I'm using Codeigniter PHP Mailer which is hosted here: https://github.com/ivantcholakov/codeigniter-phpmailer/ and with gmail smtp it works flawless.
However,using it for a standard contact form, when visitors use that contact form and send us an email, they basically send mails from our mail address to our another mail addess. When they open their own email address, they wont be seeing what they sent in their own sent items. What I want to do is (maybe without using smtp settings) show the visitors own mail adress (the one I'm asking as an input on contact form) as the FROM part of the email I receive from my contact form. So that, in case I want to reply the mail, hitting the reply button would be enough. İnstead of doing coding tricks and showing their email somewhere I could copy/paste and send new email.
Don't do that. It's effectively forging the from address and will fail SPF checks. Instead, use your own address as the From address, and add the submitted address as a reply-to address. In PHPMailer:
$mail->From = 'youraddress#example.com';
$mail->addReplyTo($POST['emailfrom']);
Related
I'm using the $email->setFrom('no-reply#example.com'); method and it's working fine for email delivered to the registered sender.
However, the email is delivered as no-reply#example.com.
How can I include the email of the customer that has filled the form? Eh: mario#gmail.com?
If I replace $email->setFrom('mario#gmail.com'); I will get 403.
This happen because I have to register the sender. But I just need to create a simple contact form.
Is there a way to use setFrom using a custom email?
Thanks in advance
Twilio SendGrid developer evangelist here.
When sending emails with SendGrid you do need to verify the email or domain you are sending from. So, you can't use any email address as the from email.
You're creating a contact form, which is why you want the email to appear to come from the person sending it. However, what you really want from that is to be able to reply straight to the person that sent the email.
What you can do is send the email from a domain or email address you have verified and then set the reply-to header to the user's email address. You will receive the email from your chosen email address but when you go to reply the to address will be filled in with the custom email address.
$email->setReplyTo("mario#gmail.com");
I want users on my website to use php mail() to send emails from my website domain. I would like users to get replies on their personal email address which will not be my domain email it might be gmail, hotmail or any other. When I do so, the email recipients get a phishing warning in gmail.
How can I set headers in php mail() so different sender and reply-to emails do not make gmail and other services tag the email as spam or phishing.
Your recipients are getting a pishing warning because your emails are not passing SPF checks. That simply means that the from domain you are using is not authorizing your server to send mail on its behalf.
Try using PHPmailer https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer
You can use it to set a separate from address as well as a specific reply to address
$mail->AddReplyTo('replyto#email.com', 'Reply to name');
$mail->SetFrom('mailbox#email.com', 'Mailbox name');
That being said. The SetFrom address is an address that must pass SPF and preferably DKIM checks to be NOT marked as SPAM or PISHED. This address is recognized as the BOUNCE address where all the bounced emails will be returned to. Not having a valid address may possibly disrupt future deliveries.
The AddReplyTo address will be loaded when the reply button is clicked by the recipient. Keep in mind that even though the message may pass SPF there are many SPAM filters that will potentially mark the message as spam.
The easiest way to get this working is to create an email address on your website (me#mysite.com) then get the website to automatically forward all mail to your gmail account. Then, use the website email address in the 'From' and 'Reply-To' address of your mail() routine.
My webhost ONLY allows sending/recieving emails IF either the sender or reciever is hosted with them. (freehostia.com)
This is a huge disadvantage to me (and I'm assuming everyone else), because of the way my website works.
(My website: I have a classifieds website where CustomerA posts an ad with her email and CustomerB replies via the email form with his email. Neither email is hosted with my host.)
I asked if I could use an external SMTP server (such as Gmail) to bypass the limitations, and they said "Even if you set an external MX record for your domain you will not be able to send e-mails via your mail forum, if you do not use a mailbox from your hosting account with us as a sender or recipient."
Theoretical Workaround:
Auto-enter and hide my hosted email into the "email" section of the form
Have a new section for customer to input their email
When a message is sent, embed customers message and email into a default message. It will look like this:
To: customerA#example.com
From: DONOTREPLY#example.com
Subject: You have recieved a message!
Body: Blahblahblah (customers message) blahblah. To reply, email: customerB#example.com
Sorry about all the confusion. Would this work? Should I give up? I really like my host, but should I switch? Or is there a better workaround?
While you don't need to send through a different server, you can just send to whom you need and set the reply to any address you want.
The mail function allows you to set your own headers as a final parameter.
$headers = 'Reply-To: someone#some_other_domain.com\n\r';
mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);
You can set the reply-to address.
That way even though the email is sent from your address, when the recipient hits reply it creates an email to the address given in the reply-to.
I'm not sure what you are using to send mail but there are some examples in the PHP documentation mail function - http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php
I am trying to build a email messaging system for a classified site ( a la craigslist), so that users can email each other. emails of registered users are stored in a database.
What I want is for the recipients email address to be hidden from the sender's . If I just use the mail() function and dynamically get the recipients email from the database, will this email be visible to the person sending the mail ??
if the recipients email is indeed hidden from the sender's when using mail() this way, then why does craigslist anonymize's email ? isn't it already anonymous ?
Edit: so the email won't be visible to the person filling the form. SO the question remains is why does craigslist anonymizes email addresses? and whether I should implement the same ?
Craigslist doesn't use a form to submit. They provide an email address. When the users send the email using their own email system to #craigslist.org, then their servers get that email, look up the appropriate record, and forward the email to the real email address, so the sender never sees the real email address of the person.
If you're providing a form for the users to fill out, then you're doing something completely different from craigslist. You don't have to show the person's real email address on the form, and they're using your form, not their own email program, to do the reply, so there's no need to show any email address at all, anonymous or real.
If you're going to let people use their own email programs and provide them with an email address, then use the anonymizing service, which will add some load to your servers since they'll have to parse and process incoming emails at a variety of addresses. If you're using a form, you don't have to show any email addresses at all.
You are the one sending it, and it really comes from your server, not the person who filled out the form on your website. So no, there is absolutely no way they can see the real address it went to.
Why does craigslist take it a step further? Not sure, but its not for that reason.
I am using phpmailer to send email. I need to know how to hide or mask sender email address
You can specify any sender email address anyway, since SMTP by itself does not place any requirements on sender email addresses.
If the actual SMTP server you use places restrictions on email addresses (e.g. corporate servers which do not allow sender emails outside of the company domain) there's no way around that, unless of course you can influence the mail server configuration.
Update:
You say in a comment that you want to use gmail to send email where the sender's address is not a gmail address. There is no way to do that.
This is a rare situation you have here... if you do not have a mail server you can still tell PHPMailer to send from a different address just set the From attribute of the PHPMailer object to the address you want. But Wait! if your server doesn't exists, the client can't verify the account and then your mail will more likely be deleted (moved to spam in the more benevolent scenario). If you are trying to mimic third party mail, I'll help you no futher.
Note: Your mail server may be valid but clients are still unable to verify it, and thus you are getting mails delivered to spam or deleted. Check "Must Read" to below to have some inside on how to solve this.
On the other hand, if you already have a mail server, then tell PHPMailer you want to use it, set the Host and Port attributes to your domain name and port respectively. The same if you want to use an account form a different server, remember to set the attributes Username and Password correctly, you may also need to set SMTPAuth = true; and SMTPSecure = 'ssl'; depending on the server. [Note: Username and From may differ]
Now, if you want to use an account from Gmail, you could easily set an alias in Gmail to send as another account [Go to Settings-> Accounts And Import -> Send mail as -> (click) Send Mail From Another Address], that can be the case if you have a mail server but you cannot afford to have it online, you will need to start your server so you can receive the confirmation code Gmail generates to verify your account. Check recommended read for PHP side configuration details.
Lastly if for some rare circunstancies you can't tell PHPMailer to use your mail server, but you do in fact have one, and that one is able to recieve the mail... you can use AddReplyTo('me#example.com', 'My Name'); Most clients will understand that any reply to the message must be (unless explicitly defined by the user) directed to "me#example.com" in this case.
Disclaimer: I take no responsibility of any harm result of the use of the method I mention here, such as (but not limited to) your mail account getting banned.
Must read:
Coding Horror on sending mail via code
Recommended read: PHPMailer Tutorial (old version)
No need (neither a good way) to hide or mask whatsoever.
I assume you already know how to use the class you are talking about.
You probably have some variable for sending email, like
var $From = "someguy#whatever.com";
you can type whatever you want into that email address. Gmail dont care what email things is sent from.
And no, this dosent sound very legit.
One more thing: Gmail requires a gmail account to relay mails. Its no problem, it wont be visible.
You want to "show the company email address as sender" but you "didn't (sic) have any email server"?
Can anyone actually send you email at your company email address? If so, use that server which is hosting your email to send out from.
If you don't really have a company email address, then I suggest you get a gmail address like companyname#gmail.com and just send from that. Otherwise the email will appear as spam to a great many of your recipients.
Now, if the people you are about to send an email to actually signed up to be on your mailing list then you can use a third party application like Constant Contact to do your broadcasts from.
If they haven't, then I suggest you not send an email at all.
in mail headers you can have both a Sender: and a From: header which in most mail clients is displayed as either just the From or in some cases Sender on behalf of From, using this way is a nice and clean way to be able to send From a different mail address then the actual Sender mail server
This is highly illegal.
var $From = "someguy#whatever.com";
Is the only option your have for trying to hide email address. But no matter what your email will be inscribed with IP. Someone who knows what they are doing will still be able to trace the email back to the source.