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Best Practices
Behind the scenes, the Common Hosted Email Service dispatches SMTP email messages to the apps.smtp.gov.bc.ca SMTP server which is managed by OCIO. Before you consider using CHES for your line of business needs, please take a moment to review the following information regarding the best practices and general fair use limits for the apps.smtp.gov.bc.ca SMTP server.
When using CHES, only government messages are allowed. You should only be using domains that OCIO Exchange hosts such as @gov.bc.ca or one of the other 60 plus domains that they manage. If you have reqirements to send emails outside of that, please note that OCIO will not be updating their core SPF or DMARK records with client server IPs as that is not allowed.
You can utilize an existing hosted address as the sender or open a iStore consulting order with Messaging to investigate setting up a separate domain for your custom sending needs. This has the benefit of configuring the SPF and DMARK records with your server IP addresses.
While the CHES API is designed to be flexible and scale based on load demand, there are still general usage rate guidelines you should follow as recommended by OCIO:
| Parameters | Limits |
|---|---|
| Recipient rate limit | 10,000 recipients per day |
| Recipient limit | 500 recipients |
| Recipient proxy address limit | 400 |
| Message rate limit | 30 messages per minute |
If your line of business is expecting to exceed the limits in the above table, please contact the OCIO Messaging Services team to discuss about your line of business needs and raising the limits as necessary.
It's worth remembering that all every spam filter out there is different depending on the client or service you use. Here are some general recommendations:
- Don't include textual spam triggers. (E.g. suspicious words in the subject or body.)
- Use your own variation of a "no-reply" sender address. (
[email protected]is reserved. You could for example use[email protected]instead.) - Consider the format of attached files. (E.g. zip files could trigger spam filters.)
- Use a tool to check your email "score" (E.g. https://www.mail-tester.com/.)
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