minimum apps needed to enable a contact form on a website to send out from webhosting server?

Ideally, on my new web hosting server, i want to completely disable any kind of email hosting for users domains. That will be something they have to sort for themselves using gmail, office 365, mail relay hosts such as sendgrid, or whatever...I just dont want any email my servers or my network.

However, i do want contact forms to remain functional, on both static HTML and WordPress sites.

1. What are the minimum install requirement for a webhosting server for contact forms to work for example on wordpress website?

2. Does WordPress ability to use PHP mail make any difference to these minimum requirements? My thought is i need at least SMTP. However, i was wondering if i could have zero mail functionality on the server and force all customers to use offsite solutions for contact forms?

 

Set up your host to use Smarthost for sending, and no local e-mail. That should match your requirements if I undestood correctly.

 

So does that mean i could disable the webserver smtp?
Am i right that server at least needs smtp installed for websites contact forms to perform internal communication in order for a contact form to get access out?

 

What is webserver smtp?
It might be wrong to discuss SMTP in this case. If e-mails are to be sent from that host, it needs an MTA, that is Mail Transfer Agent.
Since you are running Debian 9 (you tried to keep it secret, but clever me looked it up in your other post), istalling exim4 is enough. Or if it already is installed, do

Code:

dpkg-reconfigure -plow exim4-config

and choose using smarthost and no local delivery. Of course the smarthost must be available.

 

i did not mean to make it seem like i was keeping Debian a secrete. I did not think that had any relevance to the question?

My question simply relates to stmp. When i used the term server smtp...i mean that this is the smtp on my webserver as opposed to a desktop pc running mail (some people setup LAMP to run on Virtualbox or vmware). Sorry for the ambiguity.

I dont know much about serving email. I have fiddled around with webservers for a couple of years however i have concentrated my learning on just that...leaving mail out because its another area all by itself that i will learn once i have the webserver knowledge needed to manage shared webhosting clients (which is what i am beginning to do as we speak).

S