VPS and Mail server advice - offload Mail or not?

A

Andre

Guppy
I am looking for advice and what to do with mail on my VPS.

Previously I've had WinVPS Silver packages, these were for clients of mine, and ran some moderately trafficked sites and also ran the mail server on it with no significant issues.

But on my new WinVPS setup it's only a Value account which I think only has 480 Ram.

I'm wondering if it's better that I offload the mail servers to an external mail host, like FuseMail as I have limited ram.

How much of a burden is running a mail server going to put on the WinVPS value package? I assume of course its dependent on how much mail we get. I'll be running at least 5 ASP.NET sites on the Value VPS account, including an e-commerce store of about 70 products.

Of course I'll have the mail agent running to send out mail, like for notifications and other mail originating from the web server or web application.

BTW, I got a question regarding google apps and WinVPS accounts, but I'll start another thread about this.

Anyway, any recommendation on mail hosting - should I do it on my VPS or use external mail hosting? What factors would warrant the need to offload the mail services?
 
There is not a lot of need UNLESS you are getting loads of spam. If you are using plesk 100 or unlimited, it includes power pack with spamassassin, and the spamassassin perl process can easily eat 50-90MB of RAM at times

RBLs use nothing more and are the best first line of defense against spam, but can prevent people from mailing if listed wrongly, so be careful the lists you use and make sure it is a reputable one that is responsive and removes IPs once issues are resolved.

So the decision process woudl go something like:
I am seeing a lot of spam
I enabled spamassassin if available, it eats more RAM than I'd like.
enable outside mail service to offload as a workaround.
 
Thanks Stephen for the advice.

As far as RBLs, do you recommend any particular list provider?

Also if you can answer another question, I remember having some mail issues with a WinVPS Silver server here, but I made a mail-related request and it seemed to help. I think it was asking Jodohost support to add a SPF record for one of my client's domain, but it was awhile ago so I'm fuzzy on the details. Am I correct that Jodohost will do that on request? And why is creating a SPF record sometimes needed?

Thanks in advance.
 
SPF can be done in plesk, it was a reverse DNS PTR record you needed us to make, it is common, submit us the name you wish to associate with the IP and it solves a lot of problems.

spamcop and xbl spamhaus.
 
Thanks. I just sent in a ticket earlier for rDNS PTR so I'm waiting on that.

Regarding SPF, is there a guide on how to set that up in Plesk? I'm sure I've done it before but it's been awhile, so not exactly sure what to enter.
 
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