CFMAIL and Google Apps for Your Domain

[eyefishfusion]

Hello everyone,

I'd like to host our email accounts using "Google Apps for Your Domain" (basically GMail for business), and then use the Coldfusion (MX 7) implementation in GoDaddy.com to send emails out from a website hosted there.

So my question is, has anyone managed to send emails from coldfusion using Google Apps as the mail system?

[Kronin555]

I just tested it on ColdFusion 8, and it worked fine.

In the Coldfusion Administrator:
Mail Server: smtp.gmail.com
User Name: full username (user@domain.com)
Password: your password
Server Port: 465
Enable SSL: checked
Enable TLS: unchecked

[eyefishfusion]

The problem is that MX 7 does not seem to support SSL with SMTP connections...

[Kronin555]

quote:

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Originally posted by: eyefishfusion
The problem is that MX 7 does not seem to support SSL with SMTP connections...

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That's going to be a problem. Gmail SMTP requires TLS (SSL) and user authentication.

[tclaremont]

The original poster specifically states he is using MX7. Can anyone confirm that it works with 7?

[Kronin555]

I know the poster stated MX7, which is why I said I tested it on ColdFusion 8 (versus just saying it works and not listing my version number). Since I listed the settings I used, it'd be a simple thing for him/her to test it themselves. I don't think anything changed with the SMTP implementation between 7 and 8, so it should work fine.

[tclaremont]

I tend to agree, but I have not played with CF8 in a shared host's SMTP situation yet. If there are complications, I would bet that they can be traced to the web hosts implementation or requirements for sending mail rather than any change or limitation on the part of CF.

Many hosts require that the "from" address match your domain in an effort to cut down on spammers using other people's mail servers. If you are getting tripped up during your testing, ensure that the FROM attiribute is specificed and it matches your doman name. If you omit this attribute, the mail very well fail without telling you why.

[craigkaminsky]

NOTE: I posted this while Kronin's response came in and did not know that Gmail SMTP required SSL for authentication.

I use Google Apps for one of my domains and in the settings section for each email address in the domain, you have the option to set the "Browser Connection". The options are always use https and don't always use https.

Might be interesting to see if CFMX 7 is able to send to or from an email address in the domain when the Browser Connection is tagged as "Don't always use https".

Of course SSL might be something you absolutely want to have for the domain but could also be a good base test to see if CFMX 7 will work at all.

[Kronin555]

Here's a writeup on how to get this working with ColdFusion 7
http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2008/02/Using-Google-as-your-CF-Mail-Server.cfm

[eyefishfusion]

Thanks Kronin555, but this does not help me since I'm using a hosting providers' Coldfusion MX 7 in one of those shared server environments where I have no access to installing things like stunnel. In my case we use GoDaddy.com to host our pages.

[Fetch]

That being the case, your only option is to send mail via your local server, or GoDaddy's SMTP service (if they have one). Since I don't host with GoDaddy for obvious reasons (see my signature) I can't say what would need to be done in this case.

EDIT: By 'local server' I mean the webserver that hosts the application. If it's Windows then it should have IIS SMTP running (or that can be configureed) and if it's Linux it should have some similar SMTP daemon (postfix, sendmail, qmail, et al.) which would be able to send your messages. If going this route just make certain that the primary IP for your server has RDNS setup so recipient mailservers won't think it's spam. Plus, depending on your app, you may also want to implement some anti-spambot code. LMK if you need more details on that - it's a topic in and of itself.

[johnab]

I have a dedicated server with GoDaddy - I run an SMTP server locally on my server so have CF set to deliver to 127.0.0.1 but then in my SMTP config i HAVE to send it via GoDaddy's smarthost - there is no other way configure SMTP - they're obviously worried (rightly so) about spam being generated on their servers so restrict out bound mail routes. This being the case for their dedicated servers I'd imagine the same applies for shared hosting.

Coming back to the original question out of curiousity - why do you want send through gmail? Looks like you may not have a choice and resort to not specifiy a server attribute in your cfmail tag so that it routes via whatever route GoDaddy have configured.

[eyefishfusion]

Jonab,

What happens is that our clients prefer the GMail service over GoDaddy's (or even a local Outlook-like client), so we're getting to a point where we need to interact with Google.

Right now our only hope is that GoDaddy supports MX 8 in the future, or else from what I can see we might have to change hosting providers...

[Fetch]

quote:

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Originally posted by: johnab
I have a dedicated server with GoDaddy - I run an SMTP server locally on my server so have CF set to deliver to 127.0.0.1 but then in my SMTP config i HAVE to send it via GoDaddy's smarthost - there is no other way configure SMTP - they're obviously worried (rightly so) about spam being generated on their servers so restrict out bound mail routes. This being the case for their dedicated servers I'd imagine the same applies for shared hosting.

Coming back to the original question out of curiousity - why do you want send through gmail? Looks like you may not have a choice and resort to not specifiy a server attribute in your cfmail tag so that it routes via whatever route GoDaddy have configured.

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Wait - are you saying that GoDaddy forces even dedicated servers to route mail through their own systems instead of allowing you to send directly to the internet? Wow...that's...interesting.