Smart SMTP not being used

prasad0889

Hey Adam,

We use mail.baby smart host and have been using it since we adapted Enhance around a year back. After updating to v11, we see that mail.baby is not showing any email logs, so are these emails being redirected through local SMTP instead of smart SMTP?

How to solve this, as clients are facing issues with email delivery.

PradeepC

+1, we too are seeing this. One more thing, try updating to Appcd 3.0.1 to see if it solves the issue.

Adam

We have released appcd 3.0.1 to address some issues with smart hosts. Update your mail servers to this version then re-apply your smart host settings in the Enhance UI and everything should be ok.

alenguav

How can I tell if I have 3.0.1 version of appcd installed or an older one?

mendozal

alenguav dpkg -l appcd

alenguav

Thanks, I have just upgraded to version 11.0.1 and noticed that emails sent from worpdress use the server IP while the emails sent from webmail use smarthost settings is this the normal behaviour?

mendozal

alenguav Where did you set your Smarthost info? There's a global setting in /settings/service and you can also set it on each server individually.

Maybe you have it set for the mail server, but not for the app server.

Isaia-Arknet_PTY_LTD

mendozal

You are spot on regarding smart host settings/server

Also, keep in mind if you use one of your own servers as a smart host, let's say you have 5 email servers and one of them you prefer to use as a smart host for all email servers, including for PHP mail, DO NOT ADD smart host at global settings in the Settings/Services!

Isaia-Arknet_PTY_LTD

Another thing I learned that is cool to do is that if php mail is used, you will mostly hit spam due to SPF ( envelope is not yet applied as the email sender correctly instead hosting_account_user@hostingserver.com), so what I did is each server I set them up as a new DNS zone so that I can control SPF for each Server domain.

As example:
The main domain for hosting servers is asd.com
Server 1: s1.asd.com set up NS1.asd.com, ns2.asd.com (once server added to Enhance add Server hostname in server settings), then control SPF of the respective hostname accordingly.

I did this for all hosting servers. (might be other ways to do it but this is my way) this is if you do not use CF or other DNS hosting services.

Improvements Welcome 🙂

mendozal

Isaia-Arknet_PTY_LTD Great tip! I was looking for a way to solve this.

mendozal

Isaia-Arknet_PTY_LTD I tried this. I'm hosting my DNS in Cloudflare, so instead of adding the hostname in Enhance I can just add the SPF record for the server in CF.

I managed to get emails to be delivered but mostly to the spam folder. I guess one solution would be to continue using the Smart Host to avoid the server's IP to be blacklisted (they're not my IPs).

Isaia-Arknet_PTY_LTD

mendozal

If you check the email's source(original), can you see SPF PASS? In the SPF, you need to add the IP and HOSTNAME of the hosting server to the SPF of the respective hosting name or the IP of the Smart host.

Example:

es1.rocoder.com SPF "v=spf1 a mx include:em2.rocoder.com ip4:185.223.207.65 _all"
[https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/] (this is the tool i prefer for checking DNS)

em2.rocoder.com is my smarthost

mendozal

Isaia-Arknet_PTY_LTD Yes, at first messages were being rejected because of SPF not being valid. I added the ipv4 and ipv6 to the hostname's SPF record and messages were passing SPF checks.

Messages were now being delivered to the spam folder but getting 5.5 of 10 in this site https://www.mail-tester.com/.

The main issues being DKIM and DMARC for the sender's domain, which is the current WordPress admin's domain (not the enhance hostname apparently).

I guess eventually the IP would be blacklisted, so I disabled postfix altogether.