Answers.Body: <p>My recommendation is that you pay for SMTP services with a dedicated IP address. Your domain being blacklisted and marked as SPAM would end up far more costly.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-18T19:49:41.207Z
Answers.Text: I'm curious about your comment about our domain being blacklisted. Part of the Sparkpost service is to ensure that this doesn't happen through our Sparkpost settings and DNS records for our domain, all independent of an actual IP. I also get weekly blacklist reports from mxtoolbox.com and we always have ZERO on the blacklist audit. Is there something I don't understand? Thanks for explaining.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-18T20:24:59.213Z
Answers.Text: Free SMTP services are using a shared IP. That means that your reputation is affected by anyone else sending email from that IP. If someone sends out a large SPAM email from the same IP address you’re using your reputation will tank.
Answers.UserDisplayName: KarinG - Semper IT
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-18T20:32:34.377Z
Answers.Text: To be accurate: the reputation of the IP address that you’re also sending from will tank.
Answers.UserDisplayName: KarinG - Semper IT
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T00:12:07.753Z
Answers.Text: I still don't understand. We are not using SMTP through a shared IP for our CiviMail bulk emails. Sparkpost handles that for us with the webhook via the CiviDesk Sparkpost extension. I think we are not communicating well. I purposely have anything to do with sending via SMTP turned off.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T00:43:45.517Z
Answers.Text: @KarlRudnick Sparkpost is sending your mail through a server that is shared with other folks.  If some of them are spammers, Yahoo et al will blacklist the IP of the *Sparkpost* server.  For a fee, Sparkpost will send your emails from an IP address that's not shared with their other customers.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Jon G - Megaphone Tech
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T02:44:39.083Z
Answers.Text: Thank you. I did check that with Sparkpost. Note that their $75/mo plan includes a dedicated IP server on their end. I now understand what @KarinG was referring to. I contacted Sparkpost support and they felt that the requirements they put on their clients and the monitoring they do keeps bad senders off the shared IPs. I can confirm that for 2.5+ years, using their free service, we have not been blacklisted and perhaps the less expensive plan will keep it that way, but I do now understand the issue and will take that into consideration in how we go forward as Sparkpost now has NO free plans.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T18:16:43.173Z
Answers.Text: I have been conversing more with Sparkpost support and their response regarding one of their shared IP's becoming blacklisted is: " If we find that one of our shared IPs have been blacklisted we will work to resolve the issue immediately." Should I still feel there is some risk that our "domain" is suddenly blacklisted because of bad senders on one IP when Sparkpost may switch us to another IP? Sorry for the questions ... I'm a little new to having to deal with this.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-18T18:02:16.780Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2019-07-18T18:02:16.780Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: KarinG - Semper IT
Answers.Body: <p>Have you looked into amazon ses? It's not free but afaik by far the lowest price.
  A couple of steps to set up (and more complicated than others) but works well. </p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T00:15:40.280Z
Answers.Text: Thanks, netzih. I have not looked into that yet, but was wondering if others were using amazon ses. Are the steps for Civi integration documented somewhere? If so, please point me to it or maybe explain the steps in detail here. Appreciated.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T07:47:36.143Z
Answers.Text: I use it. There is an Amazon ses extension and it basically involves setting up an sns in Amazon and put the site we hook into the sns and configure it to send notifications to that topic. I know I'm not being so clear but if you end up wanting to do it I'd be happy to help you with the steps I did to set it up.
Answers.UserDisplayName: netzih
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T07:51:33.660Z
Answers.Text: Sorry forgot to link the extension https://github.com/mecachisenros/civicrm-ses
Answers.UserDisplayName: netzih
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T15:21:08.160Z
Answers.Text: Regarding KarinG's answer recommending a dedicated IP, does Amazon ses also give you that or is it run off a shared IP pool like the less expensive Sparkpost plan? Thanks for the link to the extension.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-19T18:30:52.670Z
Answers.Text: Amazon SES offers dedicated IP I think it is under $30 a month for the IP. I also just saw another extension that might integrate with SES (which has more details regarding set up) it's https://github.com/aghstrategies/com.aghstrategies.airmail
Answers.UserDisplayName: netzih
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-20T06:32:01.577Z
Answers.Text: netzih - Thanks for the extra extension, too. I just created an AWS account. What is the best way for you to share the steps you took to set things up? I have a separate test subdomain where I can try things out without upsetting our live site for now. Thanks for any help. I'm totally new to AWS, but pretty good at following directions/documentation.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-21T06:11:06.810Z
Answers.Text: Looks like I did it a little backwards after reading the instructions on the second extension link it seems much simpler.. Go to AWS under your domain settings there is a notifications there. click it and you'll see somewhere there to create topic. Create topic there and set the Bounce and complaints to go to that topic. Once done go the simple notification service in AWS (called SNS) and find that topic that you created.  Open the topic and add the endpoint which you can find in the first extension Iv'e referenced. and paste it there. That should be it.
Answers.UserDisplayName: netzih
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-18T23:02:43.973Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2019-07-18T23:02:43.973Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: netzih
Answers.Body: <p>Two weeks ago I would suggest Mailgun but the plugin supplied for webhook settings <a href="https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/31263/bounce-processing-webhook-gets-error-failed-to-verify-signature-in-mailgun/31291#31291">seems to be updated to work</a> for new CiviCRM versions.</p>
  
  <p>But if you somehow make it work (and so integrate the service with Civi successfully) the service itself is quite successful for most of the mail providers.</p>
  
  <p>Here comes the last two weeks... Yahoo (and AOL) domains keep rejecting the newsletter I sent because I was sharing an IP with some bad players. People at Mailgun are quite helpful and respond very quickly. They've changed the IP assigned to our account and the mails were accepted, but in another bulk sending, we had the problem all over again.</p>
  
  <p>So I was tired of trying out providers and set up a postfix myself, I'm sending my mails with my own server. It needs maintenance and a bit experience to set it up but I think it was worth the effort. I can compare better in few months when new mailings will be sent.</p>
  
  <p>The ironic part is, Yahoo has a <a href="https://help.yahoo.com/kb/postmaster/yahoo-complaint-feedback-loop-program-sln3438.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">program</a> for bulk mailers and I had to enroll to that in order to have some positive reputation for my server and it was not based on IP address. So maybe I could try to add my domain to the program while I was using Mailgun and it could change something but I was already done a lot in server side, so this worked for me...</p>
  
  <p>Hope it helps...</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-18T17:45:41.097Z
Answers.Text: Thanks for the advice. Because the Staff that uses CiviCRM daily is not too technical, your DIY approach won't really work with us and Mailgun sounds awfully sketchy, plus would not be that different, cost-wise, than Sparkpost on months where we might have heavy emailings, since we have about 6,000 contacts in our largest mailing lists. Also, our domain has a solid reputation with with Sparkpost via DKIM and their other recommendations. So my inclination is to just go with the $30/mo and pay a little extra some months. It has worked perfectly for us for 2.5+ years.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-07-18T13:47:01.133Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2019-07-18T13:47:01.133Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: loker
Body: <p>We have just been informed by Sparkpost that their free service which gave us up to 100k/mo emails with a max of 25k/day will be discontinued. We use the CiviDesk Sparkpost extension 1.3 on CiviCRM 5.12.4 under WordPress 5.2.2. The new Sparkpost pricing plans are shown at <a href="https://www.sparkpost.com/pricing/us/" rel="noreferrer">https://www.sparkpost.com/pricing/us/</a>. We are borderline between the 50K/mo Starter plan (almost all months average ~25k/mo but we have peaks that go slightly over) and the 100K/mo Premier plan. These 2 plans are respectively priced at $30/mo and $75/mo US$. My main question concerns whether the webhooks that the CiviDesk extension uses work without change regardless of which plan chosen. Is anyone else in a similar boat and considering changing their mail service? We've only used Sparkpost from the get-go and would entertain comparably priced services that other CiviCRM sites recommend. Thanks to anyone for any advice.</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2019-07-15T22:20:19.233Z
Comments.Text: I also noted this 2016 blog https://civicrm.org/blog/andrewhunt/alternatives-to-mandrill that was created ~3 years ago when the mandrill free service disappeared. A current update to that blog, taking into account current Sparkpost and other pricing would be super useful.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2019-07-16T21:38:29.363Z
Comments.Text: I should have added that we are very happy with Sparkpost and the CiviDesk extension. Very easy to setup, maintain, etc. Changing services is our least favorite option unless we can save significantly. So our main question is if we select the less expensive $30/mo service, is the change in our account completely transparent to our CiviCRM configuration?
Comments.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2019-07-16T22:14:43.917Z
Comments.Text: This is an answer to my question about continuing with Sparkpost, just switching to either paid plan. I queried Spakpost support and got this response: "Thanks for writing in! Nothing in your account will change except your billing, so your present configuration with CiviCRM should remain in place." Has anyone else made the switch to confirm it was transparent and as painless as Sparkpost claims?
Comments.UserDisplayName: Karl Rudnick
Tags: <civimail><sparkpost>
Title: Sparkpost service no longer free - any recommendations?
ThreadText: # Sparkpost service no longer free - any recommendations?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2019-07-15)
  
  We have just been informed by Sparkpost that their free service which gave us up to 100k/mo emails with a max of 25k/day will be discontinued. We use the CiviDesk Sparkpost extension 1.3 on CiviCRM 5.12.4 under WordPress 5.2.2. The new Sparkpost pricing plans are shown at <https://www.sparkpost.com/pricing/us/>. We are borderline between the 50K/mo Starter plan (almost all months average ~25k/mo but we have peaks that go slightly over) and the 100K/mo Premier plan. These 2 plans are respectively priced at $30/mo and $75/mo US$. My main question concerns whether the webhooks that the CiviDesk extension uses work without change regardless of which plan chosen. Is anyone else in a similar boat and considering changing their mail service? We've only used Sparkpost from the get-go and would entertain comparably priced services that other CiviCRM sites recommend. Thanks to anyone for any advice.
  
  **Tags:** civimail, sparkpost
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: I also noted this 2016 blog https://civicrm.org/blog/andrewhunt/alternatives-to-mandrill that was created ~3 years ago when the mandrill free service disappeared. A current update to that blog, taking into account current Sparkpost and other pricing would be super useful.  
  > **username_0**: I should have added that we are very happy with Sparkpost and the CiviDesk extension. Very easy to setup, maintain, etc. Changing services is our least favorite option unless we can save significantly. So our main question is if we select the less expensive $30/mo service, is the change in our account completely transparent to our CiviCRM configuration?  
  > **username_0**: This is an answer to my question about continuing with Sparkpost, just switching to either paid plan. I queried Spakpost support and got this response: "Thanks for writing in! Nothing in your account will change except your billing, so your present configuration with CiviCRM should remain in place." Has anyone else made the switch to confirm it was transparent and as painless as Sparkpost claims?  
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2019-07-18. Score: 1
  
  My recommendation is that you pay for SMTP services with a dedicated IP address. Your domain being blacklisted and marked as SPAM would end up far more costly.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: I'm curious about your comment about our domain being blacklisted. Part of the Sparkpost service is to ensure that this doesn't happen through our Sparkpost settings and DNS records for our domain, all independent of an actual IP. I also get weekly blacklist reports from mxtoolbox.com and we always have ZERO on the blacklist audit. Is there something I don't understand? Thanks for explaining.  
  > **username_1**: Free SMTP services are using a shared IP. That means that your reputation is affected by anyone else sending email from that IP. If someone sends out a large SPAM email from the same IP address you’re using your reputation will tank.  
  > **username_1**: To be accurate: the reputation of the IP address that you’re also sending from will tank.  
  > **username_0**: I still don't understand. We are not using SMTP through a shared IP for our CiviMail bulk emails. Sparkpost handles that for us with the webhook via the CiviDesk Sparkpost extension. I think we are not communicating well. I purposely have anything to do with sending via SMTP turned off.  
  > **username_2**: @username_0 Sparkpost is sending your mail through a server that is shared with other folks.  If some of them are spammers, Yahoo et al will blacklist the IP of the *Sparkpost* server.  For a fee, Sparkpost will send your emails from an IP address that's not shared with their other customers.  
  > **username_0**: Thank you. I did check that with Sparkpost. Note that their $75/mo plan includes a dedicated IP server on their end. I now understand what @username_1 was referring to. I contacted Sparkpost support and they felt that the requirements they put on their clients and the monitoring they do keeps bad senders off the shared IPs. I can confirm that for 2.5+ years, using their free service, we have not been blacklisted and perhaps the less expensive plan will keep it that way, but I do now understand the issue and will take that into consideration in how we go forward as Sparkpost now has NO free plans.  
  > **username_0**: I have been conversing more with Sparkpost support and their response regarding one of their shared IP's becoming blacklisted is: " If we find that one of our shared IPs have been blacklisted we will work to resolve the issue immediately." Should I still feel there is some risk that our "domain" is suddenly blacklisted because of bad senders on one IP when Sparkpost may switch us to another IP? Sorry for the questions ... I'm a little new to having to deal with this.  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2019-07-18. Score: 1
  
  Have you looked into amazon ses? It's not free but afaik by far the lowest price.
  A couple of steps to set up (and more complicated than others) but works well.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: Thanks, username_3. I have not looked into that yet, but was wondering if others were using amazon ses. Are the steps for Civi integration documented somewhere? If so, please point me to it or maybe explain the steps in detail here. Appreciated.  
  > **username_3**: I use it. There is an Amazon ses extension and it basically involves setting up an sns in Amazon and put the site we hook into the sns and configure it to send notifications to that topic. I know I'm not being so clear but if you end up wanting to do it I'd be happy to help you with the steps I did to set it up.  
  > **username_3**: Sorry forgot to link the extension https://github.com/mecachisenros/civicrm-ses  
  > **username_0**: Regarding username_1's answer recommending a dedicated IP, does Amazon ses also give you that or is it run off a shared IP pool like the less expensive Sparkpost plan? Thanks for the link to the extension.  
  > **username_3**: Amazon SES offers dedicated IP I think it is under $30 a month for the IP. I also just saw another extension that might integrate with SES (which has more details regarding set up) it's https://github.com/aghstrategies/com.aghstrategies.airmail  
  > **username_0**: username_3 - Thanks for the extra extension, too. I just created an AWS account. What is the best way for you to share the steps you took to set things up? I have a separate test subdomain where I can try things out without upsetting our live site for now. Thanks for any help. I'm totally new to AWS, but pretty good at following directions/documentation.  
  > **username_3**: Looks like I did it a little backwards after reading the instructions on the second extension link it seems much simpler.. Go to AWS under your domain settings there is a notifications there. click it and you'll see somewhere there to create topic. Create topic there and set the Bounce and complaints to go to that topic. Once done go the simple notification service in AWS (called SNS) and find that topic that you created.  Open the topic and add the endpoint which you can find in the first extension Iv'e referenced. and paste it there. That should be it.  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2019-07-18. Score: 1
  
  Two weeks ago I would suggest Mailgun but the plugin supplied for webhook settings [seems to be updated to work](https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/31263/bounce-processing-webhook-gets-error-failed-to-verify-signature-in-mailgun/31291#31291) for new CiviCRM versions.
  
  But if you somehow make it work (and so integrate the service with Civi successfully) the service itself is quite successful for most of the mail providers.
  
  Here comes the last two weeks... Yahoo (and AOL) domains keep rejecting the newsletter I sent because I was sharing an IP with some bad players. People at Mailgun are quite helpful and respond very quickly. They've changed the IP assigned to our account and the mails were accepted, but in another bulk sending, we had the problem all over again.
  
  So I was tired of trying out providers and set up a postfix myself, I'm sending my mails with my own server. It needs maintenance and a bit experience to set it up but I think it was worth the effort. I can compare better in few months when new mailings will be sent.
  
  The ironic part is, Yahoo has a [program](https://help.yahoo.com/kb/postmaster/yahoo-complaint-feedback-loop-program-sln3438.html) for bulk mailers and I had to enroll to that in order to have some positive reputation for my server and it was not based on IP address. So maybe I could try to add my domain to the program while I was using Mailgun and it could change something but I was already done a lot in server side, so this worked for me...
  
  Hope it helps...
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: Thanks for the advice. Because the Staff that uses CiviCRM daily is not too technical, your DIY approach won't really work with us and Mailgun sounds awfully sketchy, plus would not be that different, cost-wise, than Sparkpost on months where we might have heavy emailings, since we have about 6,000 contacts in our largest mailing lists. Also, our domain has a solid reputation with with Sparkpost via DKIM and their other recommendations. So my inclination is to just go with the $30/mo and pay a little extra some months. It has worked perfectly for us for 2.5+ years.  
  
  ---
  
  