Gotta buy a library to send E-mail without SMTP client?

[Sin Jeong-hun]

Hi.
I would like to let users send bug reports or other messages to me.
Maybe the easiest way to send e-mails from my application is just use
the default e-mail agent by executing a link
mailto://[email protected].

But this only works if the user has configured Outlook or something.
Many users use web-based mails here so if I do so, Outlook Express's a
new account wizard will pop-up. Futhure more this reveals user e-mails.
Some people want to be anonymous .

The second choise is to use SMTPClient. But to do so, either I have an
SMTP server that doesn't require login (I don't know any free SMTP
server like this) or should put my SMTP login information (for example,
my gmail credential) into the application. Of course, I don't want my
e-mail credential is embedded into the application.

I just want to send a simple text-based e-mail directly from the user's
computer like many other applications. I searched the internet but all
examples are based on the SMTPClient class. I found some direct sending
examples but they used commercial library (which is not free).

So, I've got to buy a library to send E-mail without SMTP client? Or is
there any free library? I just want to send very simple text-based
e-mails.

Thank you.

 

[Paul Hadfield]

Approaching it from another angle, could you not give the client a normal
HTML form with an input field for their email address and a subject line,
and a text area for the email body. The send button would post the form to
the server, at which point you could use the Smtp object in DotNet on the
server (if you've got that set up, or are in a position to set it up)

 

[Sin Jeong-hun]

Thanks. That could be an options. But this requires a web server
account. And sometimes I need send real e-mails from client
applications at another circumstances. So basically, there's no way
except buying a library or using web server mail? I just want to know
that.

 

[Marc Gravell]

I would like to let users send bug reports or other messages to me.
Well, if you don't want to use "mailto:", and don't want to setup mail
at the server, then why use e-mail at all? Why not just have an
"e-mail like" submittal form that posts to a page that logs the data
into a database, flat file (etc) - and have a protected page on the
same site that you can use to review the feedback?

Just a thought...

Marc

 

[John Vottero]

Hi.
I would like to let users send bug reports or other messages to me.
Maybe the easiest way to send e-mails from my application is just use
the default e-mail agent by executing a link
mailto://[email protected].

But this only works if the user has configured Outlook or something.
Many users use web-based mails here so if I do so, Outlook Express's a
new account wizard will pop-up. Futhure more this reveals user e-mails.
Some people want to be anonymous .

The second choise is to use SMTPClient. But to do so, either I have an
SMTP server that doesn't require login (I don't know any free SMTP
server like this) or should put my SMTP login information (for example,
my gmail credential) into the application. Of course, I don't want my
e-mail credential is embedded into the application.

SMTP servers don't require you to login to send them mail that's going to
them. If your "To" address is a gmail address then you can query DNS for
the MX information for gmail.com and it will tell you the public SMTP
servers that will accept incoming mail.

However, many companies block outbound SMTP traffic unless it's coming from
their SMTP server. You should probably check the SMTPServer, if it's set to
something, use that rather than setting it to go direct. If your customer
is blocking outbound SMTP traffic, they have to set the SMTP Server in the
Machine.config or in your app.config.

 

[sloan]

COuld you develop a basic webservice ... that takes:

to , from , subject , body

as parameters. And code up your app to call this web service to send
emails.

Or even very basic credential info.

to, from, subject, body, senderUserName , senderPassword

..............

Can you encrypt the Gmail (for example )account info?


............

also check my blog entry:

you could encrypt gmail credentials.... and have "backup" smtp servers:

http://sholliday.spaces.live.com/blog/

2/8/2006
Smarter Email/Smtp setup with DotNet Configuration Sections (1.1 and 2.0)