Emails from IATI Registry go to Spam

[robredpath]

Brief Description Every email I've had from that IATI Registry has gone to my spam folder. Obviously that's not very helpful!

Severity Medium

Details

Gmail isn't being particularly helpful with its error messaging, but I can understand why these emails might look like spam: email from a web hosting IP, no SPF/DKIM/DMARC, short message, high link-to-text ratio.

@odscjames would SPF/DKIM (maybe not DMARC, actually) be any use? Can we set that up?

Is there anything else we can do to improve deliverability? I think that for IATI Publisher we switched from direct email to using Amazon SNS - would that be an option here?

[odscjames]

I think that for IATI Publisher we switched from direct email to using Amazon SNS - would that be an option here?

Yes and that sounds worth trying here (or a competitor).

I heard a claim that Google recently got more strict with how they spam check, and generally I think not trying to send email ourselves unless we have a really good reason to is a good plan.

Tho this is really a Q for Derilinx

[robredpath]

@cormachallinanderilinx I'm not sure if you get notified about these issues, so here's a ping! @odscjames can help with any DNS changes if needed, or I'm sure would be happy to share details on what we did with IATI Publisher.

[cormachallinanderilinx]

We would be open to looking into some options for sending mails if it is becoming problematic.

Do you mean SNS or AWS SES?

[odscjames]

Whoops, yes, it was AWS SES with "domain verified". But many options are available!

[robredpath]

@odscjames is there any particular criteria that you'd use to choose between the options? Or, given that we've used SES elsewhere and we know it works, is that as good as pulling any other email delivery service out of a metaphorical hat?

Also: how certain are we that just doing the various bits of DNS stuff won't be enough? I'm quite out of the loop on email delivery these days!

[cormachallinanderilinx]

We can try out SES, it may have cost implications so i'm not sure how this might affect the contract? If so we may need to do the SPF/DKIM

[odscjames]

is there any particular criteria that you'd use to choose between the options?

I'd ask @cormachallinanderilinx what extra features you need but I assume nothing fancy, just sending. In which case it's more about the services record and reputation on how well that actually deliver email. This is a case where it's easy to change service provider later, so a "try it and see" approach can be taken.

how certain are we that just doing the various bits of DNS stuff won't be enough?

It might be enough but there is also things like ip-warming to consider. We could end up spending a lot of time on this, so I think a third party service has the potential to save us a lot of hassle here.

We can try out SES, it may have cost implications

Can you say how many emails you send a month, just very roughly?

[cormachallinanderilinx]

I dont believe we need anything fancy, all emails are plan text mainly to alert when new publishers register and password resets

[odscjames]

Sounds like a very low quantity then - so I would expect a very low cost? https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/

[robredpath]

@cormachallinanderilinx Do you need anything else from us to make this happen? Or is it now just on the list / in the queue / etc?

[cormachallinanderilinx]

Im working to get this on staging, I will then add it to production. I might need support on production, if so I will update here

[siwhitehouse]

The plan is to implement SPF and/or DKIM.

@cormachallinanderilinx do you have an update for us, please? We continue to miss new publisher emails as they are landing in spam inboxes, including those sent to the support@ email address

[cormachallinanderilinx]

Hi @siwhitehouse

Going to implement with SES after talking with some of my team who are familiar with emails.

We have set up an SES identity for https://staging.iatiregistry.org/ When I mentioned testing on staging I forget we dont own the staging for IATI (like most our proejcts), would someone from your team be able to set up the DNS configuration?

I have the DNS record set ready to send on and how you would like me to transfer it to you/the team?

If its easiest for them to do it for production as well at the same time I can that configuration on as well?

[odscjames]

If you email me both at the same time I can set it up. james@ the same co-op domain as my colleagues.

[cormachallinanderilinx]

@siwhitehouse

Thanks to James and Ben for helping out the DNS config. I have configured the staging environment to send emails using SES Domainkeys Idenditied Mail (DKIM)

If you would like to do some testing to check if emails are/aren't going to junk

[cormachallinanderilinx]

Changes have been pushed to production

[siwhitehouse]

We have left this running for a few weeks and checked that all emails are now going into the IATI Support mailbox