Please tell me what I am doing wrong. I am sending an email using the Zend_Mail class like this:
$message = <<<STR
You have a new invoice!
Sign in to your clientarea to see it.
Best regards,
Company name
STR;
$mail = new Zend_Mail();
$mail->setBodyText($message);
$mail->setFrom('billing#company.com', 'Company.com');
$mail->addTo('client#email.com', 'Client Name');
$mail->setSubject('You have a new invoice!');
$mail->send();
It is received as a spam though. There are other applications such as Webmin on my server and emails they send is not treated as SPAM.
I have solved this by adding these lines:
$mail->setReplyTo('contact#company.com', 'Company');
$mail->addHeader('MIME-Version', '1.0');
$mail->addHeader('Content-Transfer-Encoding', '8bit');
$mail->addHeader('X-Mailer:', 'PHP/'.phpversion());
The critical line seems to be adding Reply-To header. Without that it would always go to SPAM. Once I set the Reply-To header email clients stopped treating it as spam.
Related
I don't use PHP that often but when I do and I need to write a function to send E-Mails, I just used the mail() function. I have used it on a shared hosting service and I always received the E-Mails from a... well... not an account? A bot? It didn't even have an E-Mail address.
And that's what I want to achieve at this very moment - send an E-Mail to me without really connecting to a SMTP server or going through authentication. How can be that done with PHPMailer? Is it even possible in my case? And if you somehow got my question, how are such E-Mails even called; the ones that... aren't sent by... well... an E-Mail account?
<?php
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
require 'PHPMailer-master\src\Exception.php';
require 'PHPMailer-master\src\PHPMailer.php';
require 'PHPMailer-master\src\SMTP.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->FromName = "A random name";
$mail->addAddress("myemail#gmail.com", "Recepient Name");
$mail->isHTML(true);
$mail->Subject = "Subject is here";
$mail->Body = "Hello, <br>test body ";
if(!$mail->Send()) {
echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
echo "Message has been sent";
}
?>
This did make me laugh a bit...
No, emails can't just magically spring into existence, but there isn't necessarily a direct correlation between email user accounts and addresses.
When you send from a shared hosting account by calling mail(), the mail server knows the account you're sending from, and sometimes doesn't require authentication as a result. This for example is how GoDaddy operates. Unfortunately this approach is very prone to abuse because there is often little preventing you from flat-out lying about who you are. This is why such services are usually a) terrible and b) extremely unreliable for actually delivering messages.
If you don't specify a "from" address, the server will usually make one up from information it does have – typically your user account name, or the name of the user running the script (e.g. www-data), and the hostname of the server you're on, often something like randomnumber.hostingprovider.example.com. Look at the headers of messages you've sent before, and you'll probably see something like that.
Sometimes this address can be the same for all users on a given shared server, so your delivery reputation can depend on what others are sending, which could well be spam, phishing, malware, etc.
This vagueness is terrible for deliverability, so if you host your contact form on such a system, expect messages from it to end up in a spam folder.
If you use SMTP to send via a "proper" account you gain a lot more control and reliability, but unfortunately some hosting providers (GoDaddy again) block outbound SMTP and force you to use their mail servers. This is a way of saying that if you want to send email that will be delivered, use a decent hosting provider.
Once you get control over your sending, you can choose exactly what addresses messages are sent from, subject to authentication constraints including things like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, but that's another story.
To my knowledge it is possible and have it work correctly each time. In the last year I found that the e-mails I sent using the mail() function would immediately go into my spam box (as well as the junk box of others) causing great confusion. I upgraded to PHPMailer to solve this and I have never set it up to use SMTP and works just fine.
The code I have is:
$mail = new PHPMailer(true);
$html = $email->get(); // This gets a standard HTML Template to use as the base of the e-mail.
$title = 'Title for Inside the HTML';
$subject = 'The E-mail Subject';
$html = str_replace('[title]',$title,$html); //Use this to replace the [title] element in my HTML Template with $title.
$html = str_replace('[date]',date("F j, Y g:i A"),$html); // Again, replaces [date] in the HTML Template with the current date and time.
$body = 'Hello My Good Friend,<br>This is just a simple <strong>HTML Message</strong><br><br>Thank you.';
$html = str_replace('[body]',$body,$html); //Add my HTML Message to the HTML Template.
try {
//Recipients
$mail->setFrom('noreply#example.com', 'My Organization');
$mail->addAddress($row["email"], $row["fullname"]); // Add a recipient
//Content
$mail->isHTML(true); // Set email format to HTML
$mail->Subject = $subject;
$mail->Body = $html;
$mail->AltBody = strip_tags($html,'<br>');
$mail->send();
//Return Success Message
$rMsg .= '<div class="alert alert-success">
<strong>Success: </strong> We have e-mailed the warning.</div>';
} catch (Exception $e) {
$rMsg .= '<div class="alert alert-danger">
<strong>Error: </strong> There was an error e-mailing the warning.</div>';
}
I'm sending email to mailtrap in this way
$mail = new Zend_Mail();
$mail->setFrom("senderaddress#yahoo.it", 'Temporary sender name');
I am already using mail trap for a lot of projects, so I know that I can send email using these email address and name as "from"
What doesn't works
The problem is that $mail->send() throws an Exception
5.1.7 Bad sender address syntax
Little debug
So I debugged Zend code. I am now sure it's sending from as
Temporary sender name <senderaddress#yahoo.it>
I also tried avoiding litteral name, so using only
$mail->setFrom("senderaddress#yahoo.it");
The header is written using only
<senderaddress#yahoo.it>
But nothing changed
What I'm not understanding
I am not able to understand if this very old Zend project is NOT sending at all the message or if Mailtrap is refusing.
Questions
What is wrong with this sender address ?
Is this an error from Zend_Mail or from Mailtrap?
And obviously, how to fix ?
You can try this way:
Zend_Mail::setDefaultFrom('senderaddress#yahoo.it', 'Temporary sender name');
$mail = new Zend_Mail();
$mail->setBodyText('...Your message here...');
$mail->send($transport);
I've just updated a contact form to use PHPMailer to stop emails being marked as junk, with no luck.
It's a fairly straight forward setup I'm using but its still going into peoples junk mail.
Here is my script, I was wondering if anyone could tell what was wrong?
include_once('../inc/phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php');
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$name = $_POST['name'];
$email = $_POST['email'];
$body = "Name: ".$name."\r\n";
$body .= "Email: ".$email."\r\n";
$body .= "Message: ".$_POST['message'];
$mail->From = "mailer#blah.com";
$mail->FromName = "Contact BLah";
$mail->Subject = "Contact From: Blah";
$mail->Body = $body;
$mail->AddAddress("john#blah.com", "john");
$mail->AddAddress("david#blah.com", "david");
if(!$mail->Send()) {
$errorMsg .= "Error sending message, please try again later.";
} else {
$errorMsg .= "Message Sent successfully.";
}
I thought that PHPmailer normally takes care of inserting proper headers?
Any thoughts?
EDIT: Added spam score
-Spam-Status: "score=0.0 tests=none version=3.1.7 cmae=v=1.0 c=1 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10
a=soyWjZv28gkhNSke5wm04A==:17 a=fqdOs_Nl9wd82e3SDigA:9 a=l-lynuxnH-gfU2bevBoA:7
a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=nymK5Bb5l1cA:10 a=_6wjLm_vFSYA:10 xcat=Undefined/Undefined"
X-Spam-Level: *
EDIT 2: I just tried the script on a different server from the clients and it has the same result. Do I have to send through the SMTP setup for it not to be classed as spam?
Some reasons your mail can get marked spam:
You're sending spam
Your IP, or a block of IPs surrounding your IP has been marked as a spam source on one or more blackhole lists
The content of the email is triggering spam filters.
The recipient has added you to their blacklist
The recipient didn't add you to their whitelist
You're sending a mixed source mail ("From: xyz#example.com", but sending it from "someotherdomain.net")
SPF records for your server are misconfigured/not configured at all
Domain keys are misconfigured/not configured at all
etc...
PHPMailer is a tool. Consider it a hammer. The hammer may have bent the nail, but only because the wielder didn't aim right.
The only way you'll solve this problem is by examining the bounce messages (if any), and whatever showed up in the recipient's mailbox. If they receive the mail, but it goes into a spam folder, then get a copy of the mail and examine its headers. Most spam filters will put their spam score/reasoning in there.
Small hint:
add in a line like so
$mail->AddReplyTo( 'mailer#blah.com', 'Contact BLah' );
It should decrease your SPAM rating significantly.
I was having the same problem using PHPMailer, and here's what fixed the problem for me: set the Sender (this is different and distinct from the "From") to a valid email account for the domain you are sending the email from. This causes PHPMailer to properly set the "envelope-from" information so that the email passes SPF and Sender-ID validation. Without doing this, the "envelope-from" is a OS user id and server combination which will not be verifiable.
Example Code:
$mail = new PHPMailer;
$mail->From = 'from_email#domain.com';
$mail->Sender = 'sender_email#domain.com';
...
It is not necessarily PHPMailer's fault, there are several possible reasons for your server to be blacklisted. You can check here to see if this happened
I'm sending emails using a PHP script and class.phpmailer.php.
I need to be able to 'catch' bounces and auto-responses. I'm able to catch the bounces already. I created an alias that redirects bounces to a php script, and I parse the email there. I include some information in the original email in the headers, so I can know which emails bounced.
The same logic should work for the auto-responses, I think the problem is that the email are not getting to the server. I already have a reverse DNS configured, pointing to the server IP address.
This is part of how I send an email:
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->From = $fromAddr;
$mail->Sender = $sender;
$mail->FromName = $fromName;
$mail->AddAddress($email);
$mail->IsHTML(true);
$mail->Subject = $subject;
the I add the headers, for example:
$mail->AddCustomHeader($mail->HeaderLine("From", $fromAddr));
$mail->AddCustomHeader($mail->HeaderLine("Subject", $subject));
$mail->AddCustomHeader($mail->HeaderLine("Company-State", "Florida"));
$mail->AddCustomHeader($mail->HeaderLine("Company-Country", "USA"));
$mail->AddCustomHeader($mail->HeaderLine("From", $fromAddr));
$mail->AddCustomHeader($mail->HeaderLine("Reply-To", $fromAddr));
My RDNS is something like: mail2.mydomain.com. The bounces are going to "www-data".
What should I add and where? something like www-data#mail2.mydomain.com?
Tks!
I am using PHPMailer to send a confirmation email for newly registered users in my social network. But I found out most of them have ended up in user's spam list. (Hotmail and Yahoo). How to avoid this?
This is my script
$mail=new PHPMailer();
$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->SMTPAuth = mSMTPAuth();
$mail->SMTPSecure = mSMTPSecure();
$mail->Host = mHost();
$mail->Port = mPort();
$mail->Username = mUsername();
$mail->Password = mPassword();
$mail->From = mFrom();
$mail->FromName = "SiteName";
$mail->Subject = "SiteName New Account Activation";
$mail->IsHTML(true);
$mail->WordWrap = 50;
$mail->Body = "<h2>Welcome to " .$sitename. " " .$username. "! </h2><br><br>";
$mail->Body .= "Please click on the link below to verify your email address:<br><br>";
$mail->Body .= "<a href='".$base. "verify.php?a=" .$gen_key."'>".$base. "verify.php?a=" .$gen_key."</a>";
$mail->Body .= "<br><br>Regards<br>";
$mail->AltBody = "Welcome to " .$sitename. " " .$username. "!\n\nTo verify your email address, please click on the link below:\n\n".$base. "verify.php?a=" .$gen_key;
$mail->AddAddress($email);
$mail->Send();
$mail->ClearAddresses();
To maximize the odds of your email arriving, there are three things you need to check:
Make sure the computer sending the email has a Reverse PTR record
Configure DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) in your DNS and code
Set up a SenderID record in your DNS
details at:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/04/so-youd-like-to-send-some-email-through-code.html
There's not much you can do about it. Most of those mail providers have lists of common IP addresses, hostnames, and other data that often get flagged as spam and if your emails match the criteria they automatically get filtered. All you can really do is tell your visitors to add your email address to their allow list before registering so the email will go through to their inbox.
Honestly, don't worry about it. If they see your emails are regularly being marked as 'not spam' then they'll eventually add an exception for it. Just tell users to check their spam folder if they don't see the email like every other site does. Usually if they mark it as 'not spam' in that folder it will automatically add an exception for that address so any other emails you send them will end up in their inbox.
Do you have a reverse DNS entry for the server sending the confirmation e-mails?
If not, this might be a rDNS issue. Some sites are much more likely to mark a message as SPAM if the IP and name of the sending host don't match according to rDNS.
Otherwise, you might try sending confirmation e-mails to your own accounts on major e-mail sites like yahoo, hotmail and g-mail and then tweaking the wording until it gets past the spam filters.
Hm, there is SOMETHING you can do:
* Scrap the HTML. This looks like spam, especially with low text
* Write some more text, please.
Short HTML mails may rise up quite on the spam list.
I discovered that any variation of the word "confirm" in the title ends up in my spam bucket. I found other words that also do this: "purchase", "hurry", "order", "bargain", and "imminent".
This may not be true in all emails, but it happens in mine. It may be because those words appear in most of the emails I mark as span. It also may be that a local sysop made a filter and distributed it to all of us.
You can try using sendGrid apis which will helps, they charge but I think it is worthy. They support most popular languages : Nodejs, PHP, Java, ....