Questions about email (after browsing mail.baby's page)

mendozal

I was looking at mail.baby's email service. They offer a good price and I was thinking of giving it a try.

But one of their FAQ entries is this

Q. Are email Forwarders supported?
A. Email forwarders are supported as long as SRS (Sender Rewriting Scheme) is enabled. SRS is supported in major control panels. With out this, emails may bounce due to SPF failures. Forwarders can be problematic due to SPF failures and forwarding spam. Using SRS is the best method to ensure delivery however forwarded emails using SRS are more strictly filtered than email over SMTP auth to prevent spam from being forwarded to remote systems which influences and affects IP reputation. Consider alternatives to forward like POP fetch or pulling emails.

Is SRS something that enhance supports?

prasad0889

Hello @mendozal, How do you plan on implementing inbound filter? I can see that there is no such way in Enhance at the moment.

mendozal

prasad0889 I was thinking of using their smtp service as a smart host on enhance. Considering they have deliverability and spam checks.

So not the inbound filters at the moment.

I haven’t subscribed to their service yet but I might do it to test it considering it’s just 1 dollar/month + emails sent

Adrien

mendozal Luis, did you read their last 10 reviews and how Interserver inc replies to their clients?
Scary...

mendozal

Adrien I've read some bad comments about the service, but I just wanted to give it a try because of the price. I like their pay as you go approach.

Mailchannels si very expensive for me right now.

josedieguez

Hi, customer of mail.baby service here.

we used mailchannels for a good amount of time, leaved them because they have many problems reaching Corporate Microsoft mail accounts (mail.baby too) but paying a premium price to have that problem, was not good for us.

Migrated to mail.baby and is pretty much the same service. (on Cpanel and DA Servers)
Mail.baby support is slower, but is good (mailchannels support was good too)
pricing is better than mailchannels.

I haven't read about those "last 10 reviews and how interserver replies to clients". couldn't find anything about that.

mendozal

josedieguez does mail baby need deep integration with the panel? I mean, does the smtp service require domains and senders to be validated?

I was thinking o using the smart host functionality, but if I need to manually create and validate client’s domains it would not be a practical option.

Adrien

josedieguez I haven't read about those "last 10 reviews and how interserver replies to clients". couldn't find anything about that.

Click "contact" on their website main nav menu ;-)

I find their website very light as far as privacy and security are concerned. Personally, if these people can read my client's email content, I wouldn't choose a provider based on price.

josedieguez

mendozal

No, i'm using them with Enhance too. you just need the smarthost configured. No extra domain validation.

same process if going with the other provider, mailchannels.

josedieguez

Adrien

understood, so you mean Google reviews.

Not much of interested, beside some shared-hosting down, auto-renew, dislike portal, etc. all of them valid, but i see those complaints on pretty much every provider that has too many clients.

For security concern, you should read their FAQ section, i don't work for them, but since the mail.baby website is just a landing page, on wich, if you want to contract the service you will be a client of the real company, Interserver, you should read about privacy policy and security on the company website, interserver.

I can't comment on Uptime, speed or anything, i don't use interserver other services, only mail.

MediaServe

I like how the google map on their contact page locates Mail Baby in the Pacific Ocean.

XN-Matt

Wonder if someone from Enhance can confirm that SRS is supported for mail forwarding. If not, this will cause SPF errors on forwarding where the receiving server enforces the sending domains SPF policy.

mendozal

XN-Matt Yeah, it's apparently not working...

550 err commondomain This message from domain does not pass SPF checks from .....

@Adam would you consider this feature for a future release?

simonjw

Hey guys,

I know this thread is half a year old, however, I use mailbaby with enhance including forwarding emails with forwarders and so far there are no issues with SPF, DMARC, DKIM etc if you have it setup properly, whether using CF or internal DNS.

As for those comments about the way they treat their clients, I have not had any issues throughout the years and to be honest, there are always two sides to the story, and depending on the type of help those clients need they might not be worth the $1 and $0.20 per 1000 mails if you get my drift. But I could be wrong and it was just one terrible support person or they woke up on the wrong side of the bed those days.

The end all is that their service works, no complaints yet and it is well priced. If there are delivery issues, you just check the logs and you know exactly what is wrong. At the end of the day mail is a full time job, it is not easy to run properly and having a service like mailbaby does make it slightly easier.

JohnB

simonjw As for those comments about the way they treat their clients, I have not had any issues throughout the years and to be honest, there are always two sides to the story, and depending on the type of help those clients need they might not be worth the $1 and $0.20 per 1000 mails if you get my drift. But I could be wrong and it was just one terrible support person or they woke up on the wrong side of the bed those days.

I've used a few VERY good hosts with quick support but also cheap. On trustpilot and similiar sites they had reviews by people who basically bought a VPS, sent spam, they get suspended but not refunded. The reviews say the company scammed them. Some reviews are more creative but its still the scammer trying to twist their arm for a refund.

Oh and the people who buy $5 hosting and have no business using a computer. They say support was rude probably because they refused to fix a contact form on their website...

Usually bad english is a giveaway: Foreign scammers and uneducated people wanting web dev support for $5/mo...

WebInfra

simonjw bgeek Do you face any issues with Mailbaby for domains on Cloudflare?

Specifically they mentioned this:

Note: The server connecting IP should be added to the spf record. Directadmin and cPanel servers default spf include the main ip of the server. While email delivery when using mailbaby will not use this IP, mailbaby servers will look at the SPF record to ensure the connecting server is authorized to send email for the specific domain. If sending only over the API then you only need include:relay.mailbaby.net in SPF.

Doesn't sound like a good idea to expose the server IP in the SPF record. I wonder if it works if the server IP isn't added in the SPF. 🤔

bgeek

Hi guys! I'm not a client of mail.baby. And to tell the truth, the first time I saw this domain from some mail logs I was checking, I even thought this could be some sources of spamming. No joke, I didn't think any serious business would use this domain as their brand.

Anyway, they should be no bad at doing their stuffs. I have been a big fan of MXRoute for many years and I trust all my emails on its service. Jarland, the owner of MXRoute, also a very experienced geek in mailing services, once told me that he also uses mail.baby as one of his backup relays. So I knew, at least mail.baby could fulfill some real world business needs.

tecreasey

bgeek does MXRoute work in the same way as Mailbaby as a relay? I am always interested in alternatives.

bgeek

tecreasey Nope. They are Email hosting provider. I use my SMTP from them as relay, but only for personal usage. They have a 300 emails per hour or 7200 emails per day limitation.

Oldschool

tecreasey

bgeek

Email mxroute support, they currently work as a SMTP smart host relay although it's not advertised and they may in the future make it a paid option, but currently it works on all their plans.

mike

if you are using mail.baby without validating domains on their end. how are you setting up DKIM. Google and yahoo are forcing now all kind of email authentication for inbox delivery ...

Oldschool

mike

I'm having no problems sending to any of the big email providers through mail.baby, set up spf correctly and you should be good.