3

Whenever I send an automated e-mail using PHPMailer, it goes straight into the spam folder in Gmail. I have tried finding a solution to this myself but I don't know enough about e-mails and e-mail headers.

Can anyone explain why this is happening?

PHP Code is below, followed by the headers that show up from the receiver.

Thanks!

$mail = new PHPMailer;
$mail->From = "chrisxenongroup@server.xenonacademy.org.uk";
$mail->FromName = 'Xenon Group Academy';
$mail->AddAddress($email);
$mail->Subject = "Your Xenon Group Academy login details";
$mail->IsHTML(true);
$mail->Body = "<html><body><h3>Welcome to the Xenon Group Academy</h3><p>The Academy is an online system that will allow you to access course materials, manage your assignments and network with other Xenon Group students.</p>
<p>To access your account, go to <a href='http://www.xenonacademy.org.uk'>www.xenonacademy.org.uk</a> and use the following details to login.</p><p><pre>E-mail:            $email</pre></p><p><pre>Password:       " . mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['password']) . "</pre></p><br /><br /><p>Once you have logged in, we would recommend changing your password to something secure and easy to remember. You can also change your login e-mail address if you need to.</p><p>Welcome to the Academy, and good luck with your qualification!</p></body></html>";
$mail->Send();



Delivered-To: xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Received: by 10.49.109.71 with SMTP id hq7csp68808qeb;
        Thu, 23 May 2013 07:27:28 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.180.37.243 with SMTP id b19mr25275110wik.12.1369319247650;
        Thu, 23 May 2013 07:27:27 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <chrisxenongroup@server.xenonacademy.org.uk>
Received: from server.xenonacademy.org.uk (vps69719724.123-vps.co.uk. [46.32.233.107])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id n5si14506537wic.103.2013.05.23.07.27.26
        for <xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com>
        (version=TLSv1 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128/128);
        Thu, 23 May 2013 07:27:27 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 46.32.233.107 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of chrisxenongroup@server.xenonacademy.org.uk) client-ip=46.32.233.107;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
       spf=neutral (google.com: 46.32.233.107 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of chrisxenongroup@server.xenonacademy.org.uk) smtp.mail=chrisxenongroup@server.xenonacademy.org.uk
Received: by server.xenonacademy.org.uk (Postfix, from userid 10000)
    id DFBAAE0288; Thu, 23 May 2013 15:27:24 +0100 (BST)
To: xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Subject: Your Xenon Group Academy login details
X-PHP-Originating-Script: 10000:class.phpmailer.php
Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 15:27:24 +0100
From: Xenon Group Academy <chrisxenongroup@server.xenonacademy.org.uk>
Message-ID: <10c74f9a6380f353cb1bdfb4e7c22f52@www.xenonacademy.org.uk>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.2.6 (https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

<html><body><h3>Welcome to the Xenon Group Academy</h3><p>The Academy is an online system that will allow you to access course materials, manage your assignments and network with other Xenon Group students.</p>
<p>To access your account, go to <a href='http://www.xenonacademy.org.uk'>www.xenonacademy.org.uk</a> and use the following details to login.</p><p><pre>E-mail:            xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com</pre></p><p><pre>Password:     xxxxxxxx</pre></p><br /><br /><p>Once you have logged in, we would recommend changing your password to something secure and easy to remember. You can also change your login e-mail address if you need to.</p><p>Welcome to the Academy, and good luck with your qualification!</p></body></html>

Thanks!

Chris
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3 Answers3

6

This does sound more like a configuration issue with your mail server and/or your DNS server. Your mail server does not appear to be "trusted" enough, so you don't get enough "positive" points from GMail (and mail clients). I notice that you're using postfix as your mailer... Have you configured it properly?

I would suggest you configure postfix first. For example, here's a guide on how to do it in CentOS:

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/postfix

Second, you should add an SPF record to your DNS server:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

Third, it would be good to have a reverse lookup entry for your server:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_DNS_lookup

You will need to do the above and some more to make sure that clients don't flag your mail as spam, and you don't get blacklisted

Here's a good list of things to do to avoid getting blacklisted:

https://www.supportsages.com/prevent-your-mailip-from-getting-marked-as-spamblacklisted-a-few-tips/

Community
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Filippos Karapetis
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  • This was ultimately the problem. Unfortunately changing my DNS turned out to be a bit of a nightmare with my hosting provider (123reg), so I've made a workaround whereby the e-mails are sent via SMTP using an account registered to my domain via GMail. This seems to be working for most cases, although I've just found out that Hotmail still seems to be sending the e-mails straight to the 'Junk' folder, which is a bit strange as it is effectively coming from a Gmail account! – Chris Jun 04 '13 at 08:56
0

I use PHP Mailer a lot and haven't had any trouble with emails being sent to spam (yet!). I wonder if it might be anything to do with your 'from' email address as it's not the traditional abc@xyz.com

Friendly Code
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-1

It's because of the html body text headers. Put the simple text with some tags like strong underline etc and try.

Sagar Mathapati
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