Newsletter subscription email not delivering (due to domain mismatch in from email address)

[gammaw]

Issue Summary

• Newsletter subscription emails won’t get delivered with custom SMTP server set up in config file. No trace of error on UI or in Ghost logs.
• Ghost user notification emails will get delivered as expected (with from email address as set up in config file) –> this shows that the SMTP config is correct.
• A related issue may be this: The from address on the confirmation email for updating email in Admin Settings (Support/Newsletter) is incorrect · Issue #12802 · TryGhost/Ghost · GitHub (should be fixed).

Analysis and workaround

• It turns out (after inspecting the SMTP logs – outside Ghost) that for the newsletter subscription Ghost is using a from address in the form of noreply @ subdomain . domain . com (where subdomain . domain . com is the site of the Ghost installation) and not noreply @ domain . com as configured in the config file. Note that Ghost is using noreply @ domain . com for user notification emails as expected.
• The reason why the email will not be delivered is because the recipient’s server bounces it back if there are no SPF/DKIM records set (why would be).
• So, an obvious workaround is to set a SPF and/or DKIM records for subdomain . domain . com.
• (Sorry for the spaces in the email address example, the forum didn’t allow me to post otherwise ;)

Steps to Reproduce

See above.

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Setup information

Ghost Version
5.81.1

Node.js Version
v18.19.0

How did you install Ghost?
Via How to install & setup Ghost on Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04

Provide details of your host & operating system
Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS

Database type
MySQL 8.0.36-0ubuntu0.22.04.1

[Cathy_Sarisky]

Do you have your mail.from set in your config file, as listed? The behavior is supposed to be fixed as of 5.78, but I wonder if you’re missing a config file setting…?

[gammaw]

Hi Cathy,

yes, mail.from is set. This is how our mail config looks like (see below).

And yes, I know it was supposed to be fixed, but it’s a bit different behaviour too (compared to what was reported back then). Here, it’s about Ghost altering the email address (by adding a subdomain) wrt the data entered in the config file.

Best,

Peter

“mail”: {
“transport”: “SMTP”,
“from”: “noreply@yourdomain.com”,
“options”: {
“host”: “mail.youremaildomain.com”,
“port”: 465,
“auth”: {
“user”: “youruser”,
“pass”: “yourpass”
}
}

[mjw]

Is Ghost running on a subdomain?

[gammaw]

Yes, for testing and prepping the production deployment.