SMTP In A Nutshell
What is SMTP?
You need SMTP service if you wish to send email from email programs like Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail or mobile devices like the iPhone or Blackberry. If you only want to send email from WebMail, then you do not need SMTP services.
If you imagine that the sending of an email message is analogous to the sending of a letter, then computers are "post offices", and the "Simple Mail Transport Protocol" (SMTP) is the "procedure" by which a post office receives a letter or sends it off to another post office closer to the ultimate recipient.
SMTP is used by any program that sends an email message to deliver that message to the nearest "post office" for relaying to its destination.
For most people, there are really only two significant ways to send email - via a web-based interface or via an "email program" such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird. In the former case, the use of SMTP is taken care of by the web server running the web-based email package, and as a result you don't have to worry or think about SMTP at all.
In the latter case, where you are using a program on your personal computer (or mobile device) to send email, you have to specify a "post office" for these programs to connect to such that they can send messages. These "post offices" are known as "SMTP servers".
See Also:
- SMTP Relaying Service - LuxSci High Volume
- Understanding Email Services: What are they and what do you need?
- The Case for Secure Email
- SMTP TLS: All About Secure Email Delivery over TLS
- Enforcing Email Security with TLS when Communicating with Banks
- Secure TLS Email for Bank of America Partners
- The Case for Email Security
SMTP at LuxSci
LuxSci provides its email customers with SMTP servers that they can use with their email programs to send email from anywhere in the world (provided they have an Internet connection). Messages up to 200 MB in size can be sent or received at LuxSci. No matter if you are at work, at home, or traveling, you can always use our servers to reliably and consistently send email any time that you are connected to the Internet!
Authenticated SMTP
For your protection and to prevent SPAM, we do not provide "open relays". This just means that you must configure your email program to send your username and password when sending your email messages. This is easy to do and we have step-by-step instructions that are available to you for configuring most email programs. We also have a strict anti-spam policy.
Secure SMTP
If you are security-conscious, LuxSci also offers "Secure SMTP", or SMTP over a secure SSL or TLS connection. This ensures that your username, password, and message contents are encrypted when you connect to our email servers. No one will be eavesdropping on your outgoing email connections! Account administrators can optionally force all of their users to use only secure connections for SMTP.
Additionally, all of LuxSci's SMTP servers support "SMTP TLS" and will automatically talk to other email servers securely if at all possible. I.e. if we are sending to another server that supports STARTTLS or another server with that support is talking to us, you email message will be automatically encrypted in transit between these servers.
Alternate SMTP Ports
If your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or organization doesn't like you to use SMTP servers from other companies, LuxSci offers alternate ports that you can use to connect to our SMTP servers and thus get around your ISP's overly restrictive policies. LuxSci even provides normal and secure SMTP services over port 80 to allow you to send email through even the strictest of firewalls.
Anonymous SMTP: Hide Your IP
If you are concerned about the recipients of your email messages knowing information such as the Internet address of the computer(s) from which you are sending your email messages, you may be interested in LuxSci's Anonymous SMTP sending service. Read more about Anonymous SMTP.
LuxSci's SMTP Services are complete, easy to use, and part of every email and web hosting package for which you order "SMTP". Please contact us if you have any questions!
What About Bulk Emailing?
Because of our strict anti-Spam policies and our desire to remain off of block lists for the good of all of our clients, we do not support the sending of email or newsletters to large distribution lists from our regular email hosting accounts.
However, we do have a service, High Volume SMTP Relaying, which offers organizations the means to send legitimate bulk emailings over SMTP to their established customer or subscriber base.
