The reason why I moved away from Microsoft Exchange 365

Microsoft Office 365 is doing a great job for our daily communication with customers and colleagues, and so we used it also for our cloud system SurveyTester for sending typical emails to users.

SurveyTester sends welcome emails to new users, I-forgot-my-password-reset-mails and many other mails like You-missed-the-following-news emails.

While this worked for a while, we received a huge amount of mail bounces yesterday. They all looked like this:


"Undeliverable: SurveyTester: Notifications

Your message couldn't be delivered because you weren't recognized as a valid sender. The most common reason for this is that your email address is suspected of sending spam and it's no longer allowed to send email. Contact your email admin for assistance."

 

My first thought was that we were black-listed by the email system of one of our larger client, but then more and more emails came in from other clients as well. So I knew, there was something serious going on. …

After some Google search, I finally found out, that it was Microsoft blocking my own account because many similar emails were sent through this mail account. I was blocked by my own mail provider. After some more Google search, I also found the place, where I could unlock the blocking of this mail account. So everything worked fine again.

However, I was not too optimistic that this would not happen again. As more and more users join our cloud services, the risk is just too high that things will break again.

Choosing the right IT Partners is critical when building a cloud service and possibly, Microsoft Exchange 365 was not the best choice for that. Possibly their system is simply not designed to be used for a scenario like mine. So I looked for some alternatives. As our company is located in Germany, using an EU-vendor is indeed a must for GDPR compliance.

My final search ended so far and I am now using SendinBlue, a mass mail provider located in France. Many people use SendinBlue for Newsletters, but the System also can be used for transactional emails.

SendinBlue is exactly what I needed

So I activated a test account and after 10 minutes, I was ready to switch all SurveyTester instances to use SendinBlue for sending emails out. Today morning, I actually booked a package with some higher volumes and everything works fine.

While the most important criteria for choosing a mail provider is reliability, I also realized some more benefits when using SendinBlue. You will see them in the box on the right.

Are you running a cloud solution?
What is your preferred choice for sending emails to users? How does this work for you?
Let me know and enter a comment on this post.

 

My Finding:
For regular usage, Microsoft Exchange 365 does a great job. It protects user accounts if they are hacked and fraudulently used.
The challenge for a regular user is, finding the right place where accounts can be unlocked. This is something what microsoft could make easier for their clients.

For Cloud Services, however, it seems not to be the right tool, as cloud systems send out many similar emails which are important for users.

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Email Marketing Companies have similar challenges: They want reliable delivery of Emails. For our situation, it is important that transactional Emails are supported.

 

Top Benefits of SendinBlue

  • SendinBlue offers reliable email delivery as it is optimized for that purpose.
  • Administrators can see if emails are delivered or opened.
  • Emails and SMS/text messages are also supported, so it would be possible to contact users additionally via SMS. This cost some money, but users can be reached with SMS in any case where email would not work.
  • SendinBlue offers an API, so cloud vendors can interact with the system in a programmatic way. We use that feature to allow users to opt in or opt out within SurveyTester.
  • There are more options available, like a chatbot system that can be embedded in the cloud solution.
  • Finally, SendinBlue also can be used for marketing, using A/B tests, workflows and much more.

 

You can check out the free option first (sending 300 mails per day for free) with the following affiliate link:

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