solution, there are several packages available, for example Absolute Newsletter.

I hope this helps you.

Louis

Answer 7

Depending on your usage requirements, have you considered using gmail? Google provides a nice secure smtp service and cool (free) goodies for hosting your own domain email using google.

Answer 8

constant contact http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp

Answer 9

To add to Matt's answer above, CakeMail also offers a Relay API Class that allows for one-off emails. You can interface with our API with one of our libraries.

Cheers, Francois @ CakeMail

Answer 10

Some of the companies that I've worked with in the past include: Responsys, Acxiom Digital, PeopleSoft, Seibel, Eloqua, Marketo, Constant Contact, Blue Hornet, Mail Chimp and Exact Target.

The only 1 that I can verify first-hand as having an API that will actually allow you to send email without logging in and doing something manually via their UI is Responsys.