Enhance The Deliverability And Reliability Of The Business E-Mails Through SMTP Service Windows

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, that enhances the rate of e-mail transmission. It is a communication protocol used for sending and receiving e-mail messages.
In other words, whenever someone sends an e-mail message, the e-mail gets picked up by the sender’s outgoing SMTP Server. Then it communicates with the receiver’s incoming SMTP server and delivers the e-mail message to their inbox.

How SMTP Service Windows Works?

Let’s assume that John is sending an e-mail to Peter. The e-mail id of John is john@abccompany.com, and the e-mail address of Peter is peter@xyzcompany.com.

John uses Outlook Express as his e-mail client to send and receive e-mails. Initially, when John sets up his account in ABC company, he gets the name of the mail server as mail.abccompany.com.

Now John composes an e-mail and presses the send button. The following happens :

  • Outlook Express sends a message to the SMTP server at mail.abccompany.com for connection through Port 25.
  • Once the connection gets approved, it relays the e-mail address of the sender and the receiver along with the message body.
  • The host SMTP Server breaks the receiver’s e-mail address into two parts. peter@xyzcompany.com gets broken into “peter” and “xyzcompany.com.”
  • For example, if the receiver is a co-worker at abccompany.com, the SMTP server contacts the host POP3 (Post Office Protocol) server and hands over the e-mail message with the help of an SMTP relay service.
  • But here the recipient address is at another domain, hence the host SMTP server needs to communicate with the incoming SMTP server of the receiver.
  • The host SMTP server communicates with the Domain Name Server of xyxcompany.com and asks for the SMTP Server IP address.
  • The DNS relays the IP addresses of the SMTP server at xyzcompany.com.
  • By using the IP address, the host SMTP server contacts the SMTP server at the receiver end using port 25.
  • The SMTP server at the receiver’s end checks the domain name of the receiver’s e-mail address.
  • Since the domain name is xyzcompany.com, it accepts the e-mail message.
  • Then it contacts the local POP3 server and delivers the e-mail message.
  • The POP3 server takes care of delivering the e-mail message to the inbox of peter@xyzcompany.com.

There are instances, where the host SMTP server cannot initiate a connection with the SMTP server at the other end. In such cases, the e-mail messages go into a message queue.

Most of the SMTP servers use SendMail program to send the mail across, which tries to send the messages in queue every 5 minutes or so. If it is not able to communicate to the e-mail server, it returns the e-mail to the sender.

The e-mail message is returned to the sender if the e-mail address or the domain name is incorrect.

If one needs to send bulk messages, then it is better to use an SMTP relay service that uses a 3rd party service to send bulk e-mails effectively.

How To Configure An SMTP Server in Windows?

To set-up an e-mail client on the system, one needs to configure an SMTP server that takes care of sending and receiving e-mails. Configuring an SMTP server is not so difficult. All one needs to do is key-in the SMTP parameters in the settings window of the e-mail client. To configure an SMTP server, follow the steps outlined below:  

  1. Open the e-mail client
  2. Go to “Tools à Account Settings” sections in the e-mail client.
  3. Click Outgoing SMTP Server
  4. Click Add to configure a new SMTP server in the e-mail client
  5. Now provide details of the SMTP server in the popup window
  6. The instructions that you need to provide are:
    • Description: A simple name to identify the SMTP server. (Say if you are configuring your office server, provide as “office e-mail.” If setting up the SMTP server for Gmail or Yahoo, use e-mail provider name)
    • Server Name: This is where the user needs to key in the actual SMTP server address like mail.abccompany.com.
    • Port: A port is a communication endpoint of a system, and a computer has several ports. Every port serves its purpose and stays connected to a specific protocol. The SMTP server uses port 25 as its default communication port. But port 25 is not generally used as the messages are sent unencrypted. Companies use port 465 or 25025 for secured SSL e-mail communication.
    • Connection security: By default, SMTP servers don’t encrypt messages. But when it is needed, one needs to specify it here. One can choose between STARTTLS or SSL/TLS, which uses a separate port for secure communication.
    • Authentication method: Method used to authenticate the e-mail server. One can choose between passwords, KERBEROS, or CRAM-MD5. Usually, most use passwords for authentication.
    • User Name: And finally, your e-mail address like peter@abccompany.com\
  7. ongratulations, you’ve successfully configured your SMTP Service Windows.
  8. Users can also make use of the Google SMTP server if they have a Gmail account.
  9. One can also use this free SMTP server list to know more about the free e-mail service providers like:
    • Google SMTP Server
    • SendinBlue
    • SendGrid
    • Amazon SES
    • Mandrill
    • MailGun
    • MailJet
    • Postmark

How To Find Out The SMTP Server IP Address?

Finding out the IP address of an SMTP server is very simple if one happens to know the name of the server. Let’s say one needs to find the IP address of mail.abccompany.com. To find the IP address of this SMTP server do the following:

  1. Open the Command Prompt
  2. Type the following command and press enter:
    ping mail.abccompany.com
  3. Once the user types the command, it contacts the SMTP server through the IP address
  4. Now, you can see the following message displayed on the window:
    Pinging mail.abccompany.com [x.x.x.x] with 32 bytes of data:
  5. Now [x.x.x.x] is the IP address of the SMTP server mail.abccompany.com
  6. One can use this IP address to configure the outgoing e-mail server in the e-mail client.

Conclusion

Deploying an SMTP service ensures a robust, reliable, and easy-to-use SMTP server for organizations. It maximizes the deliverability of all the crucial marketing and transactional e-mails. We can also conclude from the above discussion that setting up and configuring an SMTP service is an easy task. It doesn’t require massive infrastructural upgrades.