Not receiving email notifications when using my own sender email

  • paulbasel
    Asked on July 22, 2016 at 3:03 AM
  • Boris
    Replied on July 22, 2016 at 6:05 AM

    I have checked your email address in our logs, and I see it is currently correctly receiving its emails. However, I do see that there have been some failed emails between May and July, which you can also check by viewing your own form email history:

    https://www.jotform.com/help/293-How-to-View-All-Your-Form-Email-History

    On the failed emails, I see you were using the same Gmail address as both the sender and recipient of the email notifications. Since recently, Gmail has updated their DMARC policies and are no longer allowing emails to be sent to any Gmail address if it is made to appear coming from Gmail or Yahoo, when it is sent from some other system.

    This means that you can no longer use a Gmail (or Yahoo) address as your notification's sender email. You should instead use one of our default sender emails such as noreply@jotform.com or noreply@formresponse.com.

    Please refer to the following guide for more details on the recommended way to set up your email notifications:

    https://www.jotform.com/help/208-How-to-Setup-Email-Alerts-to-Prevent-Email-Bouncing-Related-Issues

    If you need further assistance, please let us know. Cheers

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 22, 2016 at 7:20 AM

    I have sent emails through Gmail from me to me with no problem whatsoever. Just did it and it works fine. That can't be the explanation for me all of a sudden not receiving notification emails. It is happening to many other people recently and they don't all have Gmail addresses.

    I have 3 people receiving email notifications from my Customer Contact form. One person (Roadrunner - Time Warner account) received notification emails with no problem, my Gmail address was bounced and the third was a Sprynet (Earthlink) account and his notification emails bounced as well. So it isn't a Gmail problem exclusively. There is something else going on.

    This behavior only began recently and if the Sprynet notification bounced and the Roadrunner account didn't then there has been a change in your system to cause this. Never had a problem in over 2 years until now.

    My email notification setup was perfect, exactly as described in your guide. So why the problem?

    Paul

     

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 22, 2016 at 8:29 AM

    A followup on another issue regarding the failed email notifications between May and July. In a couple of the lines in the History it certainly shows that the notifications to Gmail and Sprynet failed however, it does not show that the Customer request that same day was sent to the Roadrunner account. In other words, two failed and one was never sent. In other lines in the log one can see that two notifications failed but one was correctly sent to the Roadrunner account. In others, one failed, one was sent and one never appeared as being sent at all.

    Check out Fri, 15 Jul 16 - 01:46 and Mon, 18 Jul 16 - 18:47 - no email sent to Roadrunner.

    Check out Wed, 8 Jun 16 - 14:52 - email sent to Roadrunner, email to Sprynet failed and no entry at all for Gmail for that request.

    How do we know that we are receiving the customer requests we should be receiving? We are running a business and cannot have these types of failures.

    Paul

  • Nik_C
    Replied on July 22, 2016 at 10:34 AM

    Reasons for ending your email in Bounce list could be various, I'm not sure now why those emails for those specific dates failed, but to be sure that your emails will go your email address you could ask your provider to Whitelist our IP addresses, that would help you. Then, your provider will forward emails from these IPs immediately since they are from the trust source.

    Why this happened all of the sudden, it could be that gmail changed something in their regulations of the email flow, and that caused our emails to be Bounced.

    Please try whitelisting, and as my colleague suggested, this guide is helpful as well in preventing such issues.

    If the issue continues please let us know.

    Thank you!

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 22, 2016 at 10:54 AM

    I appreciate your comments and the prompt response but you haven't given me a specific answer as to why those emails for those specific dates failed. I can't run a business on "I don't know why the service failed". 

    "Why this happened all of the sudden, it could be that gmail changed, . . . ." - I stated that it also happened with Sprynet emails. I repeat, it is not a Gmail problem exclusively. 

     

  • Kiran Support Team Lead
    Replied on July 22, 2016 at 12:01 PM

    I see that your email address jessecorrell@sprynet.com is in our bounce list due to the same reason which was already mentioned in the other thread.

    smtp; 550 IP 209.126.123.106 is blocked by EarthLink.

    This is one of the IP address that we use with JotForm servers for emailing and so the emails are not getting failed to deliver. When multiple emails are failed to deliver due to any reason, the email address will be added to our bounce list. I have now removed the email address and you should be receiving the emails normally. To avoid the failure of the email delivery again, please whitelist the IP addresses provided in the guide Whitelisting-JotMails-IP-Addresses.

    Hope this information helps! 

     

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 24, 2016 at 10:27 AM

    Per your suggestion I entered all of the domains on your Jotform Mailserver Domains List into into a whilelist filter on my Gmail account. Almost immediately I received spam that Gmail indicated was from my recently added filter of your domains list. I couldn't tell which of your domains caused the problem because it was a redirect I suspect.

    Can you explain why I am now receiving spam from one of your domains. Adding this type of filter may solve one problem (not receiving notification emails) and yet creates another. Not a very professional solution in my opinion.

  • Ashwin JotForm Support
    Replied on July 24, 2016 at 1:41 PM

    Hello paulbasel,

    I am not sure if I have understood the issue correctly. Do you mean to say that you are now receiving submission emails but they now end up in spam folder?

    I did check our logs and found that your email address jessecorrell@sprynet.com was still in our bounce list. Please check the screenshot below:

    Not receiving email notifications when using my own sender email Image 1 Screenshot 20

     

    I have now removed your email from our bounce list again. I would suggest you to please test your form again and get back to us if the issue persists.

    Thank you!

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 25, 2016 at 3:31 AM

    No, after I created the whitelist I received a spam email from some third party (it was not a notification email) selling something. Gmail indicated that they would have tagged it as spam but it was sent to my inbox because of the filter I just created. This was the filter with all of your domains listed in it. Therefore, one of your domains is also being used by spammers to send spam email. I have no idea which one. 

    We have used this customer contact form that I created in March, 2011 and have never had a problem with a failed notification or one tagged as spam until May of this year. Something has changed at your end!

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 25, 2016 at 6:19 AM

    <snip>I have now removed your email from our bounce list again. I would suggest you to please test your form again and get back to us if the issue persists.

    I just tested the form again. The Gmail and Roadrunner addresses received notifications and once again the Sprynet address did not. However, even more troubling is the fact that the email activity log didn't have a log entry for the failed email notification to the Sprynet address.

  • Chriistian Jotform Support
    Replied on July 25, 2016 at 7:47 AM

    I checked the mail log of the email jessecorrell@sprynet.com and I was able to check that one email was successfully sent.

    Not receiving email notifications when using my own sender email Image 1 Screenshot 20

     

    Is this your test submission? Can you check the Spam folder of the email and see if the email went there? Have you also whitelisted the JotForm mailservers in your Sprynet email server?

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 25, 2016 at 10:02 AM

    Yes, that is my test submission. I don't know where you are checking but in the Activity Log of emails in my account there are these two submissions triggered by my test email, but there is no log entry of one being sent to the Sprynet account.

    Mon, 25 Jul 16 - 12:03 Email sent to hbfred@tampabay.rr.com  #10862412290

    Mon, 25 Jul 16 - 12:03 Email sent to paulpuente@gmail.com  #10862412290

    I just checked with the person who has the jessecorrell@sprynet email address and he never received my test email. And, it wasn't in the spam folder.

    He has both the mailservers whitelisted.

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 25, 2016 at 10:22 AM

    Sorry, should be ". . . these two notifications . . .  ."

  • Chriistian Jotform Support
    Replied on July 25, 2016 at 11:45 AM

    Hi,

    I just checked again your email jessecorrell@sprynet.com against our bounce list and it is there. I have removed it again.

    Aside from whitelist the JotForm's mailserver domains, can you please whitelist JotForm's IP addresses as well? Please see Whitelisting JotMails IP Addresses for the list of IP addresses to be whitelisted.

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 26, 2016 at 4:48 AM

    I am not going to whitelist your IP addresses until you answer my previous questions.

    1. Why is this all happening now when we have used this form for over 5 years with no problems whatsoever?

    2. Why are some failed notifications not showing up in the activity log? Just now I sent a test email and two notification emails were sent (Gmail and Sprynet) but not the one to Roadrunner. But the Roadrunner account has worked up until this test.

    3. You said, "I checked the mail log of the email jessecorrell@sprynet.com and I was able to check that one email was successfully sent." I want to know where you found that notification email because I told you that it wasn't in the activity log. I also told you that this address never received the notification, but you didn't react or respond to that or give me an explanation.

    4. Why are we having to whitelist IP addresses and domains now when the system worked for over 5 years, at least in my case.

    This is just unacceptable.

     

     

  • Chriistian Jotform Support
    Replied on July 26, 2016 at 6:47 AM

    Answer for questions 1 & 4:

    We understand your frustration and we apologize for the inconvenience. However, to solve the issue, we need your cooperation. JotForm is being used by a lot of people and we are helping them, to the best that we can, build forms that also send email notifications and auto-responders. The contents of emails and the volume of sends for a certain period of time is hard to control and they can become causes of our domains and IP addresses being filtered by some mail servers. When this happens, other mail servers tend to learn that our domains and IP addresses are being filtered by other mail servers. To make sure that your mail server accepts the messages, you have to whitelist these domains and IP addresses. I hope you understand.

  • Chriistian Jotform Support
    Replied on July 26, 2016 at 6:48 AM

    Regarding your questions 2 & 3, I have created a separate thread to handle them. Please see the thread here.

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 26, 2016 at 8:31 AM

    <snip>" . . . . . can become causes of our domains and IP addresses being filtered by some mail servers."

    But this never happened in 5 years and now since May we have this problem. The chances of our 3 different mail servers (gmail, sprynet, and roadrunner) all changing their blacklists at the same time is so infinitesimally small that you can't measure it. Something has changed on your end.

    My two other business partners are not very computer literate and you are asking them to enter IP and domain addresses into whitelists when they don't even know what they are. I manage the website and know how to do all of this but they don't and they have never had to do this up until now. They simply want to receive email notifications.

  • Chriistian Jotform Support
    Replied on July 26, 2016 at 9:44 AM

    Hi,

    Mail servers change and upgrade overtime. They are, most of the time, related to each other because these filters learn from among themselves. Our developers are continuously improving the delivery of emails overtime as well. But, in addition to this, we still need some cooperation from email recipients who are not receiving emails by asking them to whitelist our IP addresses.

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 28, 2016 at 7:17 AM

    I am attempting to enter your IP addresses and domains into our providers system. I can't seem to manage it. See the following image and tell me what to enter for a Sender and Sender IP for each of those in your lists. I can't seem to make it work. If I enter us-sub1.jotservers.com as a Sender it rejects it.

    Not receiving email notifications when using my own sender email Image 1 Screenshot 20

  • paulbasel
    Replied on July 28, 2016 at 7:21 AM

    Never mind, I figured it out.

  • Boris
    Replied on July 28, 2016 at 8:39 AM

    Great to hear that you've got it sorted, and if there is anything else we can do to help, please don't hesitate letting us know. Cheers