Outbound Filtering
MailChannels Outbound Filtering is a cloud-based SMTP relay service which identifies and blocks spammers to ensure reliable email delivery. With Outbound Filtering, you can eliminate email delivery problems caused by IP address blocklisting. Automatically shut down compromised accounts and scripts to improve your security.
Compromised Account Detection
MailChannels uses sophisticated algorithms and machine learning approaches to spot spam-like trends in the stream of outgoing email coming from your servers and applications.
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Log Search
Search through months’ of logs in seconds via our intuitive web interface to quickly answer questions about email delivery.
Learn MoreMonitors
When MailChannels identifies a spammer within your network, it sends you a notification so that you can proactively remove the spammer.
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Sender Profiles
Stay informed about your users’ activity. Each user has a Sender Profile that details all mail sent, any alerts attached to the account, and other user metrics so you can identify spammers instantly.
Learn More“As a result of MailChannels, the number of tickets related to email delivery dropped by 90%.”
Brett Tackaberry
Easy setup and zero maintenance
As a cloud-based service, Outbound Filtering requires no hardware or software to install and maintain. You can use Outbound Filtering with any mail server or email service that supports SMTP authentication.
Increase email delivery
World class commercial spam and phishing detection technology
Shut down abusive accounts automatically using API webhook monitors
Easily remediate false positives
Empower end users to solve their own delivery problems using MailChannels Insights™
High quality, 24x7 email support takes email issues out of your ticket queue
Built for Shared Hosting Providers
Use MailChannels to ensure reliable email delivery for your customers and eliminate support tickets due to blocklisting issues. Improve security by tuning in to compromised account notifications.
Fix malware-infected WordPress scripts, stolen user accounts and rooted servers by having MailChannels watch out for spamming activity.
HOST CONSOLE
Modern User Experience
Powerful reporting tools to help you manage your accounts, while saving time.
Compromised Account Detection
Spammers are constantly searching for new resources from which to send their email. They partner with cybercriminals who exploit vulnerabilities in web applications and servers, and who compromise end user accounts through phishing attacks and malware. The variety of ways in which spammers obtain resources is endless and constantly changing, and preventing their advance is nearly hopeless. While it’s definitely helpful to keep software up to date and to follow best practices for maintaining site security, outbound email processing and filtering is necessary in order to stay one step ahead of the spammers.
Because it’s not practically possible to stop spammers from exploiting your resources, you need to identify spammers by watching the email they generate. MailChannels Outbound Filtering uses sophisticated algorithms and machine learning approaches to spot spam-like trends in the stream of outgoing email coming from your servers and applications. Additionally, MailChannels pinpoints the sending entity (whether it be a user, application, or server). When a flow of email traffic begins to look suspiciously “spammy,” MailChannels shuts it down and generates an informative notification that you can process either via an API web hook, or a human-readable email message to take action against the spammer.
Here are some of the techniques used by MailChannels to identify resources that have been compromised by spammers:
- MailChannels uses digital signature technology, checking the content of each email message against a real-time updated database of known spam signatures. A sudden uptick of spam messages identified in this way may trigger rate limiting or blocking of a sender.
- MailChannels tracks dozens of minute-by-minute statistics about each email sender. Unusual trends in message volume, suspicious content, recipient validation failures and other statistical signals enable identification of spammers.
- MailChannels consults external databases such as domain and IP reputation services to identify email messages relating to known spammers.
- MailChannels analyzes responses from email receivers to gauge whether receivers like the email being sent by your users, applications and scripts. Based on this feedback, spammers can be identified even before other signals indicate a problem.
Monitors
When MailChannels identifies a spammer within your network, it sends you a notification so that you can proactively remove the spammer – for example, by disabling a user account or a WordPress plugin that has been compromised. Notifications are sent either via human-readable email, or using a web hook, which enables you to shut down compromised accounts in seconds.
Multi-Password Support
MailChannels lets you create multiple passwords for SMTP authentication with the service. You can use a different password with each of your servers, and retire old passwords with a single click if you need to shut down access because of a compromise or breach.
Multiple Console Users
MailChannels lets you create web console logins for your staff. Select between regular and administrator access levels to provide appropriate access to technical staff and administrative staff.
Log Search
MailChannels logs every email delivery attempt made by your users, showing you what happened in case there’s a problem. Search through months’ of logs in seconds via an intuitive web interface to quickly answer questions about email delivery.
Insights
MailChannels provides easy-to-understand non-delivery reports (NDRs) when email is rejected, helping users resolve their own delivery challenges. A link provided in each NDR takes the user to an “Insights” page where they review all of the email sent from their address. Insights reduces the amount of work you have to do as a service provider by helping users help themselves instead of calling your support desk.
Frequently Asked Questions
To sign up for Outbound Filtering, we suggest you take a look at our Pricing Page to help select the best plan for your needs. From there, click the “Create Account” button on the bottom of the Pricing page. You will then be prompted to enter contact and payment information when you begin the sign-up process. After signing up, please refer to the Outbound Filtering documentation, which includes our Getting Started guide.
Yes, we provide SMTP services on port 25, 587, and 2525. If you can configure your mail server to relay through a smart host, you can use our service.
Sender Policy Framework (SPF), “is an email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses” (Wikipedia).
To use any mail relay service, including MailChannels or alternative solutions, you must update SPF records to authorize our service to send on your behalf by including the following string: include:relay.mailchannels.net
For more information, see the Set up SPF records help article.
When our system detects a compromised sender or spammer in your system, we generate a notification message. You can enable receipt of these notification messages by visiting the “My Settings” area of the MailChannels Host Console.
No configuration is necessary; however, you can greatly improve email delivery by following our setup instructions for your mail server. MailChannels works better if your mail server tells us which user or script was responsible for each message.
Outbound Filtering does not apply fixed limits to what a sender may send in a given period of time; however, senders who suddenly change their behavior may find their mail delayed temporarily while the system learns about their new behavior. For bulk senders, we advise slowly increasing the rate at which email is sent through the service. This gives the service time to learn about your sending behavior and patterns, and so long as we don’t see spam or complaints about your mail, within a short time we can accommodate nearly any volume.
When we reject a message, we always provide a URL in the rejection message, which allows the sender (end-user) to report the false positive directly to us. You can find false positive reporting features within the Host Console interface under ‘Log Search’.
No, we will never silently drop or lose a message that you submit to the service. If we decide not to deliver a message, you will receive a bounce message detailing what went wrong.
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Getting Started is Simple
- Create a MailChannels account
- Smart host your mail server to our mail server
- Set up sender authentication
Start sending your email to us and we’ll do the rest!