Form autoresponders going to spam?

Hey guys,

Our site is currently live on Treepl and when we test and fill out the contact form, the autoresponder goes directly to spam even though it is coming from an actual email address. Would you guys know why this is occurring? Is it because it is coming from Treepl servers or something?
Or is this directly our issue and the “From email address” used?

Is there anyway around this?

Cheers!!

Hi @Khy. Have you adjusted the SPF record for that domain?

See docs here:
https://docs.treepl.co/documentation_group/partner-portal/trial-site-activation-going-live#secSPFRecords

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Ah… I knew it would be something like this. I will add it and see if it works.

Thanks for the help Adam!

Added the SPF and autoresponders still going to spam :frowning: Any ideas?

I think it needs to be a:mail.treepl.co not include:mail.treepl.co

Correct, a:mail.treepl.co or (alternatively) ip4:34.217.169.117.

Hi - I am having the same probelm. My client is using ‘fasthosts.co.uk’ fro DNS.
As far as I can tell from teh DNS panel, I only have the option for a text record - but can not work out what information I need to add in the two spaces provided - please see screen grab -

Please help, very nervous about breaking their email as they are doctors and can not risk putting in the wrong info and breaking their email accounts.

Hi @Dawn.

Looks like that domain is still pointing to BC’s DNS management. Is this site not switched over to treepl as yet?

So there is already a TXT record for SPF on BC which is:

v=spf1 mx include:worldsecuresystems.com ~all

But either way, you’d want to edit BC’s SPF record, or create the new record in Fasthost (once switched over) to the below.
(the extra include: items are there because they have their email hosted with OpenSRS)

Leave the ‘Host Name’ blank and add the below into the ‘Value’ field.

v=spf1 mx a:mail.treepl.co include:_spf.hostedemail.com include:registrarmail.net include:worldsecuresystems.com ~all

Docs reference:
https://docs.treepl.co/documentation_group/partner-portal/trial-site-activation-going-live#secSPFRecords

whoops, sorry Adam I am loosing track of which sites have completed transfer and which are still on BC. This site is still on BC. Until I switch over to Treepl should I change the Value field to:

v=spf1 mx include:worldsecuresystems.com include:_spf.hostedemail.com include:registrarmail.net include:worldsecuresystems.com ~all

and then once I have switched to Treepl change the settings :

v=spf1 mx a:mail.treepl.co include:_spf.hostedemail.com include:registrarmail.net include:worldsecuresystems.com ~all

Yeah, it’s easy to lose track… I keep a detailed spreadsheet of my migrations, but even then it gets away from me :slight_smile:

In BC’s DNS just add the full SPF record I noted above.
When you switch over to Fasthost just be sure to replicate that same SPF record there too.

No need to adjust the record value after the switch (unless you want to remove the include:worldsecuresystems.com but it’s not necessary)

Ok thank you - I am afraid I am out of my depth here, I will submit a support email to the guys at BC - Can I just check am I asking the correct thing - to add a SPF record in the BC Admin Console with the following details:

v=spf1 mx a:mail.treepl.co include:_spf.hostedemail.com include:registrarmail.net include:worldsecuresystems.com ~all

Then when I switch to Treepl and the BC site is taken down add the slightly revised SPF record to fasthosts.

v=spf1 mx a:mail.treepl.co include:_spf.hostedemail.com include:registrarmail.net  ~all

Yep, that’s correct.

You can do this in BC here:

After clicking ‘edit’ enter the SPF record here:

Wow thank you, that is so kind of you. I have added this now, hopefully correctly.
I just need to get a wriggle on and move over all my sites to Treepl, but have been putting it off as I find the transfer over a bit stressful as something always seems to go wrong with the emails or DNS.

No problem.
I just pinged that domain and the SPF records looks good.

Yeah, DNS is a pain.
I moved to hosting DNS on Cloudflare wherever possible and it makes it a lot easier to move DNS as it detects all the current records and adds them for you. So you can be fairly confident everything will continue working.

Also, move the DNS ahead of time (while site is still on BC), if something goes wrong you can just switch back to BC DNS while investigating the issue.
Then when ready, the switch over to Treepl is much smoother and faster since the propagation of the Name Server change has already been done.

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Hi @Adam.Wilson - just wanted to bring this issue back to topic, I have investigated further with our Domain guys and autoresponders are still going to Spam, especially with emails going to @gmail.com or @hotmail.com etc.

We tested the form with our company email @fitzroy.it address and I can confirm the autoresponder did not go to spam. However when we used a personal @gmail.com / @hotmail.com it went straight to spam.

Below was the response from our domain guys:

Hey Khy, Sorry for the delay, thanks for sending the example email headers. I’ve highlighted the SPF comment in each – you can see that in both cases the IP is considered a permitted sender and the SPF check gets a pass. So this isn’t an SPF issue – which is also partly demonstrated by the @fitzroy.it and also @zynet.com.au domains despite not moving the email to junk despite most likely (certainly for zynet) having enterprise grade anti-spam.
Personally I expect this is more to do with Hotmail and other more consumer based emails – they often have junk mail systems driven by user interaction. So regardless of content if enough users mark a sender as spam then any messages from that sender (e.g. treepl) will get moved to junk.
Perhaps DKIM would help – if treepl outbound settings support that?
Sorry not to be much more help here – I’m not sure there’s much else you can do. If it’s a huge problem I’d probably consider authenticating to and relaying via the Ross Trust Office 365 tenancy as long as email volumes are not too high.

Anyone we can do here Adam? I suspect this will be an ongoing issue for everyone else in the future as well or is it only happening with us with our domain? :cry:

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Yeah, there are many spam indicators which email servers will look at. SPF is just one we have control over.
But if your SPF setting is passing the test then yeah, it must be other factors at play and probably something the Treepl team need to look at on their end.

The only other thing I can think of, that is in our control, is the actual email content itself.
Perhaps you can try stripping it back to very basic text only (as a test) to try and eliminate any reason for the spam filters to flag the content as spam.

I’m no expert in this area so I can’t give any more feedback unfortunately.

Thanks for the info @Adam.Wilson

Do you think this is an issue everyone else will have as well (or is it just us?), when they go to launch their Treepl site and people fill out their Forms? I mean this never use to happen on BC, users would always get the autoresponder no matter their email address.

Is this something Treepl can resolve? Something to add to the Backlog perhaps?

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I think it’ll be an issue for everyone.
From my limited understanding of this, it seems it might be a mail server reputation issue.
BC had a more established email server whereas Treepl’s might be fairly new???

I ran treepl.co and the mail server IP 34.217.169.117 through a general blacklist scan and it came out pretty clean. However, one undeliverable bounce message I received from a clients site suggested that proofpoint was blocking this IP due to a sender reputation issue:
https://ipcheck.proofpoint.com/?ip=34.217.169.117

I’m guessing this will only affect recipients using certain email providers (one’s that use proofpoint or other vendors with similar email security configurations)

@vlad.z, @alex.n any comments, suggestions?

Yes, reputation is a factor. Doing our best to appeal blocks, prevent mail with invalid addresses to be sent, etc.

Truth be told - email is pain at this point. Total mess of authentications, reputation, blacklists, spam filters, advanced spam filters, content scanning, never mind users having on-site Exchange servers, company-wide spam policies, full mailboxes. Basically - never try to establish your own email sending service, if you can help it :sweat_smile:

Thanks for the info @alex.n. However, what is the plan moving forward? I have a client who is not receiving workflow notifications at all… not in spam, etc. I’ve changed the from address from their address, to my agency address (which usually fixes the issue), but still nothing… so not sure what to do here…