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Comment by Ascetik | Hacker News Reader

>It's all self hosted

>Third party services usually require you to verify the domain, but the vast majority of our clients do not have access to anything related to their domain or DNS

Do you see the contradiction here?

If you are sending it from your domain there is no issue migrating to mailchimp.

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We spoof the client's email. So while we are sending from our IP address, the FROM is actually john@clientllc.com, the FROM name is John, and the REPLY-TO is john@clientllc.com.

10 years ago, that passed. Nowadays, it's unacceptable. I'm wondering if anyone has a solution that doesn't involve any DNS changes for the clients we are spoofing, because it just won't happen, unfortunately. Our entire newsletter is built upon email spoofing, which is a terrible practice but I cannot get management to allocate any more resources to fixing it than "just make it work again". I'm going to try to push sending out from our (verified) domain again using SMTP (so we keep our system other than the sending part), but I'm doubtful I will get the approval for that.

I see the contradiction and realize that the verification process is in place for an extremely good reason, but actually implementing a fix is not as simple as you would hope. I was just hoping for someone to have an idea that I had not already thought of.

What about using no-reply@service.com as FROM and client's email as REPLY-TO? Spam detection gives much more leeway on REPLY-TO address.

I've suggested that as well. I'll bring that up again, though, when I'm talking to management about it again. Our bounce rate jumped from 25% to almost 45% in the last month, so it may be enough of a shock to make some changes.

You're not going to be able to send from the clients email if you're unable (unwilling?) to implement the DNS changes required to verify the domain. Surely that's the minimum required to fulfil "just make it work again"?

This is what I suspected, but I felt it worth throwing it out there and seeing if anything is possible. We're doing things the way you did 15 years ago and that just doesn't fly anymore.

I know that you said but I'm afraid a major part of a spam scoring is coming from DNS related checks (SPF, Domain Keys...). I would concentrate on that... offer yourselves to configure that on behalf of your customers, get those DNS things shorted out and your delivery rate will get higher.

Yeah, like I said, I realize that's how spam scoring works and that our methods are just extremely outdated now. Problem is that our clients frequently do not have access to their DNS and nothing has changed on the DNS in 5-10 years. The purchased a site and email service a decade ago and they won't think about it again for another decade.

> our clients frequently do not have access to their DNS

How could they not have access to a service that they pay for?

It sounds like you have a human problem on your hands, not a technical one. I would think about how to get an updated SPF into their DNS. If the boss said "just make it work" then to me that means to call the clients and hand hold them through figuring out who hosts their DNS records and how to open a support ticket or reset their self-service web portal login password, or whatever else the client needs to do to get those records in there.

SPF is very easy to configure and will improve your deliverability significantly. After you configure SPF, mail servers will acknowledge your servers as a valid sender for your client domain. It will no longer be spoofing. The only difference between spoofing and not spoofing is domain validation.

DKIM is not tied to an IP address but the 2 extra steps of complexity involved with DKIM have allowed for SPF to be the dominant domain verification method for sending email.

> It sounds like you have a human problem on your hands, not a technical one. I would think about how to get an updated SPF into their DNS. If the boss said "just make it work" then to me that means to call the clients and hand hold them through figuring out who hosts their DNS records and how to open a support ticket or reset their self-service web portal login password, or whatever else the client needs to do to get those records in there.

Exactly my point

> How could they not have access to a service that they pay for?

Generally, they are on autopay and haven't had to sign in for several years. We often run into an issue where the person who set it up is no longer with the company and they no longer have the associated email address set up, so they can't do a password reset (without setting up the email, at least, which means hunting down how to do that; we're talking <5 person companies that haven't had a new employee in years)

> It sounds like you have a human problem on your hands, not a technical one.

This is definitely the problem. :/

As gardnr says, you need to solve this problem by involving the clients. Trying to fix this without some DNS fiddling is going to waste your time and you'll have nothing to show for it.

The world changes, and adaptation requires maintenance. 10 years ago is almost half the age of the web ago. This is more a business decision - do you let those accounts rot - than it is a technical decision. Because the business decision needs to include support time for user interaction.

In more than one industry I work with it's nigh on impossible to gain access to DNS records for bulk mailing purposes. Third parties may hold control over domains, and your emailer may not be important enough to get someone to actually put in a work order to get records changed etc etc.

Not always easy to fix the human side.

If it works for your clients you could always set up some email relay sort of deal on your emails? Get them subdomains on your domain name and relay mail sent there to them? Then you could do the dns on your own servers.

Prove it with a small example that you get better rates with DNS fixes and your management will think about it differently.

Try slowing down your outbound sending. I used to manage a mail system that generated a lot of outbound mail, and speed of the mailspool was a huge issue for the big consumer services.

Have you tried spoofing the envelope address or reply to address, but have the header address as one you control?

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