Sending email via mandrill—totally cool!

So, this might come in handy, for anyone actually needing to send email via an application (like Discourse, or really anything server-based). I did a blog post more than a year ago about relaying e-mail through Google Apps/Gmail, but even the low volume of e-mail I’m sending from the bigdinosaur.org/chroniclesofgeorge.com web server occasionally trips something at Google and they block me from sending for a day or two.

The solution, which one of the Discourse devs helpfully pointed out, is Mandrill. It’s basically an email relaying service, though there’s a ton more functionality than that. They have paid tiers of use, but the free tier gives you 12,000 e-mails per month, which is waaaaaay more than I need.

image

So far, it’s worked perfectly. The advantages of relaying through a service like Mandrill rather than simply sending email directly via postfix are numerous; one of the biggest is that you’re far less likely to find yourself on a delivery blacklist if you’re sending email via a big host like Mandrill (same with Google Apps/Gmail, obviously).

I’m definitely a fan!

1 Like