Emailing from a different server

[SeanF]

I am not sure this is the correct forum but I didn't see one which more closely matched the issue.

I have an SaaS business management tool that my customers use to manage their businesses in a very niche industry.

The system manages business development, sales, communications, logistics, etc. It includes an email function that allows my customers (the SaaS users) to send email to their customers directly from the system and it also allows them to send email "blasts" to groups of customers based on database queries. A typical "blast" might be 200-300 email addresses.

I use the the "SendGrid" API for email functions. I have a "Dedicated IP address" so that I am not sharing an IP address with random users who might be suspected spammers.

The problem is (I think) the email functions which are sending the emails are on a server where the domain is [MySaaSplatform.com] but the emails have a "from" address which matches my customer's domain such as [[e-mail]]. The vast majority of the emails go through without a problem but some of my customer's customers never receive the emails.

I think part of the reason may be the disconnect between the two domain names.

How can I check this?

If my customers' customers white label the domain of the SaaS system, will that help?

Any thoughts or comments are welcome

[lammert]

The problem is not the disconnect between the server name and the domain name in the From address. That is a common situation.

First check the IP address in online check tool sites to see if something strange comes up. Maybe the IP address has some old spam history by a previous owner and that should be fixed first. Also check if the IP address has a reverse PTR name, the email server name is on an A/AAAA address and not a CNAME and if it supports TLS on the outgoing connection.

The next step I would take is set proper SPF records for the sending domain and add DKIM signing to all outgoing emails.

If SPF and DKIM are working, you can set up a DMARC record in your DNS. When using DMARC, chances that your emails will be accepted by the larger email receivers increases. It has the added benefit that the email address in the DNS record will be used to alert you about the delivery status of your emails per sending IP address. The receiving side will tell you if it did accept, reject, quarantine or spam-mark the message on a daily basis.

[SeanF]

Wow! Lots of new terms and acronyms here... I have some reading to do I guess.

A quick check of my dedicated IP address on [whatismyipaddress.com...] show it is not listed in any of the smam checkers (good)
Using the form in the following article and entering the same IP address to check a reverse DNS, returns the name of a SendGrid server, so I guess that's good too.
[leadfeeder.com...]

Not sure how to check for A/AAAA or CNAME but I will look into that.

And I suppose SendGrid can help me set up a DMARC record. unless there are other tools you can point me to

Thanks for the reply!

[dstiles]

I and a lot of others weight SendGrid as a potential spammer - we get lots of UCE spam from there. That could be one reeason for losing mail, especially at smaller mail servers which generally run tighter spam control.

Another is: mail should come FROM the sending domain. From my server I send formmail FROM the web site's domain but put the sender's address in the Reply-To field, which people should be replying to anyway.

The email should, as lammert says, include SPF, DKIM and DMARC. To do this you need to add records to DNS. There are sites that will help you generate appropriate strings for DNS. Also, once you have DMARC set up, consider setting DMARC to "reject", that way phishers etc are rejected (by responsible mail servers) if they forge your domain.