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Is it possible to use our own outgoing SMTP server?

Environment:

Outgoing E-mail
Oracle B2C Service, all versions

Resolution:

Oracle only troubleshoots and supports use of Oracle e-mail servers.

Customers may choose to relay mail from Oracle B2C Service to their servers before being sent to its final destination. Oracle's e-mail servers are enterprise class servers, designed to serve large customer's needs efficiently and safely. Listed below are common reasons as to why customers choose to move forward with mail relay:

• Compliance/legal reasons
• A customer may want the last hop to be on their side

There are several recommendations below that should be considered before setting up mail relay:

• Relay should not be put in place to circumvent domain or authentication related issues. Oracle's e-mail servers are enterprise class servers, designed to serve large customer's needs efficiently and safely. Using Oracle's e-mail servers will reduce a customer's risk for network and communication protocol issues, as mail travels in a secured and monitored network and then is sent directly to your site. This allows Oracle to verify that the mail was sent and that it was delivered to its intended destination.
• Authentication – when mail is received and relayed for its final destination, all messages should be authenticated using SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Customers will be responsible for setup of each form of authentication. ISPs in most cases will block or filter mail into the spam folder if SPF and DKIM are not present. DMARC is not required, but is always recommended.
• Volume – customers should be sending more than 200K messages per month off any dedicated IP. If this volume threshold cannot be met, other sources of mail should be combined to exceed this monthly minimum. If this threshold still cannot be met, customers should expect to see issues at consumer based ISPs. It is important that the final IP used for delivery be warmed properly and have sufficient volume to maintain a solid reputation. 
• Deliverability – customers will be responsible for troubleshooting all deliverability issues. Once mail leaves Oracle’s servers, there is no way for support to troubleshoot issues that may arise. ***Clients should also safelist the dedicated IP that is provisioned from the Oracle side to ensure that mail is delivered as intended to your servers***

Customers who still wish to relay mail from Oracle B2C Service to their servers are required submit a service request with the business justification for why the relay is needed prior to purchasing a dedicated IP address. Deliverability Operations will need to review these requests to confirm that mail relay is indeed needed and appropriate for the current setup. Once approved, the information below will be required to process the service request:

• Confirmation they have a provisioned or have purchased a dedicated IP entitlement (please check with account team)
• CX Site name
• List of MX records where we will relay mail to via the dedicated IP
• Confirm if this is for Service, Outreach or both
• A period in which we can make the conversion for the site.  If Outreach is changing to use this dedicated IP, it does require downtime of approx. 10-20 minutes. Please work with support team to schedule the setup.

Customers can request that the setup be configured for a test site prior to switching the relay on for a live production site. This should be communicated in advance so that support is aware prior to making any changes. Our servers are only currently allowed to send mail out over port 25 - standard for mail servers.  Non-standard port requests will not be granted.

All questions should be directed to Deliverability Operations prior to setting up mail relay.