In a Support discussion titled How to block outgoing emails to @anon.forumurl?, user flash reports that their self-hosted Discourse instance is repeatedly attempting to send emails to undeliverable @anon addresses, causing hard bounces and risking their SMTP sender reputation. They use Elastic Email, which now requires upgrading to a Pro plan to block such emails — a change they find costly. anon36555649 questions whether this is an issue with the mail service, noting standard systems should stop retrying after a few days. supermathie suggests routing mail through a local Postfix instance to filter outbound messages before they reach the SMTP service. pfaffman asks if flash has configured VERP to handle bounces, referencing a meta guide, which flash is now reviewing [7]. Flash confirms Elastic Email says bounce handling is active but awaits further clarification [10]. After receiving a reply requiring a Pro plan upgrade to block anon emails, flash expresses frustration over rising costs [11]. anon36555649 recommends Mailgun, noting its flexible pricing for low-volume senders, while flash explains they’ve had past issues with Mailgun, AWS, and SendGrid — including being hacked and canceled on SendGrid after a spike in volume [13]. Flash typically sends 6k–9k emails monthly and is exploring alternatives to avoid recurring service disruptions.
I havent seen this until recently. When a @ trust level or group is sent its sending to the anon accounts on site. Resulting in a hard bounce but waiting to retry over and over.
Also is there any way to block certain email addresses from users? Users that have complained so the SMTP service has it as a complaint and then again they do something on site and they get an email and they complain again to SMTP. So a way to block the emails from the site itself without suspending the user
Are you talking about discoursemail for a site hosted by them or some other mail sender?
No for self hosted instances. Im using another smtp email service with hundreds of the anon addresses “retrying”. May switch to postmark since prices going up on other server. But I want to fix these now so its not trying to send anything out or something that will affect the sending score when I move over.
I would set up a local postfix instance on the server, have Discourse send to that, then you can drop any outbound emails you desire before postfix passes it on to your mail service.
Have you followed Configure VERP to handle bouncing e-mails
That seems like a problem with whatever mail sender that is, can you mention what is this sender?
If addresses are undeliverable the attempts to send mail should automatically shut down within a few days with standard systems.
I havent but reading up on it now and will see.
Elastic Email. I wrote to them about it and waiting on a response back as they say theyre checking into it.
Do you have the mail-receiver to catch bounces?
says it is. Still waiting on an answer back from them.
Updating apparently now I have to upgrade to the Pro plan to stop those from being sent is the reply. Its a feature on that plan now. They’ve already gone up on price from what they were and just trying charge more it seems.
Haven’t heard of that one before, “Elastic Email.”
Mailgun may be better and is recommended for discourse, they aren’t advertising that as being free but for low-volume mailings they still have flex-payment plan you can request that seems to have no cost for less than 1,000 e-mails a month.
I found them here thru other users using them.. It wasnt a free plan but used to be cheaper with a fee only for what was sent. In the past I had problems with mailgun, AWS and sendgrid. Sendgrid i was on for years and one day I got hacked somehow and they cancelled my account from the increase in the emails after charging me. Im going to keep looking around as I usually do more 6k-9k volume a month in emails and I dont think its alot but enough for others to cancel me.
