Is there any e-mail server available on Windows Azure out of the box

Question

We are currently running all our web applications in a single Windows Server 2008 R2 server. Also, we host our e-mail server on the same machine as well.

I would like to know what options windows azure offers in terms of e-mail server. 

I can now say that we can migrate our web apps to windows azure but I am not able to say the same for our e-mail. 

Do we still need to keep a separate server for our e-maills?

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Tugberk Ugurlu

Answer 1

Azure does not support email server out of the box.

From http://blog.smarx.com/posts/emailtheinternet-com-sending-and-receiving-email-in-windows-azure :

Sending email directly from a cloud like Windows Azure presents further challenges, because you don’t have a dedicated IP address, and it’s quite likely that spammers will use Windows Azure (if they haven’t already) to send truckloads of spam. Once that happens, spam blacklists will quickly flag the IP range of Windows Azure data centers as sources of spam. That means your legitimate email will stop getting through.

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Paras Doshi (Blog: ParasDoshi.com | Twitter: @Paras_Doshi )

Answer 2

Azure does not support email server out of the box.

From http://blog.smarx.com/posts/emailtheinternet-com-sending-and-receiving-email-in-windows-azure :

Sending email directly from a cloud like Windows Azure presents further challenges, because you don’t have a dedicated IP address, and it’s quite likely that spammers will use Windows Azure (if they haven’t already) to send truckloads of spam. Once that happens, spam blacklists will quickly flag the IP range of Windows Azure data centers as sources of spam. That means your legitimate email will stop getting through.

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Paras Doshi (Blog: ParasDoshi.com | Twitter: @Paras_Doshi )

Thanks for the answer. So, what is the way that people is doing that. 

They keep a separate server for that?

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Tugberk Ugurlu

Answer 3

One option is to use a free SMTP relay server from one of the larger service providers like Windows Live, GMail, Yahoo etc.

Here is an article that explains how to use Windows Live as an SMTP Relay Server - have not tried it personally, but should be straight-forward enough I would think :)

http://www.ksingla.net/2010/01/using-windows-live-as-smtp-relay-server/

 

Good luck.

Regards

KH 

Answer 4

yeah as KurtHeiz mentioned. People use external servers. And in the link http://blog.smarx.com/posts/emailtheinternet-com-sending-and-receiving-email-in-windows-azure that i had shared, the author had used a third party service.

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Paras Doshi (Blog: ParasDoshi.com | Twitter: @Paras_Doshi )

Answer 5

@ParasDoshi, @KurtHeiz

Thanks a lot guys, it really helped a lot.

I have never used an external smtp relay server before. So, if a use one, I am not related to Windows azure anymore in terms of mail server right? Can I do both receive and send through the same smtp relay server?

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Tugberk Ugurlu

Answer 6

Your are partly correct.

SMTP is a protocol to transfer e-mail between servers.  It's not advisable for many reasons to receive email through SMTP on your azure instances.  (You will need to configure MX records). To receive e-mail you will need to connect to a POP3/IMAP (or exchange).

As far a i have found, these are some viable e-mailing options:

• A free SMTP server from Live, Gmail or yahoo as mentioned by KurtHeiz. 
• Your proper smtp server (from your internet provider with smtp authentication)
• Office 365.  Use exchange to send out e-mail.  It costs $ 4,50/month for an account.  Office 365 offers exchange mailboxes as well as POP3 and SMTP connections.  The exchange mailboxes can be accessed using Exchange Web Services. 
• Another solution, but it will require extra development is the Amazon simple e-mail service (http://aws.amazon.com/ses/)

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Dampee (blog | twitter)