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We currently use Gmail for our support email. For transactional email (reset password, etc) we just use default Linux Postfix server on our Amazon Web Serivce EC2 instance.

My question is would it be possible to configure it so that we can send our transactional emails (welcome email, forgot password, etc) using Gmail servers? My guess would be that it's not possible but I'm curious as far as explanation why this would or would not work.

Sven
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dev.e.loper
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    Possible? Yes. Good idea? Not really. You have a sending limit and would probably be better off with something like Sendgrid or Mandrill, both of whom have free tiers. https://support.google.com/a/answer/166852?hl=en – ceejayoz Jan 13 '15 at 00:07

2 Answers2

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Can this work? Yes.

Do you want to do it this way? No.

Gmail is not meant to be used in this way. They have somewhat arbitrary restrictions and limits on what can be sent, and how many emails can be sent. If you run into these restrictions, they'll gladly cut you off without warning. Belive me, I've had personal experience with this.

Instead of Gmail, just sign up for an AWS Simple Email Service account. It is dead-simple to integrate this with your current MTA, it's very cost-effective, and you won't need to worry about being shut off in the middle of the day for an unknown reason.

EEAA
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This is somewhat up to your applications and what you want to do exactly, but most likely it would work. However, you would still need a local relay server, but not necessarily a full blown Postfix instance - a relay-only server like nullmailer might be sufficient.

Sven
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