E-mails are one of the key elements of a website/web application. They are used in contact forms, sign-ups, notifications, newsletters, etc.

It is a common experience that sometimes e-mails sent from websites go to the junk folders or never reach.

Although it is not always possible to detect the reasons for this, there are several things that we can do to minimize the risk. Here they are:

Send E-mails Through A Valid E-mail Server With Authentication

This is the most important one which you may be automatically offering all the tips below.

It is mostly a good idea to send website e-mails through the e-mail server that will require authentication rather than the web server's SMTP server. Servers that are specifically set to send e-mails generally have Reverse DNS & SPF records, support greylisting ,etc.

Every scripting language offers methods to send e-mails with authentication.

On the other hand, sometimes, using e-mail servers are not enough as you may need to send lots of e-mails but the hosting provider may be applying limits, etc. In such cases, if you'll be sending e-mails through your web server, make sure to check these all:

Reverse DNS (rDNS)

As every domain resolves to an IP address, optionally, IPs can resolve to domain names which is called reverse DNS.

Many spammers use non-existing or dynamic e-mails without reverse DNS records. E-mail servers generally check if the sender IP has a reverse DNS record or not.

How to add reverse DNS records?: reverse resolving uses the pointer DNS record type (PTR record) which you should be asking your hosting provider to create it (check if it exists).

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Xeams is a free e-mail server software that supports POP3, SMTP, IMAP & works in all major operating systems (Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOSX).

It comes with a powerful spam engine which can stop most of them by default & lets you to customize the rules further.

The server can work in 3 modes:

• Full Email Server – no other email server is required
• Spam Wirewall – will be a layer between messages & your e-mail server
• Hybrid Mode – will both work as a mail server & block spams on your e-mail infrastructure

The server is controlled from a web-based interface which also helps you to live-monitor the system.

It has support for detailed logging, mailing lists, customized footers & much more.

The company also offers another free product named Synametrics Smtp Gateway which again works in multi-OS.

Synametrics Smtp Gateway can be used as a backup SMTP server which will send e-mails when the primary server fails or can be used to load-balance outgoing messages.

Today, e-mails are one of the most important parts of a web application as the app. may need to:

• connect to the user's e-mail addresses,
• send large volumes of e-mails,
• detect if the e-mails sent are bounced back or not,
• & much more that are vital for the application to function correctly

MailBee.NET Objects is a set of powerful & flexible .NET components for accomplishing any e-mail related task easily.

There are 6 components provided: SMTP, POP3, IMAP, Security, AntiSpam & Outlook where each of them can be bought seperately or as a bundle with serious discounts (upto 66%).

What are the components?

SMTP

It is the component for composing & sending e-mails with just a line of code.

E-mails can be sent with/without (can perform DNS MX lookups) a relay server & it supports every authentication type.

SMTP component can also send bulk mail + do mail merge over database, track accepted/refused recipients & much more.

POP3

It downloads mail from POP3 servers, parses them & prepares for display.

If wanted, the component can download only the headers & get "already downloaded messages" (great for broken connections).

It also has support for secure TLS/SSL connections out-of-box (supports Gmail, etc.) which is generally a headache without such a component.

IMAP

It is the POP3 component + download/manage folders, search, flag, upload, move, copy messages, download message envelopes or any specific parts or attributes of messages, etc.

Security

This is for enabling MailBee.NET objects to communicate with TLS/SSL enabled mail servers & use S/MIME for e-mail encryption.

It can sign e-mails with a digital signature, DomainKeys and/or DKIM signature.

AntiSpam

Using the AntiSpam component, it is possible to analyze messages using the Bayesian filters, return a spam score & take action (if necessary).

The best part is, it offers an auto-learning feature that will help keeping the spam database up-to-date.

Outlook

It simply makes converting e-mails from .MSG format into .EML format & vice versa possible with a single line of code.

Conclusion

To sum up, MailBee.NET Objects offer every feature that can be expected from e-mail components. And, they go few steps further & enable processing server-side tasks like DNS MX lookups or antispam.

Also, the components are very well documented with samples & supported by a professional company + an active community.

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.

XMail Server Lite is an open source & free mail server with an Ajaxed webmail bundled to it.

It is compatible with Window & Linux OSs with 2 different installers provided.

The server is capable of managing SMTP/ESMTP & POP3 protocols with web-based administration panel.

It supports unlimited domains/users including virtual domains & aliases.

XMail Lite also offers anti-virus integration, bayesian filters (for spam protection) & a logging functionality of all the activities.

The Webmail Lite can display folders/nested folders, has an address book, multilingual & much more.

Tip: The webmail can be downloaded & installed as a standalone product too (from here).

Swift Mailer is a feature-rich PHP mailer library for sending e-mails from PHP websites and applications.

It does not rely on PHP’s native mail() class which consumes high resources. Instead, Swift communicates directly with an SMTP server or a MTA binary to send mail quickly and efficiently.

Swift supports event-driven plugins which offer you the opportunity to really take control of the library and set this mailer apart from everything else that’s out there. 

Some features of Swift Mailer: