Good SMTP server on Windows for a production server [closed]

Question

I'm going to have my website hosted soon on a VPS or dedicated server (with Windows 2008), so I'm trying to plan ahead. I wonder whether the built-in SMTP server that comes with IIS7 is reliable enough for a production server or should I look for an alternative? I heard good things about hmailserver and best of all it's free, do you have any experience with using the bulit-in SMTP on a high traffic website.

Thanks a lot for any suggestions

Answer 1

I hit this thread via Google but I was looking for an outbound only SMTP server for transactional emails (customer registration confirmation etc. but not marketing), then some things I discovered are:

SMTP does still exist in Windows Server 2008.

Server Manager > Features (not Roles) > Right-click, Add > SMTP Server - then Configure IIS 7 SMTP to point to the local server.

Then use the Framework to do the business: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.smtpclient.aspx

Jango have a paid for but cheap enough service for exactly this kind of thing. The Free account only allows 200/month but might be useful for some folk.

http://www.jangosmtp.com/Pricing.asp

Good luck!

UPDATE

I blogged about setting up the original MS SMTP Server on Windows Server 2008.

http://www.lukepuplett.com/2010/06/how-to-send-email-from-microsoft-server.html

Answer 2

hMailServer. Free and open source.