Did you know that if you have a GMail account, you can use their mail system's SMTP service for free? I am using it to deliver "Contact Me" messages from my blog to my account at GMail, but you can send emails to anyone using it.
Here's how to configure your email client (or server email component) to use GMail for outbound mail delivery:
- Set the software's SMTP server to smtp.gmail.com
- Enable authentication for the connection, and enter your gmail account credentials (GMail's SMTP service only works with clients that support authenticated connections, so if your software doesn't support authentication you need to use another client to use this feature of GMail)
- Select TLS or SSL (this will encrypt the connection)
- Set the port number to either 465 or 587
That's all there is to it. Now you don't need to prop up (and secure) some MTA software on your web server just so you can send an email.
Oh, an important note: Google will rewrite your "From:" (and Reply-To) address to whatever account you have configured to use for authentication. You can massage this a little bit by changing the "Default account" setting within your GMail account profile (it will always rewrite the From address to match the default account). If you are looking for an anonymous remailer, you will need to look elsewhere.