Outgoing SMTP Relay

[JackWebb]

Gents,

Lately I've been trying to locate a free or very inexpensive outgoing SMTP relay to no avail. Not sure what is happening in the SMTP realm but there is very little info.. Is this a thing of the past? Many of my apps depend on this for transactional emails or just emails in general. Think contact form on a web page, or to email a temporary passcode for validation, text messages etc.. Does anyone know of a good one that actually works? Free would be nice but I'd be willing to pay a small amount. I have tried all the obvious ones like MailChimp ect.. They no longer have free service and I dont generate enough emails to justify the cost.. I'm at my wits end with this. Any help would be greatly appreciated..

Thanks in advance!
Jack

[jassing]

You could get a cheap hosting solution, arvixe has hosting for $4/mo. Then you could use their smtp server to relay thru.
You don't actually need to host your domain there, just set it up as if it were hosted, so their dns and mail servers would allow it.

I used to let people relay thru my smtp server, but it became to bandwidth intensive.
Google used to have mail-hosting services for free, I don't know if they still have a free tier or not.

A google search for "smtp service" yielded a few options.

[JackWebb]

You could get a cheap hosting solution, arvixe has hosting for $4/mo. Then you could use their smtp server to relay thru.
You don't actually need to host your domain there, just set it up as if it were hosted, so their dns and mail servers would allow it.

I used to let people relay thru my smtp server, but it became to bandwidth intensive.
Google used to have mail-hosting services for free, I don't know if they still have a free tier or not.

A google search for "smtp service" yielded a few options.

Thanks for the tip! I was not aware of this provider. I was hosted with HostGator which I highly reccomend especially if you have multiple websites. They allow you to have an unlimited number of sites for the price of one. In the end I decided to drop the service simply because the very small amount of traffic my sites get didn't justify the cost, which was very competetive BTW.

So I started looking into either free or very inexpensice hosts. I found 000webHost.com which is very good and really is free but no relay. I tried a few others but wasn't impressed. Currently I am hosted with with NearlyFreeSpeech.net which is not free but rather pay as you go by bandwidth. Literally it costs pennies a month to run a site there, but again no relay (and no cpanel) It kind of reminds me of the old days where you did everything by FTP only.

So anyway, 4 dollars a month isn't bad, but I think I can do better. If I find a solution I'll post it here for the benefit of others. Thanks for the quick reply!

Jack

[electrochrisso]

Have a look at ipage.com they are $2.99 a month unlimited, with some freebies like domain registration and online store, looks like the first three months are $1.99 if you sign up within the next 2 days, I have been using them for 2 years now, and have been very happy with their service, and their cpanel is feature packed too. Unfortunately I am not getting paid for this recommendation.

[dhouston]

http://www.softhome.net/hosting/prices.html

They offer full featured email for $15 annual fee.

[JackWebb]

Thanks Guys!

@ElectroChrisso, Ipage loos really good. I'll keep that one in mind I have it in my bookmarks now. In the meanwhile they appear to be about the same as HostGator if not slightly more expensive in the long run. But thank you anyway!

@Dhouston, I'll probably go with this one I don't think one can really do better that $15 per year. Thanks for the info!