Forums/Bugs & Fixes

Changes to reply-to address for form notifications

Michael Slater
posted this on July 11, 2014, 14:22

When someone fills in a form on your site, you typically will receive a notification email (depending on the site setup).

In the past, we have set the "from" and the "reply-to" address to the email address that your visitor entered in the form. This is convenient, because the email shows as being from the person who filled out the form, and it allows you to simply reply to the notification email and your response will to them.

Earlier this year, however, Yahoo and AOL made a change to something called their DMARC policy. Essentially, this tells other mail systems that they should reject any mail with a "from" address at the Yahoo or AOL domains, if the message did not actually come from Yahoo or AOL.

We have changed all notification messages to use "no-reply@webvanta.com" as the "from" address, while using the address of the person who filled out the form as the "reply-to" address. (Note: if you are a private-label partner, the "reply-to" address will be no-reply@yourdomain.com.)

As a result, messages will typically be shown in your email client as being from no-reply@webvanta.com. When you reply to the message, however, the reply is sent to the "reply-to" address, which is email provided in the form.

Put another way: messages must be "from" Webvanta, but that doesn't mean that a reply will go to Webvanta.

We realize that the earlier behavior was more convenient, but it is simply not possible to provide good email delivery any longer using that approach.