Email sending approaches [closed]

Question

In my project have to suggest email sending approaches to my manager. As a part of design document. Following are the approaches available. Kindly share your views on pros and cons for these approaches

Approach 1: Use third party SMTP
Pros: Readily available
Cons: Costs

Approach 2: Host own SMTP on Windows Azure
Pros: ?
Cons: ?

Approach 3: Using Public email Account
Pros: No additional cost or dependency.
Cons: Requires more effort in terms of designing and implementation.

Answer 1

Approach 2 is not recommended by Microsoft, and I am also with that. The main reason is that the chance for IP Address of Azure datacenter to become blacklisted because of SPAM is very high.

Don't quite understand Approach 3.

The highly recommended approach (also by Microsoft) is to use a third party mail sending system, such as SendGrid. Microsoft & SendGrid are partnering to offer Azure developers free and easy way to reliably, securely and easily send e-mail message from the Windows Azure platform. Read more on the link provided. And this is the official reccomendation.

Answer 2

Does not matter what SMTP server you use because all your code needs to know is about the SMTP host, port, secure mode authentication and user credentials. And ofcourse your application should be able to connect to the SMTP host. If your application supports connecting to any SMTP, then no need to bother about what to use. You can very well use your own company's SMTP server or use public SMTP severs like Gmail, yahoo etc.

Answer 3

We use Amazon's SES service to send emails from AzureWatch to our customers. Currently sending north of 3000-4000 emails per day. Works wonderfully and is very affordable.