Using Gmail SMTP for server generated emails

T

turbo2ltr

Member
We use google apps for our email and we use MailChimp for our newsletters. But recently the emails sent from the server (form the cart) are being delayed by gmail because they are claiming we are sending too much spam.

Code: 
2015-10-27 15:30:18  SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:  [our ip] Our system has detected an unusual rate of unsolicited mail originating from your IP address. To protect our users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been temporarily rate limited. Please visit  https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126 to review our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines. g139si25423912oic.39 - gsmtp

The ONLY email that comes out of that IP address are order related emails, and emails from the helpdesk, most of which are from us. I greped the mail log and found 160 emails in the past 60 hours that were to people outside of our own organization. They were all notifications of new orders, shipped orders, or helpdesk reply notifications. And looking at the headers of those emails, when gmail finally accepted the them, the SPF passes. The IP is not on any spam blacklists.

In any case, is it possible to just make the server use our google apps gmail SMTP to send outgoing mail instead of exim? I think that would make life easier..
 
Sounds like some of your customers have marked those emails as spam. You absolutely can, but you need to modify your programs code to use their smtp server over localhost. Here are the smtp settings: https://support.google.com/a/answer/176600?hl=en
Using google's "SMTP relay service" will first require you to allow that IP to send mail on Google's side. Using the normal SMTP server will require you to login using your gmail/app account in your program's code. All is explained in the above link.
 
I can't imagine a significant portion of the 160 order confirmation emails sent over the past 2.5 days would be marked spam.

Things seem better today.

As for the SMTP, recoding is not an option. I was hoping it was something that could be done at the server level.
 
Even a small percentage getting marked as spam can cause temporary blacklisting. I'm only familiar with re-coding programs in Linux to use a different mail server. Since your program is using localhost as a mail server (without re-coding it) you'd need to set up an email forwarder within centos which would cause any and all emails on your server to go through the relay server. I've done that on an IIS server before, but never on centos. A quick google search brought up: http://nixx.co/setting-up-an-email-forwarder-on-centos-6/ However, I'm unsure if Knownhost would recommend this, and there may be a better option than this if someone else knows of one.
 
I know this is a little old, but what cart are you using? Many offer an SMTP plugin that makes it easy to use SMTP servers instead. That being said, I tried an SMTP plugin on a wordpress site, using gmail/google apps account, and gmail didn't like it, stopped allowing things to go through rather quickly. Maybe it was a configuration issue, but I have found Mandrill to be very effective and relatively easy to set up. It is free for 12,000 emails a month, and not very expensive if you go above that. If you are having 12,000 emails a month go out from your store though, you can afford it for sure. This works in conjunction with your main email being hosted by google
 
oops, 12,000 free per month is no longer offered, now it's 2000 free, until the 2000 free sends are used up, then $9.95 / month for up to 25,000 emails per month, still not too bad, above the initial 25,000 month $0.20 per thousand.
 
Yes, well now they are taking it away altogether, so from 12,000 to 2000 to zero, but there are plenty of alternatives that still have free tiers, Mailjet, sendinblue,elastic email, pepipost, leadersend, mailgun, postmark, socketlabs, sparkpost, turbosmtp...haven't checked any of these out yet, but will need to soon.
 
If Gmail give you that warning:

2015-10-27 15:30:18 SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: Our system has detected an unusual rate of unsolicited mail originating from your IP address. To protect our users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been temporarily rate limited.

And you server/ip keeps sending e-mails, it will remain blocked, at least that happened to one of my servers.

LFD sent 1 alert per hour for days that kept the server IP blocked from Gmail. that's only 1-mail per hour, to my own mailbox,

I took care of that alert (was a file dump of litespeed alert), alert was not sent anymore, and few hours later, was receiving mails as normal (crons, updates, etc).
 
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