The Windows Azure environment itself does not currently provide a SMTP relay or mail relay service. So how do you send and receive email in your Windows Azure applications? Steve Marx puts together a great sample application (available for download here) that does the following:

  1. It uses a third party service (SendGrid) to send email from inside Windows Azure.
  2. It uses a worker role with an input endpoint to listen for SMTP traffic on port 25.
  3. It uses a custom domain name on a CDN endpoint to cache blobs.

sendgrid

Resources:

Azure SDK Download: http://bit.ly/zxazuresdk

Free Windows Azure Platform Trial Account: http://bit.ly/zxazuretrial

Windows Phone SDK Download: http://bit.ly/zxphonesdk

WebMatrix Download: http://bit.ly/zxwebmatrix