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Asked: 2026-05-26T13:01:45+00:00

I have an ASP.NET 4 application that has been in production for years running

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I have an ASP.NET 4 application that has been in production for years running on Windows Server 2008 R2. It sends email, and is currently configured to send to a specific SmartHost.

I would like to eliminate the dependency on that SmartHost server (it might be going away). As I see it, I have two options:

  1. Find another SmartHost – possibly in the cloud? Which concerns me because it’s another point of failure and dependency.

  2. Install & configure SMTP server on the same box as the application. I’m not wild about installing the ‘IIS6-bits’ that seem necessary to do this.

What’s the best practice here? Are folks using external servers via SmartHost more or are you installing local SMTP servers?

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  1. Editorial Team

    I have chosen option 2, because, as you wrote, this eliminates another point of failure, namely the network path between your server and the smart host. Administering a send only mail server is not a big deal. I set up a local send only mail server about two years ago, and except an upgrade I did not do anything with it. Even the upgrade was not strictly necessary. I have to add that I was not completely new to configuring a mail server, and we already had a second mail server, giving additional safety.
    On the other hand I have no experience with the SMTP server included in IIS (I only tried it once, several years ago, without success, and gave it up immediately), and I also found then that the choice of open source mail servers on Windows is limited.

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