In notifications, can "reply-to" & "from" be set to the visitors supplied in

Gravity Support Forums » General » Pre-Purchase Questions

oxygensmith
Member

Hey everyone,

My client has a particular demand to be able to reply to the notifications he gets through a contact form by hitting reply. So, I'm wondering if it's possible to set up a form and e-mailed notification such that, rather than arriving in our inbox from our Gmail address or a generic address on our domain (wordpress@ourdomain.com), it actually comes from the sender and their address.

So instead of

From: The Website <wordpress@ourdomain.com>

the notification email is

From: John Smith <johnsmith203023@hotmail.com>

and when you hit "reply" in your email client, it addresses John Smith <johnsmith203023@hotmail.com>.

Some form scripts do not have this capability so I just wondering before I jump into Gravity Forms.

Also: I'm having SMTP issues with my host, and I understand the issues involved in fixing these for anyone running Wordpress on a host where SMTP mail is required. I also have read up on the companion plugins that Gravity Forms (or any form system on Wordpress using wp_mail) will need installed alongside Gravity Forms.

I'm just wondering, if this reply-to setup above I'm hoping to implement is possible, if anyone knows if SMTP affects that in any way, so that this can't be done if we have to use SMTP with Gravity Forms.

Thanks so much for your answers in advance! The software looks cool - I just have a kind of demanding client. He expects a lot of mail so he doesn't want to have to type out someone's email address to reply.

Best, Rob

Posted 11 years ago on Monday January 14, 2013 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

Yes, the form submission can come from the person who submitted the form. Gravity Forms is designed to do that. However, some hosts place restrictions on who the mail can be sent FROM on their server. Some restrict that the email for the website example.com come from someone@example.com. This is not a Gravity Forms restriction, but a restriction on the host.

If there are issues with the notifications not arriving, an SMTP plugin is the solution on 99% of the hosts. I'm not sure if you are saying you cannot, or can, or have to use a plugin like that. We can't tell you if your host will deliver mail from Gravity Forms to your client or not, but we can help you later if you find out notifications are not being send out by your host. The solution in that case is an SMTP plugin to offload the sending of the email.

Posted 11 years ago on Tuesday January 15, 2013 | Permalink
shendison
Member

The requirement of being able to hit "reply" without copy and pasting the senders address is reasonable, and not demanding. it's just efficient.

I have a business with hosted Exchange mail elsewhere, so we set up a Gmail account using an SMTP plugin, but now messages appear to come from that Gmail address that nobody should even be aware of. Surely there's a solution here? Will an SMTP plugin actually allow this to take place?

Chris, you say "an SMTP plugin" but there are a bunch - can you recommend one?

Posted 11 years ago on Thursday January 17, 2013 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

The requirement of being able to hit "reply" without copy and pasting the senders address is reasonable, and not demanding. it's just efficient.

I don't think anyone disagrees with you. This is a built in feature of Gravity Forms.

Using Gmail as your SMTP server means Gmail gets to do what they want with your email headers. Depending on the client receiving the email on the other end, it may be displayed that the email was sent by Gmail on behalf of "whoever". This is not a Gravity Forms limitation but a limitation of the SMTP server you are using. In many cases, you can use the SMTP server of the host of your website, rather than the built in mail command, and since you are authenticated to the SMTP server, that will work better than not using SMTP.

I know of these commonly used SMTP plugins for WordPress:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-smtp/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/configure-smtp/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cimy-swift-smtp/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-mail-smtp/

There are also services which provide reliable SMTP service for reasonable prices. Sendgrid is one such service. They have a free account which will send up to 200 emails per day for you.

Posted 11 years ago on Tuesday January 22, 2013 | Permalink
oxygensmith
Member

I just want to remark that this was all helpful information that led me to purchase Gravity Forms.

But, I also notice that, once installed, I'm able to set the reply-to properly, without even the aid of one of the SMTP plugins! Does Gravity Forms now do some magic on its own with making wp_mail use SMTP? If not, I wonder if I just had an issue with forming the reply-to header information properly in the original form.

Posted 11 years ago on Tuesday January 22, 2013 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

oxygensmith, please feel free to open a new support topic in the regular support forums and we can help you there, if you need help.

However, Gravity Forms does set the From and To email headers based on your configuration. That is what a lot of servers have a problem with. They ask, in essence "how is it possible I am being asked on example.com to send email which appears to be coming from salesman@gmail.com - that can't be possible and I won't let it happen." So, some server toss that right out, which is why we recommend using an SMTP plugin, which allows you to authenticate to the server, and you can send to and from whoever you want usually.

Posted 11 years ago on Tuesday January 22, 2013 | Permalink

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