mail forwarding from gmail - SMTP

[jlarsen70]

I am a free/legacy user of ZoneEdit. I have in the past successfully been able to receive and send mail using my owned domain by forwarding mail via ZonEdit to the Gmail account, and then setting up the outgoing email as an alias. This has stopped working. The few related topics I've found suggest use of ZoneOut, which according to the header of that tool suggests should be available to legacy users without further issues. But when I try to add the tool it says I must be a subscriber. Very confusing. So:
a) Why did the ability to send from Gmail using domain email address suddenly stop?
b) When attempting to re-add the domain email address as an alias in Gmail, the tool automatically selects "mx-caprica.zoneedit.com" as the SMTP, but a thread in the forum insists that is not an SMPT server (and I can't make Gmail use it in any case, as it doesn't accept authentication).
c) Do I need ZoneOut, and if so is it not included in my legacy account as the page suggests?
d) Why is there no obvious way to search the forums?

 

[Chris Cherry]

Hello,

I can only assume Gmail recently stopped grandfathering a function that was long ago considered a security issue—sending emails for a domain they do not host. OpenRelays for emails from a host that has not validated that they can send for your domain is a problem. That's what spammers would use to send emails pretending to be from your domain. What's to stop spammers if Gmail allowed this kind of activity.

Most 3rd party services for domains these days require that you show some form of control over the domain (or DNS) that they're providing services for. For example, Gmail or Microsoft might ask you to add a TXT record into the DNS for your domain to prove you have control of it before they allow you to configure a service on their system. In the past, you probably didn't do any of that when you configured to "send as" your mailmap email address via Gmail.

What you have is a mailmap (aka Email forward)

A Mailmap is a one-way forward. No username/password is required because it's just an alias that forwards messages to the destination mailbox -- which is where you would reply from. You cannot use the Gmail SMTP service for your Mailmap because the Gmail SMTP service needs your mailbox authentication credentials -- hence the problem, your mailmap is not a mailbox with credentials. Zoneedit does not provide Mailbox services. We provide ZoneOut SMTP service that you can purchase using Credits on your domain to work around that. You are supplied with a specific SMTP hostname, a username (your domain) and a password (which you configure when you enable the service). Using that ZoneOut service allows you to use the Gmail SMTP service to "send as" your domain's mailmap email addresses.

To answer d)
- You're possibly the first post in the forums pointing out this new change (there might be others, I've not searched). It is a Gmail change, not a change we made. We've always had the option for Zoneout services for many years; you just weren't having a problem with it until Gmail decided to stop supporting unauthenticated sending of emails from domain's that they don't host.

 

[wisgest]

You can use smtp.gmail.com with one of:
1) your gmail credentials. In this case you must allow less secure apps access at https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps (I use it);
2) special app password like it is written here: https://forwardemail.net/en/faq#how-to-send-mail-as-using-gmail (I haven't tried that, I hate 2FA).
In such case the header 'From' will contain your domain address, but the header 'Return-Path' will contain your gmail address.

 

[Chris Cherry]

Thanks for the additional option/info, Wisgest!