How do I add SMTP to my server?

Question

I installed WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) on an old computer to use as a server. How can I install SMTP?

Answer 1

You will not be able to run a mail server from a dynamic ip address. Most of them are blacklisted, blocked, and will not work.

Assuming you have a static ip address, and want to run a full service mail server , i'd suggest taking a look at mercury mail server

Answer 2

I used to use Podcast Server. and as mentioned by Journeyman Geek, there shall be issues. Any mails you send from a dynamic IP address end up in SPAM these days. It is okay to test, but not for production. You can however, set an SPF Record authorizing your IP to send mails on behalf of your domain. However, if your IP changes in the mean time, your mails may end up in the spam box for the next 24 hours. You might be able to avoid this by setting up your DNS record with very short TTL.

In the US, with my internet always on, I have not have my IP address change in months, although I have a dynamic IP address and the address I have is not guaranteed to remain fixed.

Answer 3

Apart from the spam consideration, you can install any SMTP-compliant email software. You didn't mention which version of Windows but you don't need to go too far. See http://serverfault.com/questions/60524/mail-server-for-windows-server - Windows Server has an integrated email server.

I was thinking about installing Exchange too.

Another truth is that you are not obliged to run your own SMTP server on WAMP stack. You can configure PHP to auto forward email to your provider's SMTP server or use Mandrill, Amazon or any other outsourced emailer (I have edited my downvote comment)

Answer 4

You can ABSOLUTELY run a mail server from a dynamic IP and everything that is said above about IP address being marked as spam is NOT TRUE. This is why Amazon SES and other similar services exist. Try out Postfix server, which allows relaying on others' SMTP servers. You will be able to send mail from YOUR domain with YOUR SMTP server by using GMail, Amazon or whatever else SMTP server as a relay. They provide these services, because Amazon Web Services are well known for spamming and hence most of IPs provided by Amazon are already marked as spamming in blocklists. So, they founded a service to handle e-mail from one single trusted IP, but in order for that IP not to be marked as spamming, they monitor your e-mail activity (and there are thresholds, which you are unlikely to reach if you are using e-mail for personal use or sending less than 10000 e-mail a day).
Here's a simple how to for configuring Postfix for GMail as relay: http://charlesa.net/tutorials/centos/centosgmail.php
And here's one for Amazon SES (which is not free, but costs less than a dollar a month to send thousands of e-mails): http://blog.swisstech.net/2012/06/local-postfix-as-relay-to-amazon-ses.html

These how tos are for Postfix, which is mainly for Linux systems, but I am pretty sure you can run it on Windows, too. Of course there are extremely simple solutions for Windows such as: http://amazonsessmtp.codeplex.com/ (if you have little experience with Postfix, I'd suggest you try out this one first)