Undelivered Link Emails and SPF Records

[Anonymous]

I’ve recently had a spate of customers not receiving their link emails. I’m not an expert in this at all, but I was told by one of the rejecting email companies that

“although it appears your IP is used to send the links, it is actually sending from IP Address 50.87.144.126.

Upon checking our RBL (Blacklists), our network has that IP listed as an address which is frequently used to send SPAM. In addition, you will note that your own SPF record, discourages sending of email from your email address, from the IP Address listed. In this case, the SPF record, designed to protect your email account from being spoofed, is possibly working against you.”

I contacted my hosting company Hostgator because the IP address above appears to be theirs and they said:

“It appears that your script is sending email claiming to be from an “@gmail.com” address. In this case, the recipient servers would be checking the gmail.com SPF record to see if our server IP address is included. Unfortunately, it is not. As such, recipient servers that check SPF records will reject the messages.”

They are telling me:

“To work around this issue the software will need to be configured to make the “From” address look like it’s from an address at “jerrysguitarbar.com”, as that domain has a valid SPF record which includes our server IP addresses.

It would be even better that the address that the plugin is sending the email as, actually exists. This is because some servers perform “sender verifications” where they check if the sending email address even exists before accepting the message.”

I’m sorry this is so long but I’m not at all sure what I need to do to ensure my link emails are delivered.

Many thanks.

[Anonymous]

I should add that the WP eStore log tells me the emails are sent so this isn’t a WP eStore problem. I just don’t know where to go to fix it.

[admin]

The following post is a good start for you:

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/not-receiving-emails-even-though-the-plugin-sent-the-email

[Anonymous]

Thanks. A lot of good information in that link.

But I’m not sure how to do what I understand I need to to correct the specific problem I have. My hosting company tells me:

“WP eStore is claiming the emails are from “gmail.com” when it’s clearly from our server. Mail servers that are receiving email are very sensitive when it comes to mail claiming to be from one domain (gmail.com) actually coming from somewhere else (our server).

Your domain has a correct SPF record, but it’s not being put to use in this case because the current configuration is sending mail on your site from gmail.com and not your domain. Switching the WP eStore to use a valid email address from your domain to send the mail would be best. This is because your domain resides on the server, so the recipient mail server will see this and treat it as valid (as confirmed by your domains SPF record).”

Do you agree with them, and if so, how do I make the change they’re suggesting? Do I simply change the ‘from’ email address in Settings? But what do I change it to? I have ‘Use WordPress mailing system’ checked. Is that a good or bad thing?

Many thanks

Jerry

[wzp]

Did you get the ability to setup email accounts with your hosting service? If so, why can’t you use your own domain instead of gmail for sending out the emails? Doing that will solve the problems. That’s what they’re trying to tell you.

[Anonymous]

I did but I already had jerrysguitarbar at gmail dot com and thought that would be ok. Forgive my ignorance on these things. You’re saying that if I created for example jerry at jerrysguitarbar dot com, and put that in the ‘from’ fiels on WP eStore settings, that would look more acceptable to the spam filters of email providers?

[wzp]

Yes.

Just to clarify, eStore will let you send emails using any “From Email Address” value that you specify in the settings. However, if your hosting provider doesn’t support it then there is nothing we can do about that.

[Author]

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