Mail.baby by interserver

Abdullah

Just found this
https://mail.baby by interserver

The best part is Pay as you Go, $0.2 per 1000 emails send, no per-server charge & outbound mail filtering.

Abdullah

I have been waiting for the alternative to mailchannels Jarland mentioned about since sometime...any updates @jarland ?

wdmg

Looks like mail.baby is just their own IP subnets they’re warming and falling back to mailchannels.

jarland

@Abdullah said:
I have been waiting for the alternative to mailchannels Jarland mentioned about since sometime...any updates @jarland ?

Outlook less optimistic

hey

@Abdullah said: The best part is Pay as you Go, $0.2 per 1000 emails send, no per-server charge & outbound mail filtering.

Mail baby charges you $1 per month to keep the account active. This is a nominal amount just to make sure every user on our system is actively using our service. Pay for what you use billing model of 20 cents ($.20) for every 1000 emails sent.

even for a minimum of $1 that affordable, will test them in the future for my little project

AaronSS

I’m kicking the tires. So far so good.

BlaZe

Sorry, I don't promote child labour.

I let the big bois handle my emails (MXRoute)

/jk

Seems nice and pricing is good too though I fear the prices might increase in near future?

vimalware

There's also a $1.00/month account 'alive'-ness fee.

AWS SES is $ 0.1/1000 mails .
If my math is not completely off, that's 144,000 messages/month where SES is cheaper than their minimums?
Edit: actually, break-even with SES volume would be further ahead. Not doing the linear algebra now; Anyone can figure it out.

AC_Fan

@vimalware said:
There's also a $1.00/month account 'alive'-ness fee.

AWS SES is $ 0.1/1000 mails .
If my math is not completely off, that's 144,000 messages/month where SES is cheaper than their minimums?
Edit: actually, break-even with SES volume would be further ahead. Not doing the linear algebra now; Anyone can figure it out.

SES also charges for data transfer, which could potentially be an issue.

angstrom

@BlaZe said: Seems nice and pricing is good too though I fear the prices might increase in near future?

More than possible.

As someone said on the other forum, the domain name was created on 2020-09-11, so this is a very fresh product, still hot from the oven. They first need to build a customer base.

Someone else said that they appear to be using MailChannels for all mail at the moment. (I don't know whether this is the case.)

Razza

I thought they just used Mailchannel as a fallback.

InceptionHosting

I can afford $30 every 3 years without even having to think about it so I just use mxroute, although full disclosure, I don't yet use mxroute because I have had far more important things to do than switch mail servers over all over the place (I have a lot too update) recently so instead I am an idiot paying mailchimp/mandrilapp $40 /month instead.

I should set a goal of being on mxroute within 2 weeks.

sanvit

@angstrom said:

@BlaZe said: Seems nice and pricing is good too though I fear the prices might increase in near future?

More than possible.

As someone said on the other forum, the domain name was created on 2020-09-11, so this is a very fresh product, still hot from the oven. They first need to build a customer base.

Someone else said that they appear to be using MailChannels for all mail at the moment. (I don't know whether this is the case.)

Every mail I sent fell back to MailChannels

@vimalware said:
There's also a $1.00/month account 'alive'-ness fee.

AWS SES is $ 0.1/1000 mails .
If my math is not completely off, that's 144,000 messages/month where SES is cheaper than their minimums?
Edit: actually, break-even with SES volume would be further ahead. Not doing the linear algebra now; Anyone can figure it out.

SES changes messege id and return path, which may break some apps. And this seems to be a MailChannels alternative, not SES anyway. Also SES requires you to change the sending domain to amazonses.com or sub.yourdomain.com which some might not like

Abdullah

Using mxroute for my daily usage, its good.
For DA relay, may use mailbaby.

MikeIn

@AnthonySmith said:
I can afford $30 every 3 years without even having to think about it so I just use mxroute, although full disclosure, I don't yet use mxroute because I have had far more important things to do than switch mail servers over all over the place (I have a lot too update) recently so instead I am an idiot paying mailchimp/mandrilapp $40 /month instead.

I should set a goal of being on mxroute within 2 weeks.

So, any update on your 2 week goal???

AaronSS

Any updates anyone? I am having issues with it right now :-/

laskinforest

@aaronstuder said:
Any updates anyone? I am having issues with it right now :-/

I remember a post a few days back that he switched over.

edit: found it https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/2075/took-a-while-but-les-emails-are-now-served-by-mxroute

sweatbar

So mail.baby's backend is served by Nanny is MailChannels?

DataRecovery

@AnthonySmith said: I can afford $30 every 3 years without even having to think about it so I just use mxroute, although full disclosure, I don't yet use mxroute because I have had far more important things to do than switch mail servers

Be careful with this - the same thing is happening to me for two years already

InceptionHosting

@DataRecovery said:

@AnthonySmith said: I can afford $30 every 3 years without even having to think about it so I just use mxroute, although full disclosure, I don't yet use mxroute because I have had far more important things to do than switch mail servers

Be careful with this - the same thing is happening to me for two years already

Too late I already forgot about mxroute. Because it just works

bikegremlin

I know this is "back from the dead" - but I'm curious to hear the feedback from LESbians who've been using the mail.baby service for longer.

MXroute is just awesome, but it has a 300 per hour outbound limit, and I'm looking for a more scalable solution to deal with forum notification emails (under a dozen per day now, but I fear it will grow).

Is mail.baby good?
Their pre-sales reply was a copy/paste (missing to answer my questions), so it doesn't look promising.
Can you see the stats for the number of sent emails?
Can you see a list of bounced or flagged emails (or at least have those sent to an email address) - so I can check and clear up the problematic user emails?

I mean, ideally, I'd prefer to just have @jarland shoot me an email if I ever go near the 300 emails per hour (over 200), saying: "hey Relja, you'll be paying XX per month to have your outbound limit doubled for that email account," but I suppose that might be more extra hassle than it's worth it for MXroute.

• MailChimp's Mandrill should work fine, but it costs 4 times more, and they want a min. of $20 per month minimum which is hard to justify when just starting.
• Amazon SES looks like more hassle than it's worth for my use case (cost control in case something "strange" happens is one of my concerns too).

Relja SMTP Novović

lapua

necrolesbian but interesting mrs. novovic

JeDaYoshi

@bikegremlin said:
Is mail.baby good?

At least I know that @jarland uses them as a fallback. First MXRoute IPs, then mail.baby, which in turn uses their own IPs or MailChannels.

Amadex

I use mailbaby at our company servers for 2 years. No problems at all.

AaronSS

I have been using them since they came out without issues. Feel free to drop me a PM if you like to test with my account

bikegremlin

@AaronSS said:
I have been using them since they came out without issues. Feel free to drop me a PM if you like to test with my account

Thank you for the generous offer (I'm not being sarcastic).
I trust the LESbian feedback.

cornercase

Been using it since March and had no complaints. I'm not aware of any way to monitor statistics or see bounced messages (outside of looking at my logs) but I went from being entirely blocked by gmail and outlook (no matter how many green checkmarks the various online tools gave me or how many blacklists showed me as 100% unlisted) to not even going into spam. Still the best $1/mo. I've spent (although a little odd that they don't want to charge for a year in advance).

bikegremlin

@cornercase said:
Been using it since March and had no complaints. I'm not aware of any way to monitor statistics or see bounced messages (outside of looking at my logs) but I went from being entirely blocked by gmail and outlook (no matter how many green checkmarks the various online tools gave me or how many blacklists showed me as 100% unlisted) to not even going into spam. Still the best $1/mo. I've spent (although a little odd that they don't want to charge for a year in advance).

You check the logs of the server where the email sending is "activated"?
The MailBaby (Interserver) control panel doesn't show the number of sent and bounced emails?
Or does the control panel show all the logs related to the mail.baby SMTP use?

EDIT:
If I got these instructions correctly, MailBaby requires you add your hosting server IP to your SPF record (thus exposing it to the public if you are using Cloudflare)?

https://www.mail.baby/tips/spf/

"TLDR: Add include:relay.mailbaby.net ip4:MAIN_SERVERIP_ADDRESS to your DNS spf record."

cornercase

@bikegremlin said:
You check the logs of the server where the email sending is "activated"?

Yes.

The MailBaby (Interserver) control panel doesn't show the number of sent and bounced emails?

It actually does, I just haven't bothered to look at it:

Or does the control panel show all the logs related to the mail.baby SMTP use?

Yes, in addition to the above statistics (which include the email addresses in the pie charts underneath them) they also have a log of all the emails attempted with columns: ID, Time, To, From, Subject, Origin [IP], Response

EDIT:
If I got these instructions correctly, MailBaby requires you add your hosting server IP to your SPF record (thus exposing it to the public if you are using Cloudflare)?

https://www.mail.baby/tips/spf/

"TLDR: Add include:relay.mailbaby.net ip4:MAIN_SERVERIP_ADDRESS to your DNS spf record."

Yes, as your link states:

mailbaby servers will look at the SPF record to ensure the connecting server is authorized to send email for the specific domain

In the past I have used servermx.com when behind Cloudflare as it avoids this kind of IP leak.

bikegremlin

@cornercase said:

@bikegremlin said:
You check the logs of the server where the email sending is "activated"?

Yes.

The MailBaby (Interserver) control panel doesn't show the number of sent and bounced emails?

It actually does, I just haven't bothered to look at it:

Or does the control panel show all the logs related to the mail.baby SMTP use?

Yes, in addition to the above statistics (which include the email addresses in the pie charts underneath them) they also have a log of all the emails attempted with columns: ID, Time, To, From, Subject, Origin [IP], Response

EDIT:
If I got these instructions correctly, MailBaby requires you add your hosting server IP to your SPF record (thus exposing it to the public if you are using Cloudflare)?

https://www.mail.baby/tips/spf/

"TLDR: Add include:relay.mailbaby.net ip4:MAIN_SERVERIP_ADDRESS to your DNS spf record."

Yes, as your link states:

mailbaby servers will look at the SPF record to ensure the connecting server is authorized to send email for the specific domain

In the past I have used servermx.com when behind Cloudflare as it avoids this kind of IP leak.

Thanks for the detailed reply - you've explained everything I was confused about.

Didn't get that kind of explanation from the MailBaby/Interserver pre-sales folks - which could be considered as a red flag, but that's only one.

I don't like the idea of exposing the server's IP address through my SPF record. That's another red flag IMO. And that one is a deal breaker for me. MXroute does the job great without forcing the IP address exposure.

Based on that, I think I'll just wait until I get close to the MXroute's outbound volume limits, and pay my $20 for the MailChimp's Mandrill service. Who knows, maybe I'll never surpass the sending limits and save a few bucks.

legendary

Does mail.baby provides white label solution? They have api, but what about spf records and mx servers?

cornercase

@bikegremlin said:
Didn't get that kind of explanation from the MailBaby/Interserver pre-sales folks - which could be considered as a red flag, but that's only one.

It is a $1/mo. service only available to be billed one month at a time with a website that is fairly self-explanatory. I think expecting any amount of pre-sales hand holding for such a low end service is perhaps a bit much.

As far as I'm concerned: It does what is says on the tin and I have never needed support.

I don't like the idea of exposing the server's IP address through my SPF record. That's another red flag IMO.

This is just how normal mail delivery on the internet works, though.

bikegremlin

@cornercase said:

@bikegremlin said:
Didn't get that kind of explanation from the MailBaby/Interserver pre-sales folks - which could be considered as a red flag, but that's only one.

It is a $1/mo. service only available to be billed one month at a time with a website that is fairly self-explanatory. I think expecting any amount of pre-sales hand holding for such a low end service is perhaps a bit much.

As far as I'm concerned: It does what is says on the tin and I have never needed support.

I don't like the idea of exposing the server's IP address through my SPF record. That's another red flag IMO.

This is just how normal mail delivery on the internet works, though.

MXroute and MailChimp don't require that - not for your hosting server when using the service.

legendary

@bikegremlin said:

@cornercase said:

@bikegremlin said:
Didn't get that kind of explanation from the MailBaby/Interserver pre-sales folks - which could be considered as a red flag, but that's only one.

It is a $1/mo. service only available to be billed one month at a time with a website that is fairly self-explanatory. I think expecting any amount of pre-sales hand holding for such a low end service is perhaps a bit much.

As far as I'm concerned: It does what is says on the tin and I have never needed support.

I don't like the idea of exposing the server's IP address through my SPF record. That's another red flag IMO.

This is just how normal mail delivery on the internet works, though.

MXroute and MailChimp don't require that - not for your hosting server when using the service.

Mxroute requires to list theor own spf. And if you concerned by ip disclosure - email headers contsin your server anyway. So bounce back email from your server and you exposed.

bikegremlin

@legendary said:

@bikegremlin said:

@cornercase said:

@bikegremlin said:
Didn't get that kind of explanation from the MailBaby/Interserver pre-sales folks - which could be considered as a red flag, but that's only one.

It is a $1/mo. service only available to be billed one month at a time with a website that is fairly self-explanatory. I think expecting any amount of pre-sales hand holding for such a low end service is perhaps a bit much.

As far as I'm concerned: It does what is says on the tin and I have never needed support.

I don't like the idea of exposing the server's IP address through my SPF record. That's another red flag IMO.

This is just how normal mail delivery on the internet works, though.

MXroute and MailChimp don't require that - not for your hosting server when using the service.

Mxroute requires to list theor own spf. And if you concerned by ip disclosure - email headers contsin your server anyway. So bounce back email from your server and you exposed.

Yes, MXroute requires their own SPF - so does the MailChimp.
MailBaby, apparently, requires their own SPF (relay.mailbaby.net), plus your server's IP.

I'm using MXroute for emails, so I don't see how bounced emails could disclose my hosting server's IP. Am I missing something?

AaronSS

@bikegremlin said:
MailBaby, apparently, requires their own SPF (relay.mailbaby.net), plus your server's IP.

That's news to me. I send from many different IP's and I ever gave them any of them.

bikegremlin

@AaronSS said:

@bikegremlin said:
MailBaby, apparently, requires their own SPF (relay.mailbaby.net), plus your server's IP.

That's news to me. I send from many different IP's and I ever gave them any of them.

So it works OK in practice even withot the IP (contrary to their tutorial page recommendation)?

As far as I can tell, it ticks all the boxes, apart from that IP "thing" which I don't really like.

JeDaYoshi

I feel the mention of "adding your server's IP to your SPF" is just as a fallback in case of your own misconfiguration to send e-mail directly instead of using their relay servers.
I'd say try it out because I don't think people have done this before and get blocked; just make sure that your e-mail headers are not leaking the IP anyway.

Razza

@bikegremlin said:

• Amazon SES looks like more hassle than it's worth for my use case (cost control in case something "strange" happens is one of my concerns too).

On the subject of cost control using Mailbaby going to have the same issue as SES if something strange happens since both of them bill based on number of sent emails.

Nyr

@bikegremlin said:

• Amazon SES looks like more hassle than it's worth for my use case (cost control in case something "strange" happens is one of my concerns too).

Should not be a big concern. Any email delivery provider will suspend your account FAST if anything happens.

bikegremlin

@JeDaYoshi said:
I feel the mention of "adding your server's IP to your SPF" is just as a fallback in case of your own misconfiguration to send e-mail directly instead of using their relay servers.
I'd say try it out because I don't think people have done this before and get blocked; just make sure that your e-mail headers are not leaking the IP anyway.

I managed to get this answer from Interserver - they were clear about listing the IP being required.

Sending limits are 6000 emails per hour - if you exceed that, the "extra" emails are rejected.

For a comparison:
MXroute is the cheapest, but has a 300 / h sending limit, and the account gets suspended if you exceed it.

MailChimp's Mandrill service has a variable outbound limit (depending on the price/account tier) but can reach 12000 per hour, and the emails exceeding the limit are queued for the next hour (need to double check and confirm that). They cost about 4 times more on paper, but since they only sell $20 "blocks", it ends up being even pricier in real use - a lot pricier. The good is that they let you configure the "blocks" so you get notified if you are near the limit (and check if there's something wrong, or you just need to "buy" another "block").

Based on that, I suppose I could either give Amazon SES a try, or wait until I'm near the MXroute's 300 email limit and then start paying for the MailChimp.

treesmokah

Mail.baby is a gem of a service. I do not like the name and "theming" very much, but service is top notch.
Awesome support and service quality.

Name of the service(subjective) is the only thing I wish was changed, everything else was perfect in my experience with them.