Setting up a new webserver: Is there a better way to setup an email system?

Question

For the new webserver, I am thinking of setting up the email system as follows:

1. gmail business for site-specific emails, like customer support, etc (bidirectional)

2. amazon-ses for transactional and marketing emails (outgoing only)

3. postfix on the webserver box to send out log messages (log@xyz.com) to an email alias on gmail-business (outgoing only)

Is there a better way to setup the email system? Budget is a big influence on my setup.

If I do like above, I have a few things to understand:

1. Is it possible to send emails from other servers (like #2, #3 above) when gmail is used for the domain email?

2. Will there be any problems with the MX records setup?

3. I see several mentions on the net that having a 'noreply@xyz.com' email addr in the reply-to field is not a good idea (it hinders conversation). In this setup, what can be the preferred reply-to field, especially for the marketing and transactional emails? Also, will it be ok to have reply-to set to an address on gmail while sending emails from amazon ses?

4. If future, if I need to migrate my transactional and/or marketing emails from amazon-ses to another (say sendgrid/mailup/mailchimp/..), will the change in the IP address due to this migration have a negative impact on the deliverability?

-- Answer to #4 --

Changes to the IP address will not impact the reputation of our email address
if we use DKIM signatures, the latter is given more priority by ISPs.

Answer 1

Here are my answers, based on my experience with a similar setup.

Is it possible to send emails from other servers (like #2, #3 above) when gmail is used for the domain email?

Yes, we are using Gmail for business (with our own domain name) and are also sending emails from Amazon SES without any issue. I'm not familiar with postfix, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

Will there be any problems with the MX records setup?

We have set it up successfully without any problem. Just follow the instructions from Google.

I see several mentions on the net that having a 'noreply@xyz.com' email addr in the reply-to field is not a good idea (it hinders conversation). In this setup, what can be the preferred reply-to field, especially for the marketing and transactional emails? Also, will it be ok to have reply-to set to an address on gmail while sending emails from amazon ses?

The reply-to field can be whatever email address you like, including a Gmail address for an individual or a group. We have created an email group (using the Google Admin Control Panel) called admin@ourdomain.com and are using it as reply-to address to send emails from SES.

If future, if I need to migrate my transactional and/or marketing emails from amazon-ses to another (say sendgrid/mailup/mailchimp/..), will the change in the IP address due to this migration have a negative impact on the deliverability?

It should not cause any issue. We are sending emails from both SES and Mailchimp and didn't have to do anything special to make it work.

Edit: We also use SES to send log messages by email because unlike you, we don't send many of them (only critical stuff). Your idea to use Postfix makes sense to me, but I can't really help with that since I've never used it. It seems to be possible according to this excerpt from a Google support article:

If you have a local mail server, you can send to the recipients directly and avoid the sending limits. This local server should also be added to your SPF record to stop the messages from being marked as spam.

Answer 2

Is it possible to send emails from other servers (like #2, #3 above) when gmail is used for >the domain email?

In general, you can have one incoming email server and unlimited outgoing email server. Again, in general. There is ways around it, but thats above my level and not common.

Will there be any problems with the MX records setup?

No. Just make sure that after you change your MX records, that they still work for your other services

I see several mentions on the net that having a 'noreply@xyz.com' email addr in the reply-? to field is not a good idea (it hinders conversation). In this setup, what can be the >preferred reply-to field, especially for the marketing and transactional emails?

We use info@example.com, You can A|B test if you think it makes a differance.

Also, will it be ok to have reply-to set to an address on gmail while sending emails from amazon ses?

Yes

If future, if I need to migrate my transactional and/or marketing emails from amazon-ses to another (say sendgrid/mailup/mailchimp/..), will the change in the IP address due to this migration have a negative impact on the deliverability?

Each company has there own sending guidelines. I find that SES has not well defined guides. We use MailGun and they deal with the rate limit and reputation management. (SendGrid came in a close second, But MailGun offered a better product for us).

So, when you are switching over, you should contact the company and find the best plan of action for your company to switch from SES. I would recommend that you start with one of the companies. I know that there are a lot, and for when your ready: Good Compare Guide

Answer 3

I use to work with Exchange email servers and I have to say there are a lot of considerations to take into account whether to host your own servers or use an email provider. However we used Postini (after Google purchased it) and we had to define all the servers that would be used to send outbound in the configuration or Postini would reject the message. I know they were migrating Postini services to Google Business apps so you might be able to use your own email servers while using their email service:

http://www.google.com/postini/

The MX record records I don't think will be an issue because they will point to the Google Email service instead of your mail servers. They will then know how to route to the next smart host. You can see this in the nslookup I did on a domain I know utilizes Postini:

domain.net    MX preference = 300, mail exchanger = domain.net.mail7.psmtp.com
domain.net    MX preference = 400, mail exchanger = domain.net.mail8.psmtp.com
domain.net    MX preference = 100, mail exchanger = domain.net.mail5.psmtp.com
domain.net    MX preference = 200, mail exchanger = domain.net.mail6.psmtp.com

Not really following with your third question. However for your last question as I know it you need to define all email servers that the hosting provider will be receiving emails from and sending emails too. So if it's not defined it could be possible the hosting provider will reject the name.