Sent emails to OVH mail are tagged as SPAM

[soullivaneuh]

Sent emails to OVH mail are tagged as SPAM

Description

When an email is sent to an OVH mail inbox, this one is tagged as SPAM.

We don't have the issue with the same SMTP server but for an another application emails.

Affects versions

v1.17.5

Steps to reproduce

Send an email to an OVH mail account from FusionAuth.

Expected behavior

The mail is received without any issue.

Screenshots

Tagged as SPAM.

Platform

Not related.

Additional context

Here is the mail-tester report of the email:

The only error we have with FusionAuth and not with our other application is the HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_12 code, but I'm not sure of the meaning of this error.

[mooreds]

What SMTP server are you using (under "Tenants" on the "Email" tab)?

That typically weighs heavily on if an email is considered spam.

[mooreds]

Ah, I see your SMTP server is shared, and you don't have issues with the other application.

I'd try addressing this as outlined by the docs. It seems that the emails are too image heavy, with not enough text.

Have you customized your email templates or are they the default?

Another option could be to use a different SMTP server with better reputation (like sendgrid or similar).

[soullivaneuh]

After some investigations, we finally found where the problem come from.

Yes, we are using the default mail templates.

However, we are using Mailgun SMTP service for our mail sending and this one offer a tracking feature:

This tracking feature add a invisible image to the html code in order to get request for stats.

If I deactivate this feature, the HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_12 error is gone and the mail are no longer marked as SPAM.

We don't have any issues with our other applications because sent emails are bigger in text content.

On our side, you have two possibilities in my opinion:

1. Make default templates content longer so tracking images will not be an issue anymore.
2. Add a note on documentation, recommending to deactivate such features for FusionAuth emails. By the way, we agree that tracking is not very useful for this kind of email.

As I solved my problem, I let you decide what to do with this issue. 👍

Cheers

[mooreds]

Great, glad you fixed it. I'm not sure this belongs in the formal documentation (always hard to balance between reaching beyond FusionAuth and being thorough) but I did create a forum post with what you learned: https://fusionauth.io/community/forum/topic/313/the-default-templates-are-being-marked-as-spam so that hopefully google will pick it up and help others.

Thanks!

Closing.

[soullivaneuh]

Indeed, a forum post is better for this use case. Thanks!