[Koha-devel] Sending email on behalf of customers

[Magnus Enger]

Hi!

I run Koha for several customers, and a number of them have email
enabled. The sender of these emails is set to be the email of the
library in question, e.g. library at example.org.

Now, the problem is that services like GMail and Hotmail are not
accepting these emails, because they see them as non-legitimate, in
the sense that they are sent from some random server somewhere on the
internet, that is not in any way associated with example.org.

And they are right, of course! I *am* sending email on behalf of
libraries from some random server on the internet. So, the question
is: how to get around this? I see two possibilities:

1. Work with the sysadmins of the organizations of each library and
have them include my servers in their "published lists of trusted
servers" (I am thinking of stuff like SPF, PTR, OpenDKIM etc - I have
not gotten my head around all of the details.) This would entail
talking to lots of different sysadmins (if there is one) at lots of
different organizations = lots of work...

2. So I was thinking about a second optoin - paying my way out,
through some service like the ones listed here:
https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/best-transactional-email-sending-services/
My thinking is that GMail and Hotmail would "think" like "hm, this
email says it comes from example.org, but it originated from some
random server. BUT it was sent through ServiceX, which you have to pay
to use, so it is probably legit". But I have no idea if GMail and
Hotmail works like that at all. Does anyone else have a clue about
this? Or some other way to solve the problem?

Best regards,
Magnus Enger
Libriotech