Author Topic: CiviCRM/CiviMail on an intranet (Read 1701 times)

guaka · February 20, 2010, 04:29:50 pm

Having CiviCRM on an internet host is sometimes too slow especially when everything has to go over https in countries with slower internet connection. On top of that, when dealing with sensitive information it can be important to have an installation not directly on the internet. Hence my question.

Would it somehow be possible to have CiviCRM on an intranet, including a running CiviMail setup?

I foresee problems with optout and with bounces.

It should be possible to handle email returns and bounces, but I'm not sure. Anyone knows more about this?

The optout could be solved by a reverse SSH tunnel in combination with a locked down proxy server. Complicated, but doable, I guess. Maybe there's a simpler or easier solution that is still safe?

Eileen · February 20, 2010, 11:36:28 pm

If you want to run civimail then you have the option of only allowing people to unsubscribe by clicking on a URL (in which case your server must be publicly accessible unless you must use the CiviSMTP service)

But you can also choose to only provide the option to opt out by e-mail (ie. provide Opt-out mail address rather than an opt-out URL). CiviMail does allow people to opt-out by typing 'unsubscribe' in a return e-mail or e-mailing a specific address (supplied by a token in the e-mail).

Bounces are not a problem as they will go to wherever the return e-mail is an don't rely on people accessing your webserver.

If hosting the mail side is a problem google is a good option. Google will manage your domain's mail for up to 30 mailboxes for free. You only need one mailbox (+ VERP) for CiviMail and if need be you could probably register a different domain name just for civimail response handling

kmarkley · February 26, 2010, 06:58:23 pm

Quote from: Eileen on February 20, 2010, 11:36:28 pm

Bounces are not a problem as they will go to wherever the return e-mail is an don't rely on people accessing your webserver.

If hosting the mail side is a problem google is a good option. Google will manage your domain's mail for up to 30 mailboxes for free. You only need one mailbox (+ VERP) for CiviMail and if need be you could probably register a different domain name just for civimail response handling

Google Apps is a great service for hosting mail on your domain, but it is not ideal for civiMail.

Bounces are a problem because they go to the address in the return-path header, not the reply-to header (or at least some of them do). If you try to use google for SMTP, they will insert their own return-path header which supercedes the one set by civiMail. Net result is that bounces don't get processed.

Furthermore, as gleaned from http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,7553.msg38766.html#msg38766 bounce tracking also doesn't work with the sendmail delivery method. Bottom line is you'll probably need to get an SMTP relay service.

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Author Topic: CiviCRM/CiviMail on an intranet (Read 1701 times)

guaka

CiviCRM/CiviMail on an intranet

Eileen

Re: CiviCRM/CiviMail on an intranet

kmarkley

Re: CiviCRM/CiviMail on an intranet