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MXroute Classic - Simple email hosting for your domain, as low as free ($5 setup)
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MXroute Classic - Simple email hosting for your domain, as low as free ($5 setup)

jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

Hey everyone!

For those of you who are familiar with MXroute, you probably remember these days:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140517190254/http://mxroute.com/

We've come a long way, but still some prefer the simple product that we offered back then. For that reason, I've added a new product line called MXroute Classic. It's simple, it's email, it does it's job. The important part is, it saves you money. If you don't need fancy things and you just need basic email for your domain, I've got you covered.

Features:

  • VestaCP for management
  • Roundcube webmail
  • POP3 / IMAP / SMTP
  • MailChannels for outbound mail
  • Backup relay in case of outages
  • That's it.

Things that you might notice missing:

  • DKIM (seriously let it die)
  • Server side filters

With that all said, here are the plans I'm offering. They are a spin on the original three listed at that archive link:

ClassicMXfree
1 Domain
1 Email Account
500MB Storage
60 outgoing per hour (soft limit, enforced only when causing problems, forwarding included in calculation)
$5 setup fee, then free
Order

ClassicMXone
Unlimited Domains
Unlimited Email Accounts
30GB Storage
$10/year
Order

ClassicMXfive
Unlimited Domains
Unlimited Email Accounts
75GB Storage
$25/year
Order

Have fun, and thanks for your support!

Thanked by 1cassa

Comments

  • jarland said: Things that you might notice missing:

    • DKIM (seriously let it die)

    What was the issue with DKIM? Other than, of course, preventing plausible deniability in regards to HRC's emails...

    Thanked by 1im_jmz
  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    @Jarland, where is your provider tag? :D

    Thanked by 1Plioser
  • nhocconannhocconan Member
    edited July 2017

    @randvegeta said:
    @Jarland, where is your provider tag? :D

    Did you click on the Flag button? He abused Admin tag as a reason :-P?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited July 2017

    jiggawattz said: What was the issue with DKIM? Other than, of course, preventing plausible deniability in regards to HRC's emails...

    I've come to a pretty strong opinion of DKIM. It basically comes down to a few points:

    1. If it helps inbox delivery, there is a larger problem. The positive impact is so minor that removing your email signature is probably even more helpful. In this way, the complexity of DKIM outweighs it's benefit in a negative fashion.

    2. Signing email so that recipients know it's from you is primarily something that is beneficial to average users. Average users will not check if your email is signed and passes. Only Gmail users really could be reasonably expected to, but then read below.

    3. There is no real penalty for not using it. So if you use it regularly and someone spoofs your domain to send out a phishing campaign (for example), all they have to do is not attempt to use DKIM. If no header for DKIM exists, then it's equal to not using DKIM, not equal to a DKIM failure.

    So if not using DKIM is not equal to a DKIM failure, then it becomes useless as a means for the average user to know if it's relevant or important that it isn't signed. Only if they use Gmail and only if they expect every sender to sign their emails with DKIM, or if they keep a list of senders that use DKIM consistently, could they accurately determine real vs spoofed by DKIM. The complexity of setting up the DNS record simply is too much for basically no real benefit. SPF is king, but also you should set expectations with your recipients the things you will never send them so that they know what looks suspicious because these days you can just use sendgrid and pass SPF for a ton of companies out there.

  • trewqtrewq Administrator, Patron Provider

    Annndd I have some affiliate links in my sig for those interested or you can visit deploy.email.

    Keep up the good work @jarland!

  • @randvegeta said:
    @Jarland, where is your provider tag? :D

    He even listed a plan with a setup fee. For shame.

    Thanked by 2randvegeta Plioser
  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    @teamacc said:

    @randvegeta said:
    @Jarland, where is your provider tag? :D

    He even listed a plan with a setup fee. For shame.

    Completely missed that!

  • RickBakkrRickBakkr Member, Patron Provider, LIR

    @jarland You almost make me buy a second package to replace my current at MXroute :')

  • I do think omission of DKIM has benefits - specifically, to allow plausibly denying the authenticity of emails in case of a privacy leak, but...

    jarland said: but also you should set expectations with your recipients the things you will never send them so that they know what looks suspicious because these days you can just use sendgrid and pass SPF

    This is a surprising (and disappointing!) lack of leadership in the email industry, @jarland . DKIM validity/invalidity should be better presented across email platforms. In an age of ever-improving spearphishing, DKIM needs to be household vernacular. 8th graders should be taught about this stuff in school.

  • yokowasisyokowasis Member
    edited July 2017

    +1 for DKIM. Being able to score 10/10 on mail-tester.com is very satisfactory.

    Question : Does it have SMTP ?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited July 2017

    @jiggawattz said:
    This is a surprising (and disappointing!) lack of leadership in the email industry, @jarland . DKIM validity/invalidity should be better presented across email platforms. In an age of ever-improving spearphishing, DKIM needs to be household vernacular. 8th graders should be taught about this stuff in school.

    It's not though, and that's isn't by my doing. Argue my points and tell me I'm wrong. Tell me how the average user can be expected to determine phishing vs legitimate by DKIM signature to any reasonable degree, using any or all of the major mail providers.

    The email industry has spoken. The major providers have no intention of implementing it in a way that makes it useful or helpful in determining phishing vs legitimate email for average users. What we want it to be is irrelevant at this point. If regular users using hotmail, Gmail, yahoo, aol, etc. see no penalty for inbound mail that isn't signed then that's it. Nail in the coffin. We've had time, it wasn't adopted in any meaningful way, it's time to move on. We lost this one. Continuing to pretend that it is important, when it hasn't been significantly adopted by any major mail provider in a way that helps it accomplish its goal for average users, is an exercise in futility and an example of a lack of willingness to be an effective leader in the industry.

    You have to know your cards and play what's in your hand. Today, implementing DKIM in the way that everyone would have to for its success to be ensured would mean the end of my influence and the death of MXroute, because it would be incompatible with too many other email services. A standalone email service that only works with itself is useless. This is why I, as a leader who understands his scope of influence, should be focused on something else. I will ensure my survival and the growth of my influence, I will not trade that to die on this hill. This book has already been written. That's why I'm not spending time/effort to implement it in a new "on the side" product line designed for budget and simplicity.

    I'm taking a leadership perspective by not watering down my message and giving in to a useless protocol that no one will adopt in a meaningful way. Instead, I'm looking for the next big thing and I'm telling people to set expectations with recipients so that they know what you will not ask them to do via email. My leadership is based on reality, you're asking me to lazily adopt a feature that anyone could, for a false sense of security. That's not leadership, that's laziness and incompetency. Leadership is not being afraid to be the first one to say "this didn't work, we need to turn our efforts to something else."

    Keep in mind that I do support this laziness and incompetency to some degree in my primary product line, because people want it badly and they're too lazy to take the time to understand it. Because, like I said, growing my influence is more important than fighting small battles that cost me my chance to grow. This product line doesn't need to succeed, it has no overhead if no success.

    Sometimes you have to be brave enough to be the only one willing to stand up and acknowledge that previous efforts, despite how entrenched some may see them as being, have failed. Don't go down with the ship, save your crew and live to fight another day.

    @yokowasis said:
    +1 for DKIM. Being able to score 10/10 on mail-tester.com is very satisfactory.

    Yeah but is that where you send all of your emails to? Seems like real recipients would be of higher value.

  • williewillie Member

    I defer to your wisdom about DKIM but I'm glad it authenticated those HRC emails that someone mentioned.

    Now what we need is a really good FOSS webmail client, comparable to gmail or fastmail. One of these days...

    Thanked by 1jar
  • SMTP @jarland ? With Forwarding + SMPT. I can just check and send the email from my gmail account.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited July 2017

    @yokowasis said:
    SMTP @jarland ? With Forwarding + SMPT. I can just check and send the email from my gmail account.

    Yes, but would prefer you use POP3 fetch via Gmail as it does two things:

    1. Ensures that 100% of the email that arrives on our server reaches your mailbox (Gmail filters forwarded email heavily, as do we).
    2. Ensures that if you happen to be the recipient of a spam campaign that gets through our filters, I am not forced to block the forwarder to save our reputation/money (we pay MailChannels for outbound mail).

    https://support.google.com/mail/answer/21289?co=GENIE.Platform=Desktop&hl=en

  • angstromangstrom Moderator

    @jarland said: SPF is king, but also you should set expectations with your recipients the things you will never send them so that they know what looks suspicious because these days you can just use sendgrid and pass SPF for a ton of companies out there.

    Just wondering: in a couple of words, why is SPF better than DKIM? Yes, SPF is easier to set up, but (in my experience) it's seldom set up as "hard fail", which makes it much less effective as a guarantee of anything. In addition, a lot of the spam that I receive these days passes SPF.

    Or do you mean that Gmail, Yahoo, etc. take SPF more seriously than DKIM as a standard?

    I have outgoing DKIM set up on my mail servers, my reasoning being simply: "In the worst case, it won't hurt, and in the best case, it may even help, deliverability".

  • Quick question. If I send the email from gmail client via smtp, which one do the signing (DKIM / SPF) The Mail Server or Gmail ?

  • hzrhzr Member

    gmail

  • Where can I find the spf record to put in my txt domain record ?

    @jarland said:

    @yokowasis said:
    SMTP @jarland ? With Forwarding + SMPT. I can just check and send the email from my gmail account.

    Yes, but would prefer you use POP3 fetch via Gmail as it does two things:

    1. Ensures that 100% of the email that arrives on our server reaches your mailbox (Gmail filters forwarded email heavily, as do we).
    2. Ensures that if you happen to be the recipient of a spam campaign that gets through our filters, I am not forced to block the forwarder to save our reputation/money (we pay MailChannels for outbound mail).

    https://support.google.com/mail/answer/21289?co=GENIE.Platform=Desktop&hl=en

  • Master_BoMaster_Bo Member
    edited July 2017

    First, DKIM is not a protocol, strictly speaking, just an implementation of GPG-style digital signature.

    Second, I see no drawbacks in using DKIM. Several major mail providers (including Fastmail, Mail.ru, Yandex etc) do support DKIM and insert corresponding headers. For example, when I send an email from my MXRoute account to Fastmail, I see something like this at Fastmail side:

    Authentication-Results: mx3.messagingengine.com;
        dkim=pass (2048-bit rsa key) header.d=example.com [email protected] header.b=VA/vEoTC;
        dmarc=pass header.from=example.com;
        spf=pass [email protected] smtp.helo=cadetblue.ash.relay.mailchannels.net
    

    (I obfuscated domain name). How can an average email user verify the signature? Without smart enough mail client - only by looking in the mail source. However, the absence of proper plugins/whatever or ignorance of the majority of mail users isn't reason just to discard DKIM.

    It has been integrated into all major MTA software (Exim, Postfix etc), and I see no negative impact at all.

    SPF isn't simply enough. It's required, but not sufficient mail authentication feature. A scenario, when a rogue mail client sends DKIM-less mail from common gateway, thus abusing SPF, isn't too fantastic or unlikely. Having mail signature is a way to prove the mail is authentic (at least from viewpoint of MTA). Average users' problems should not undermine the security, IMNSHO.

    So, even if you do not support DKIM personally, please do not deliberately turn it off at MXRoute. Those who wish, let them use DKIM.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited July 2017

    Master_Bo said: even if you do not support DKIM personally, please do not deliberately turn it off at MXRoute

    There's no decent implementation in VestaCP though unless you host DNS with it, so not using it on the classic product does make more sense.

    Master_Bo said: the absence of proper plugins/whatever or ignorance of the majority of mail users isn't reason just to discard DKIM

    I actually submit that it is. It's the only way the feature could do it's job, and it's been made abundantly clear that people are not going to adopt it in that way. Therefore it is an added complexity, especially when explaining to users how to add it to their various externally hosted DNS services, with zero benefit toward it's intended function. If that isn't a reason to ditch something, it being useless to almost everyone and complex for no gain, I can't imagine what is a reason to not support it.

    But don't worry, cPanel continues to support it and I'll pass through their support. I'm just not going out of my way for it, it's wasted time.

    yokowasis said: Where can I find the spf record to put in my txt domain record ?

    "v=spf1 include:mxroute.com -all"

    yokowasis said: Quick question. If I send the email from gmail client via smtp, which one do the signing (DKIM / SPF) The Mail Server or Gmail ?

    Our server would be the one that matters there.

    angstrom said: Or do you mean that Gmail, Yahoo, etc. take SPF more seriously than DKIM as a standard?

    Basically that yeah. SPF helps inbox delivery more than DKIM. If SPF provided a 2% increase in chance for improving inbox delivery, I would propose DKIM provided a 0.001% chance in improving inbox delivery alongside it.

  • sanvitsanvit Member

    Does MXRoute classic have the same spam filter as the original one?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @sanvit said:
    Does MXRoute classic have the same spam filter as the original one?

    It's fairly minimal and can even be disabled. There are some RBLs and of course rejection for breaking important protocol, but content filters are minimal and mostly ineffective. If flooding becomes an issue that may change.

  • sanvitsanvit Member

    @jarland said:

    @sanvit said:
    Does MXRoute classic have the same spam filter as the original one?

    It's fairly minimal and can even be disabled. There are some RBLs and of course rejection for breaking important protocol, but content filters are minimal and mostly ineffective. If flooding becomes an issue that may change.

    Awesome! Just one more question, can I use it for outbound email relay(just personal mails or notification mails from my server)?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @sanvit said:

    @jarland said:

    @sanvit said:
    Does MXRoute classic have the same spam filter as the original one?

    It's fairly minimal and can even be disabled. There are some RBLs and of course rejection for breaking important protocol, but content filters are minimal and mostly ineffective. If flooding becomes an issue that may change.

    Awesome! Just one more question, can I use it for outbound email relay(just personal mails or notification mails from my server)?

    Sure. Should work well for that use case actually. It's standard SMTP user auth.

  • RadiRadi Host Rep, Veteran

    @jarland Check PM please

  • @jarland, I have problem when sending to my own email. I am using mailgun to send outbound email, and using mxroute to receive incoming email. When I tried send email to myself (e.g. from mailgun to mxroute), my mail bounced. It says SMTP Auth Required. Can you do something about it ?

    Thanks.

  • How long is this deal still active for @jarland?

    Been considering giving up running my own mail server and the Classic is tempting (I actually considered it last summer when you were running this deal https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/88163/mxroute-email-hosting-summer-special ).

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @tarasis said:
    How long is this deal still active for @jarland?

    Been considering giving up running my own mail server and the Classic is tempting (I actually considered it last summer when you were running this deal https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/88163/mxroute-email-hosting-summer-special ).

    These deals should be around for quite a while. The server running these plans right now has less overhead than the rest, and hasn't been seeing a ton of orders.

    Thanked by 1tarasis
  • @jarland said:

    These deals should be around for quite a while. The server running these plans right now has less overhead than the rest, and hasn't been seeing a ton of orders.

    My kids interrupted me responding earlier, thank you for the quick response.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    tarasis said: My kids interrupted me

    I know that feel ;)

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