Email domains and Reply-To addresses

Email domains and Reply-To addresses

by James Stephens -
Number of replies: 3

Hello,

I've dug through the forum hoping to find an answer; I haven't found anything that directly answers my situation.

Our Moodle site has users from many, many different domains. The email relay we use is allowed to send from only one of those many domains. We have the mail going out from a donotreply address.

What I'd really like to have is the FROM address being the donotreply address from the one domain we're allowed to use so that it gets passed spam filters, but have the Reply-To address be the users' real email addresses so that the recipient can reply to these emails. It seems like setting the allowed domains sets both the FROM and REPLY-TO addresses to those allowed domains, which I think will get us in trouble if we add domains here we aren't allowed to send from.

Is this an option?

It is also very possible that I'm misunderstanding something fundamental!

Thanks!

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In reply to James Stephens

Re: Email domains and Reply-To addresses

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
No - but that's because (these days) you can only use from or reply-to from domains you have the right to send from. If you try to do anything else you'll just find yourself getting blocked.
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Email domains and Reply-To addresses

by James Stephens -
Oh! I thought Reply-To was ok to use for other domains. Ugh. Thanks!

Do you happen to have recommendations for how to make this work? Or is just leaving it at donotreply the only way and not have people replying to emails from Moodle at all?
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In reply to James Stephens

Re: Email domains and Reply-To addresses

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
I'm not sure that there's a simple answer - you don't have any control over what remote email hosts do to check for spam. So while, in theory, you can get away with setting reply-to to anything you like the reality may be different. What I'm saying is that you have a much better chance of delivery if your from and reply-to are 'noreply@mydomain.com' and you rely on people logging into Moodle to reply.

Even then, be cautious that you email domain is set up correctly with SPFs and such in place as you can easily look like a bulk-email spammer if you have courses with large numbers of participants.
Average of ratings: Useful (2)