Account enrollment email, deliverability issues with Hotmail accounts

help
1

I’m using the built-in Accounts.sendEnrollmentEmail( ) together with Google Apps Gmail SMTP to send emails.
All emails get delivered OK, EXCEPT for @hotmail.com addresses. They don’t even go into a junk/spam folder.

I would use a 3rd party email service. Though I don’t see a way to use Mailgun or Sendgrid with the Accounts.sendEnrollmentEmail() functions.

Any thoughts on improving deliverability and/or using a third part service?

2

Both Mailgun and Sendgrid have SMTP options. Just setup your MAIL_URL environment variable following the usual smtp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/ pattern, substituting in the proper values. Quick example for Mailgun:

smtp://postmaster@mg.somehost.com:1458afc2e7d6702773a56fcy5469d62d@smtp.mailgun.org:587

I’ve had similar issues in the past with Hotmail (and other hosted email providers), and using services like Mailgun, Sendgrid and Mandrill (RIP) have really helped.

3

Thanks Hugh, I did discover the SMTP option after looking closer at mailgun. So now I’m using mailgun. Thanks.

I’m still struggling with hotmail deliverability. At times messages appear in spam, other times it’s nowhere to be found. They never appear in the inbox.

I’ve tried changing the URL of the app, the sender address, adding unsubscribe links. Nothing seems to put a meteor email in the hotmail inbox. Any ideas?

4

What are you seeing in your Mailgun logs via the Mailgun admin? Do you see any record of the hotmail emails being bounced?

5

@hwillson At least all meteor emails seem to go to ‘junk’ when I use MailGun. Using Gmail some were simply undelivered.
I still can’t seem to get the emails to get past ‘junk’ filter even with MailGun. MailGun shows them as delivered.

I even added some tweaks to the content to improve. But no changes happened after:

  • I added unsubscribe links.
  • made the sender domain the same as the URL links.
  • added user’s first name and last name to the message.

Open to suggestions from anyone here.

6

Are you using the sandbox on mailgun or an actual domain? And if you’re using an actual domain, have you set up the dns records for sending via mailgun?

7

Thanks. Yes I’m using an actual domain, and dns records are configured correctly. Any other ideas?

8

Just to confirm, you’ve set up the txt record? Also, there’s the possibility that your ip has been blacklisted by hotmail.

9

Yes I have the txt record set up in the DNS. The IP would be Mailgun’s IP. I’m not sure how I could change that.

10

@lpgeiger I’m having the same problem with hotmail. Where you able to solve this? Please help!