with the domain name, some might have an IP address also. In most cases, you will be using Port 587 for your needs.Ĭommon addresses for SMTP servers start with SMTP. This is used as an alternative to 587 incase its blocked. Most moden Email Clients will use this, it uses TLS Encryption. Was for secure SMTP, Used SSL for encryption. Things are not so simple with the port to which to connect, Servers and relays usually have a set of different ports to which you can connect, and each has come into being over time to fulfill specific requirements. Then you can use the dig command to find the IP address if dig +short To find the address of the SMTP server you can use the dig dig +short MX Also, these are specified by the Mail Exchange (MX) records in the DNS which direct a client to the mail server which is supposed the handle how Email messages are to be routed. In most cases, the SMTP address will be a prefix of mail or SMTP in front of the domain to which you are trying to connect to. And if all is well then it forwards this to the incoming IMAP or POP3 Server. The Recipient’s Email Server verifies if it can handle the Email being forwarded to it.Next, it connects to the receiver’s SMTP address and tried to deliver the email.Next, the SMTP server using a DNS request for MX records finds out the recipient’s IP or domain address where his SMTP server is running.If it had been our user who had been sending it to someone in the same domain then our server will simply forward it internally to the local recipient server.After a handshake, the Email Client sends the Receivers address which in our case is, the subject, and the body.The client and SMTP server do a handshake if authorization is required, the client will provide credentials for the same. Once the user presses send the Email client will connect to the configured SMTP server for now let’s assume it to be.A user wanting to send an email from to uses his Email client to draft an Email with a Subject and Body and press Send.You can either install a local application like MailHog or MailCatcher or use a cloud provided like Mailtrap or Our local tool.īelow is a common guide to how the process of Sending Emails works with SMTP. These servers are mainly routers for mail.įake SMTP Servers: – These Servers are mainly used for testing by developers, they basically are catch-all servers that allow users to see how the Email will look on the recipient end without actually sending any Email. An example can be SendGrid or SendinBlue which offer these.

SMTP Relay Server: This is also a Server, but this term is used when the source email and destination email domains are different from the SMTP server domains.These are usually used with free email services like and. SMTP Server: It is the same thing as an SMTP relay but is mainly used when the receiver domain is the same as the server domain.You can break it into two types as given below, both are mostly the same other than the minor difference. The SMTP protocol needs to be made available by an application, this application that responds to the SMTP requests for those who wish to send an Email or relay Email is called an SMTP Serve/SMTP Relay.

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