+1 Vote - Totally agree with this request. Pay per email, whatever the pricing strategy, I don't care. Currently people are just going to use the Gmail relay. The differentiator for Azure will be the X service offerings that seamlessly integrate with the platform.
Sending an email is a fundamental requirement of any cloud hosting solution. Yet both Azure and Amazon seem to be missing it. In the mean time we are using Elastic Email, which is cheap and good. http://elasticemail.com
Michael Brown: why do I need another billing relationship with another company just so I can get access to a SMTP server? Sending email from our apps is a very common feature, Microsoft should make it easier on us and allow us to use a Windows Azure SMTP server for outgoing emails.
Seriously people Using Azure your azure traffic quota and machine time for Email? Register through godaddy and you get email included in your account. Now use any of the SMTP libraries (IPWorks is good) to connect to for sending. Have another service running to poll for emails over pop. Done and Done.
There should be a more generic Alerting / Notification system available for Azure apps. See my suggestion for "Azure Alerting System using Text Messaging". Many Azure apps would like to be able to send out a notification / alert using a variety of different transports - SMS, Email, Phone. This would be a valuable service to have. One simple feature could be to enable Azure Apps to have mailbox(es) e.g. "user@myazureapp..cloudapp.net" associated with the project.
My current application needs to send email based on the events happen in the application and I am not able to do that now. Microsoft should provide that feature in Azure.
If you are running a real business, you should not count on Gmail. Google could block your account at anytime and you could not really scale to more than 2,000 emails per day. There are better outgoing SMTP services out there that address both of these issues.
But since we already have a billing relationship with Microsoft and technically the SMTP servers could be in the Azure data centers, having Microsoft do it for us makes a lot more sense.
I would really feel more comfortable if MS was lot allowing emails to be send, at least not allowed without some extra charge. Otherwise, the Amazon scenario is going to repeat with Azure. In 6 months from now spammers will have managed to get any single IP address of Azure black listed.
Here's what I think: First, daily quota may be good fit for hobbyists, not for public-facing business. Azure is designed for elastic reaction to business spikes. So, using an email that has a daily quota on Azure presents a conflict in philosophies.
My thoughts of an email solution that integrates with Azure would be one that follows the Azure philosophy, and provides opportunity for an SLA that is consistent with the SLA you have for other parts of your Azure needs. And if your minimum quota is exc... more
Here's what I think: First, daily quota may be good fit for hobbyists, not for public-facing business. Azure is designed for elastic reaction to business spikes. So, using an email that has a daily quota on Azure presents a conflict in philosophies.
My thoughts of an email solution that integrates with Azure would be one that follows the Azure philosophy, and provides opportunity for an SLA that is consistent with the SLA you have for other parts of your Azure needs. And if your minimum quota is exceeded, you have an SLA that gives you a choice of says ... 1. Charge me for the extra or 2. Shut down the service.
Second: It's not a Hotmail problem. MSFT's strategic messaging offering for business is Exchange. ExchangeOnline does already exist as a cloud service. Making it work together with Azure should be a snap.
The terms 'quite easy" and "Azure-related features" as used by Perry are phrases that would mean something to one person and something else to another, depending on their roles in the establishment. If you have your primary responsibilities limited to coding, you may think of "quite easy" in terms of I can code it in 1 hour and make it work on a user load of 1. Similary, Azure-related features would mean things I can code by extending Azure reference libraries. If you have more far-reaching responsibilities summarized in strategic terms as 'business success', you'd think more differently and the word "related" begins to include ... everything!
@pobiefuna: Sending quotas to 500 recipients/day on a standard edition and 2000 recipients/day for premiere edition is reasonable and usually enough for most people.
I agree that MSFT should also offer something similar eventually, but that would be up to the Hotmail team and not really an Azure feature. I'd rather see the Azure work on Azure related features.
@Perry: How do you intend to deal with gmail quotas?
Again, if gmail can offer this for passersby, don't you think that Microsoft should much more for that reason feel compelled to offer it as value add for actual azure customers?
How would it feel that a MSFT product depends largely on it's competitor's free offering to make it more functionally complete?
simnova
Check out SendGrid / AuthSMTP / PostMark all very capable providers
Steven Nagy
+1 Vote - Totally agree with this request. Pay per email, whatever the pricing strategy, I don't care. Currently people are just going to use the Gmail relay. The differentiator for Azure will be the X service offerings that seamlessly integrate with the platform.
jrperina
Sending an email is a fundamental requirement of any cloud hosting solution. Yet both Azure and Amazon seem to be missing it. In the mean time we are using Elastic Email, which is cheap and good. http://elasticemail.com
StLuisRey
Slightly off topic but http://cloudmail.codeplex.com/
backus.naur
Great, just make sure that it's not economically viable for spammers.
Emmanuel Huna
Michael Brown: why do I need another billing relationship with another company just so I can get access to a SMTP server? Sending email from our apps is a very common feature, Microsoft should make it easier on us and allow us to use a Windows Azure SMTP server for outgoing emails.
Michael Brown
Seriously people Using Azure your azure traffic quota and machine time for Email? Register through godaddy and you get email included in your account. Now use any of the SMTP libraries (IPWorks is good) to connect to for sending. Have another service running to poll for emails over pop. Done and Done.
Bruce
There should be a more generic Alerting / Notification system available for Azure apps. See my suggestion for "Azure Alerting System using Text Messaging". Many Azure apps would like to be able to send out a notification / alert using a variety of different transports - SMS, Email, Phone. This would be a valuable service to have. One simple feature could be to enable Azure Apps to have mailbox(es) e.g. "user@myazureapp..cloudapp.net" associated with the project.
Dharmendra
Right now i depend on gmail smtp for sending emails, but its kind of very frustating that azure does not have any emails functionality
Mike Leach
Is this request perhaps referring to a need for an email "relay" service in Azure?
You can send emails just fine, but you'll need a trusted SMTP relay service to deliver them.
Luis Martins
Allow the use of a BPOS account to be used to send email
Gopinath Sundharam
Charging per email after a pre-defined quota based on your account size should be good. This would help small business owners and developers like me.
Mario_Gandasegui
What about to charge between 0.1 to 1 cent an email, it's way to expensive for spammers, and not a big deal for 80% of us?
Ravindranath Hampole
My current application needs to send email based on the events happen in the application and I am not able to do that now. Microsoft should provide that feature in Azure.
Emmanuel Huna
If you are running a real business, you should not count on Gmail. Google could block your account at anytime and you could not really scale to more than 2,000 emails per day. There are better outgoing SMTP services out there that address both of these issues.
But since we already have a billing relationship with Microsoft and technically the SMTP servers could be in the Azure data centers, having Microsoft do it for us makes a lot more sense.
Joannes Vermorel
I would really feel more comfortable if MS was lot allowing emails to be send, at least not allowed without some extra charge. Otherwise, the Amazon scenario is going to repeat with Azure. In 6 months from now spammers will have managed to get any single IP address of Azure black listed.
ShaunT
I can't believe how highly voted this feature is. This is possible today and we're doing it, re: Perry's response.
pita.o
Here's what I think: First, daily quota may be good fit for hobbyists, not for public-facing business. Azure is designed for elastic reaction to business spikes. So, using an email that has a daily quota on Azure presents a conflict in philosophies.
My thoughts of an email solution that integrates with Azure would be one that follows the Azure philosophy, and provides opportunity for an SLA that is consistent with the SLA you have for other parts of your Azure needs. And if your minimum quota is exc... more
Here's what I think: First, daily quota may be good fit for hobbyists, not for public-facing business. Azure is designed for elastic reaction to business spikes. So, using an email that has a daily quota on Azure presents a conflict in philosophies.
My thoughts of an email solution that integrates with Azure would be one that follows the Azure philosophy, and provides opportunity for an SLA that is consistent with the SLA you have for other parts of your Azure needs. And if your minimum quota is exceeded, you have an SLA that gives you a choice of says ... 1. Charge me for the extra or 2. Shut down the service.
Second: It's not a Hotmail problem. MSFT's strategic messaging offering for business is Exchange. ExchangeOnline does already exist as a cloud service. Making it work together with Azure should be a snap.
The terms 'quite easy" and "Azure-related features" as used by Perry are phrases that would mean something to one person and something else to another, depending on their roles in the establishment. If you have your primary responsibilities limited to coding, you may think of "quite easy" in terms of I can code it in 1 hour and make it work on a user load of 1. Similary, Azure-related features would mean things I can code by extending Azure reference libraries. If you have more far-reaching responsibilities summarized in strategic terms as 'business success', you'd think more differently and the word "related" begins to include ... everything!
Perry
@pobiefuna: Sending quotas to 500 recipients/day on a standard edition and 2000 recipients/day for premiere edition is reasonable and usually enough for most people.
I agree that MSFT should also offer something similar eventually, but that would be up to the Hotmail team and not really an Azure feature. I'd rather see the Azure work on Azure related features.
pobiefuna
@Perry: How do you intend to deal with gmail quotas?
Again, if gmail can offer this for passersby, don't you think that Microsoft should much more for that reason feel compelled to offer it as value add for actual azure customers?
How would it feel that a MSFT product depends largely on it's competitor's free offering to make it more functionally complete?