Why avoid CDO for sending mail in .NET?

Question

Our application uses System.Net.Mail to send mail from .NET which unfortunately doesn't support implicit SSL servers. We have several options we're reviewing for supporting implicit SSL but I would like to know what are the technical reasons to avoid using CDO?

I know it's deprecated and the recommendation is to use System.Net.Mail instead, but if the new version doesn't actually do everything CDO does, what's technically wrong with using the older CDO?

I'd particularly appreciate specific situations or examples when CDO doesn't work and System.Net.Mail is better.

Thank you.

Answer 1

CDO is to be avoided because it is an external dependency that does not ship with .NET and is not installed by default on Windows. It's almost certainly not available on any non-Windows system.

I would suggest that if you have it available, there's no reason not to use it. But if you don't need it, it's better not to use it.