Creating a Reliable Email Service Like Zoho, Microsoft, and Gmail: Technical Insights Needed

[Losers]

Hello,

I hope everyone is well. Honestly, I didn't know where to post this question, but I found that asking this question in a tech community is better than asking it in a business and profit-oriented community without any technical background on the subject.

My question is how can I create an email company like Zoho, Microsoft, and Gmail? I understand that the examples I provided of these companies might be surprising to some, as they are internet giants. However, I want to start by creating a simple website that serves the same purpose.

For example, my company's website is "example.com." Customers register on my website and get an email like "[email protected]." I can provide programmers to design the main interface of the website, customer control panel, and so on.

But the critical question is, how do you make the mail servers that send email reliable so that these messages are not considered spam or fraudulent? I hope to find an answer, and if I don't find an answer, please forgive me because I don't think this is an easy topic.

Thank you.

 

[dos2unix]

You have to get a registered domain name.
You have think up a unique domain name that no one is using.

Something like jakejook3.com
Then you have to go to one of the domain registrars, (goDaddy, ionos, domain.com, hostgator )
I think there are about a dozen or so different ones. There is a cost, usually it's yearly or every two years.

Then you'll either need to set up a DNS server, or you'll have to have someone manage and host your
DNS for you. This adds another cost, unless you do it yourself.

Most internet providers ( comcast, infinity, spectrum, etc... ) block in-coming traffic to your house.
So you'll either need to buy a couple of public IP addresses from your internet provider ( one for your DNS
server, and one for your mail server ) which is yet another additional cost, or pay for a couple of VMs in the cloud
that has a public IP address ( this has a cost also ) and setup your email and DNS servers there.

 

[dos2unix]

13 reasons why your emails go into the spam folder (and what you can do about it)

In this guide, we share why legit emails might get flagged as spam and show how you can avoid that dreaded spam folder.

postmarkapp.com

After a while, your domain while get "scored" on it's email. Kind of like a grade.
If your mail server sends out a lot of spam email, and people complain about it.
It will still work, but now any email from your domain, will automatically go
into the spam file.

Also people have the ability to this themselves. If I get a lot of email from you
that I don't like, I can setup my email client to automatically put any email from
you in the spam folder.

So if you're planning on setting up a marketing email server, it might not be worth the cost.
In the past there used to hundreds of these "bot" email servers, that just spammed everyone.
Now it seems every website has some kind of "captcha" filter to make sure you aren't a robot.
Trying to get info about something on their site.

 

[KGIII]

You're gonna want this:

Newsletters spam test by mail-tester.com

mail-tester.com is a free online service that allows you to test your emails for Spam, Malformed Content and Mail Server Configuration problems

www.mail-tester.com

Also, I believe there's an API(?) that will let you automatically generate emails in cPanel. I suspect there are ways to do so with other control panels.

My assumption is that you're not going to want to sit there and approve them manually and then create them manually - unless you don't plan on scaling this up.

 

[dcbrown73]

Just be aware, email is one of the most attacked Internet facing services out there.

While there are some very vocal "outsource everything" people out there. I'm not one of them. Do I outsource things? Yes, I do, but only when it makes sense.

I will get straight to the punch here. Email is something I outsource. When you have an Internet accessible attack surface. The more common and complex the service, normally the better choice it is for outsourcing.

Given that email is one of the most attacked service and it can be very complex (especially when looking at the complexities of MS Exchange) I highly recommend outsourcing it.

Now, why would I post that here if you are wanting to start an Email service? Mainly because of the reason I outsource my email servers. To protect an email service, you need a front line security team to protect and support it. The company I work for doesn't have a full time email security staff, so we outsource it to a company that does.

If you are not adept at email security and securing an email service. That is the first place you should start looking, because your service will be attacked. There is no if, ands or buts about it.

Dave