feat: added Forward Email to SMTP providers list

[titanism]

Hi there @knadh 👋

We're the team at Forward Email (100% open-source email service) – and this PR is simply to add us to the built-in list for listmonk alongside other closed-source solutions like Postmark, Sendgrid, et all.

Why use us as your email provider?

• Send & receive email as [email protected]
• Unlimited addresses and domains for just $3/mo
• Developer-friendly API for your website and apps
• Enterprise-grade SOC 2 Type 2 security standards
• Automatic spam, phishing, and malware protection
• Supports Apple, Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, ...

What makes us different than others?

• We’re the only 100% open-source provider
• We don’t rely on any third parties (no SPOF)
• Our pricing allows you to scale cost effectively
• Unlike others, your email with us is not stored in a shared database alongside everyone else

P.S. Our full timeline is at https://forwardemail.net/about and our GitHub is at https://github.com/forwardemail

[titanism]

A few other places we're included already:

• Available in BitWarden as of 2023.7.0 release
• Listed in well-known configuration of Nodemailer
• The official Nodemailer sponsor and recommended provider
• React.email guide for sending with Nodemailer

[MaximilianKohler]

I checked you guys out, this is a really severe restriction:

Important: You are only permitted to use our outbound SMTP service for transactional emails. You are prohibited from sending marketing email (e.g. promotional, bulk, or commercial email to a list of contacts with the same content). https://forwardemail.net/en/guides/send-email-with-custom-domain-smtp#step-by-step-instructions

It would be a little misleading to add you along with SES, mailgun, etc.

[titanism]

@MaximilianKohler this restriction is being lifted 🎉 we will ping you back once done

[titanism]

🎉 As of today, @forwardemail now supports mass marketing email. See the announcement posted here:

https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/forward-email-email-provider/13370/209

We will submit a new pull request soon (hopefully today) to add Forward Email as a built-in provider to listmonk!

cc @MaximilianKohler @knadh

[MaximilianKohler]

We rate limit users and domains to 300 outbound SMTP messages per 1 day. This averages 9000+ emails in a calendar month. If you need to exceed this amount or have consistently large emails, then please contact us. https://forwardemail.net/en/faq#what-are-your-outbound-smtp-limits

[titanism]

@MaximilianKohler Hi there! Yes, additional messages can be purchased – $1 per 1000.

[titanism]

@MaximilianKohler Did you have any feedback in particular on that? We only saw the blockquote reference.

[MaximilianKohler]

Yes, additional messages can be purchased – $1 per 1000.

I would recommend adding that to the FAQ. Because currently, the 300/day limit seems very severe and makes you seem significantly inferior to other SMTP options.

On a separate & personal note, I'm currently using SES, so I'd need to see a very good reason why I should pay 10x more to use Forward Email.

[titanism]

@MaximilianKohler

I would recommend adding that to the FAQ. Because currently, the 300/day limit seems very severe and makes you seem significantly inferior to other SMTP options.

Will do!

On a separate & personal note, I'm currently using SES, so I'd need to see a very good reason why I should pay 10x more to use Forward Email.

You should use Forward Email because we are the ONLY provider that is 100% open-source and privacy-focused. After messages are sent, the message is redacted from our system. Amazon SES stores a copy of all your outbound messages. This is a huge privacy issue (and security too).

[titanism]

@MaximilianKohler We are also working towards making self-hosting easier, so you could 1-click deploy to Digital Ocean or a provider of your choice, and not have to worry about paying $1 per 1000, instead you could host your own infrastructure (or just your own SMTP server) with our software and send unlimited (while still getting the benefits of a modern UI and codebase/platform).

[titanism]

@MaximilianKohler Also another reason why you should not use Amazon SES is due to blocklists and poor IP reputation and deliverability. Our IP addresses and entire system has carefully human curated userbase (we block out spammers, monitor in real-time, and have smart auto-retry (in case one of our IP's was recently blocked for a specific MX host/target for delivery, and smart bounce detection). It's quite advanced, we've been working on it for 7+ years.

[titanism]

@MaximilianKohler If you want to avoid issues like https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/16q3pm3/amazon_ses_on_email_blacklist_sorbsbarracuda/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/zepizj/ses_ips_blacklisted_a_lot_lately/, then you need to get an Amazon SES Dedicated Standard IP for $24.95/mo/IP, but this is not guaranteed to avoid deliverability issues

[titanism]

@MaximilianKohler see new PR at #2016 thx to @shaunwarman