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Currently I have an install of Ubuntu on my AWS server with VestaCP running as my control panel. Roundcube that comes with vestaCP is not working properly, I however need to be able to send emails from a contact form on my website errandboyja.com .

I was looking at using ZohoMail to send my emails but i dont know if I can get it to work this way. I tried changing the MX on zoho but none of the emails sent through the contact form arrives.

Is it possible to bypass the need for a local mail server this way?

I used the following for Zoho MX:

10 mx.zohomail.com 20 mx2.zohomail.com

Any help would be appreciated

Horace Mozadegh-Khorampast Cun
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1 Answers1

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Yes, you need an SMTP server to send email. No, you don't have to run it yourself.

The MX record is NOT used to send email. It's used to specify where the sending SMTP server should DELIVER email to.

If you're using Zoho to send your email, then you should be using their smtp server. Probably something like mail.zohomail.com or smtp.zohomail.com or whatever. Your client code would specify that hostname as the SMTP server, and send the email there. That server will then take care of looking up the MX records for the email's destination, and handle the rest of the delivery sequence itself.

In real world terms, you need to figure out what street corner the nearest mailbox is located at, and drop your letter into it. After that, you don't need to know ANYTHING about where your recipient's mailbox is, or which postal service(s) the letter will go through to reach it.

Marc B
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  • I understand what you are saying. Do you have detailed instructions on how to go about using an external smtp? Doing some research but not finding any clear cut way of doing it without installing something additional on my server. – Horace Mozadegh-Khorampast Cun Jan 23 '15 at 21:17
  • That's more server configuration than programming, making this offtopic for the site. Try superuser or serverfault. – Marc B Jan 23 '15 at 21:26