Emails being blocked since we went to "dedicated environment"

[Jim Cockerham]

Our servers do not currently perform DKIM signing of messages.

David , I see that this quote was from several years ago. Is it possible yet to get DKIM signing for Miva transactional emails?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Our recommendation is to use Sendgrid for that. Their transactional email service will deliver outbound from high volume and good reputation IP networks, with correct spf, dkim, dmarc, along with open and click tracking. For most stores the $19.95/mo plan will suffice as it's 50,000 emails per month. We investigated the costs of building a formal transactional email network but it would have cost more to not be as good as Sendgrid's option.

[Jim Cockerham]

Our recommendation is to use Sendgrid for that.

Can Mailchimp do this? We already use them for marketing emails.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Based on their site it appears they can; I was not aware of that feature. They have it documented at:

https://mailchimp.com/help/about-transactional-email/

and https://mailchimp.com/developer/transactional/ suggests it works with SMTP sending, so it should work for you in that case. The store settings would ultimately just need to be updated to send through them.

If they work like Sendgrid, there will likely be some setup steps involved with DNS records to allow them to sign your emails for either a given address or any address at the domain. Typically it will just be a few records added, which our staff can help with if Mailchimp supplies them.

[Jim Cockerham]

Based on their site it appears they can; I was not aware of that feature. They have it documented at:

https://mailchimp.com/help/about-transactional-email/

and https://mailchimp.com/developer/transactional/ suggests it works with SMTP sending, so it should work for you in that case. The store settings would ultimately just need to be updated to send through them.

If they work like Sendgrid, there will likely be some setup steps involved with DNS records to allow them to sign your emails for either a given address or any address at the domain. Typically it will just be a few records added, which our staff can help with if Mailchimp supplies them.

Thank you!

[William Davis]

Based on their site it appears they can; I was not aware of that feature. They have it documented at:

https://mailchimp.com/help/about-transactional-email/

and https://mailchimp.com/developer/transactional/ suggests it works with SMTP sending, so it should work for you in that case. The store settings would ultimately just need to be updated to send through them.

If they work like Sendgrid, there will likely be some setup steps involved with DNS records to allow them to sign your emails for either a given address or any address at the domain. Typically it will just be a few records added, which our staff can help with if Mailchimp supplies them.

ILoveHostasaurus, Thank you.

By the way, what happened to forum users ability to tag their posts with key words?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

I believe that's only on the initial thread post, not responses. Is that not working for you when creating a new thread?

[William Davis]

I believe that's only on the initial thread post, not responses. Is that not working for you when creating a new thread?

ILoveHostasaurus, could not say, as I have not created a post in a while. But it might be a good idea if a users could add tags to their posts, especially if initial post does not have them.

This is one of those posts that might be difficult to find if not properly tagged. Of course this post would come up when performing a search for "email", but by adding tags it would significantly improve search results relevancy (e.g.: SMTP-Service-Provider, eMail-Service-Provider, eMail-Validation-Service Provider, etc.).

Finally, on a semi-related issue, I believe it might be useful if forum users had an option to group search results by post title with the ability expand each post (e.g.: + /-) to shorten the list of hits.

[PCINET - Andreas]

Hey David!
So if a company doesn't use their own email server or don't want to use it for transactional emails, then they could either use SendGrid or MailChimp? This would require the client to sign up with either of them, let Miva support know what changes to add to the DNS settings (if Miva handles the DNS settings), change the mail server settings in Miva admin and start sending transactional emails thru the new provider. Would this be correct? Also what about the contact us form, password reset or any other emails send thru sendmail, would they work too?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Hey David!
So if a company doesn't use their own email server or don't want to use it for transactional emails, then they could either use SendGrid or MailChimp? This would require the client to sign up with either of them, let Miva support know what changes to add to the DNS settings (if Miva handles the DNS settings), change the mail server settings in Miva admin and start sending transactional emails thru the new provider. Would this be correct? Also what about the contact us form, password reset or any other emails send thru sendmail, would they work too?

That is correct. Contact Us and password resets, etc. would use the third party as well and will also work fine, with the caveat being Contact Us forms can't send "as" the visitor with a forged From address; the real visitor's address can be in a reply to, but third party service providers generally won't allow the forged header necessary for the From to be the shopper.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

ILoveHostasaurus, could not say, as I have not created a post in a while. But it might be a good idea if a users could add tags to their posts, especially if initial post does not have them.

This is one of those posts that might be difficult to find if not properly tagged. Of course this post would come up when performing a search for "email", but by adding tags it would significantly improve search results relevancy (e.g.: SMTP-Service-Provider, eMail-Service-Provider, eMail-Validation-Service Provider, etc.).

Finally, on a semi-related issue, I believe it might be useful if forum users had an option to group search results by post title with the ability expand each post (e.g.: + /-) to shorten the list of hits.

We're unfortunately at vBulletin's mercy on that one. I'll see if it will let me add them to the first post though.

[William Davis]

Thank you!

Jim Cockerham, a couple of years back when we were in the market for STMP and Validation service provider, after we did our research we opted to go with Microsoft Exchange ($4.00 a month for each license (email address)), and their support is very good, and use a separate service Digital Marketing (e.g.: Sendlane) with a good reputation.

Our reasoning "at the time" to use two different services, is that we did not want to risk transactional and inquiry emails to ending in peoples junk/spam folder, and use a separate service for digital marketing -don't really know if that was a good idea or not, but it seems to be working and that is why we did it, if that helps.

[PCINET - Andreas]

Appreciated, very valuable information! The Contact Us form makes sense and reply to for the sender should be sufficient. SendGrid or MailChimp support more than one account but Miva supports only one account for transactional emails, correct? Using Miva's sendmail it would be possible to use a different email address for those cases (coded template emails). All correct too?

[Jim Cockerham]

Jim Cockerham, a couple of years back when we were in the market for STMP and Validation service provider, after we did our research we opted to go with Microsoft Exchange ($4.00 a month for each license (email address)), and their support is very good, and use a separate service Digital Marketing (e.g.: Sendlane) with a good reputation.

Our reasoning "at the time" to use two different services, is that we did not want to risk transactional and inquiry emails to ending in peoples junk/spam folder, and use a separate service for digital marketing -don't really know if that was a good idea or not, but it seems to be working and that is why we did it, if that helps.

Thanks for the info William

[ILoveHostasaurus]

a couple of years back when we were in the market for STMP and Validation service provider, after we did our research we opted to go with Microsoft Exchange ($4.00 a month for each license (email address)), and their support is very good, and use a separate service Digital Marketing (e.g.: Sendlane) with a good reputation.

Our reasoning "at the time" to use two different services, is that we did not want to risk transactional and inquiry emails to ending in peoples junk/spam folder, and use a separate service for digital marketing -don't really know if that was a good idea or not, but it seems to be working and that is why we did it, if that helps.

This is a best practice. Using the normal communication domain as the transactional domain can ultimately cause issues if there is any characteristic of a given store which allows it to generate a surge of undesirable messages, such as bogus account creation or an attack on a contact form. One can always set the emails to appear as coming from the 'real' domain, while they don't really, such as how Sendgrid works if you dig into the headers.

In contrast, communication email providers like MS Exchange are built to not be used for transactional service, so we highly recommend against using them in the store settings. They add an 8-10 second delay to each SMTP message, on purpose, so it can cause bad usability issues, or even timeouts, if a store uses them.