Can JotForm send Multi-Part MIME Emails?

  • Tom Keays
    Asked on August 4, 2017 at 11:44 AM

    I'm testing using JotForm to send emails from library users to a library service provider that we use to manage reference questions called LibraryH3lp.

    In the past, I was using a web form I built myself. However, a situation arose where the ISP I was using to host the form got a sufficiently bad reputation as being unresponsive to spam being sent from their hosted sites, that LibraryH3lp began blocking mail sent from them -- and that included my form. 

    JotForm seems like a possible alternative, so I tested a JotForm I made,

      https://form.jotform.us/72154112938151

    and it successfully posted to LibraryH3lp.  

    However, I was concerned about the long-term viability of using JotForm, so I asked LibraryH3lp to evaluate the email that was received and they said that, yes, JotForm gets through their spam filter, but that there was one area of possible future concern: the fact that emails are not Multi-Part MIME Emails and contain HTML but no plain text component.

    This isn't, in itself, a cause for concern, but if other circumstances arose -- say, JotForm suddenly became popular with spammers and Spam Assassin assigned more spam points -- it would contribute to pushing us over LibraryH3lp's spam threshold. 

     

    So... to the question: Is there a way to have JotForm send proper Multi-Part MIME Emails?

    Thanks for any help you can provide.

    Best regards,

    Tom Keays

     

    Here's the text of the email that LibraryH3lp sent me, in case this is useful to you:

     

    In an effort to give you a better answer about JotForm, we took a look for these new messages in our spam filter logs.  They are NOT currently a significant source of spam for other customers, so that is great!  

    The two test messages DID receive some spam score points (1.748), but that score is below the threshold that would cause them to be blocked entirely.  Currently that block threshold is set to 2.5.  If you go into 3mail and look at the raw message, you can see the spam score details. 

    Here is the relevant part:

    X-NubGames-MailScanner-SpamCheck: spam, 
    SpamAssassin (not cached, score=1.748, required 0.55,  
    DKIM_SIGNED 0.10,
    DKIM_VALID -0.10, 
    DKIM_VALID_AU -0.10, 
    FROM_EXCESS_BASE64 0.10,
    HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_32 0.00, 
    HTML_MESSAGE 0.00,
    HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG 0.64, 
    MIME_HTML_ONLY 1.10, 
    URIBL_BLOCKED 0.00)

    So the biggest contributions to the spam score are that the message ONLY contains HTML -- there is no plain text version.  

    And again, for right now, this is fine because the total score is below threshold for blocking.  If you wanted to look at further decreasing that score, you could see about providing Multi-Part MIME Emails.  With that format, you provide an HTML version and also a plain text version of the e-mail message. If recipient's mail client can show HTML, only the HTML version will display.  If the mail client cannot show HTML, the text version will display.  3mail, of course, will show HTML, but this would be done to decrease the spam score if you wanted to do so.

    It looks like if multi-part MIME email was sent, the following two would go to zero and reduce the spam score by 1.74, which would bring it to practically 0 overall:

    HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG 0.64, 
    MIME_HTML_ONLY 1.10,

    Page URL: https://form.jotform.us/72154112938151
  • aubreybourke
    Replied on August 4, 2017 at 12:07 PM

    JotForm does not send plain text emails anymore. This is because all modern email clients (web, desktop, and mobile) all are able to read HTML. This is what is popular among our users. And the text emails also increase the complexity of the solution we provide. We want it to be easy for the user.

    Appolgies for the inconvenience this has caused you.