Testing for Bouncemanagement - Couldn't get autoresponses

ℹ️ Support
1

Hi,

I’m testing a PHPList Installation for the best way to manage bounces. From past Newsletters I know that apart from really undeliverable mails there where away responses as well (“I’m on vacation” etc.) but couldn’t replicate that behaviour with the Email-Accounts I have access to.

I have set autorespond messages from two different providers (AllInkl and Microsoft) and tested them to work with a single mail outside PHPList.

On several test runs I send to existing, non-existing and the configured autorespond addresses from PHPList. The non-existing addresses bounce as expected and I could
setup to unsubcribe on bounce threshold. The part I don’t understand is why I don’t get the autoresponse, neither in the setup bounce address/ message envelope nor to the from address.

Is this because my autoresponders react a certain way that those mentioned away emails that were generated on past newsletter don’t do? I rather thing this behaviour is the right way (no autoresponse to a newsletter), but I’m unsure if I’m missing something as a really want this to be stable.

2

Not sure. Maybe those recipient hosts detect the mailing list headers and decide not to autorespond. If that’s the case I’d expect it to be known and documented independently.

Or maybe something on your Mailserver config (used for the sender address) results in the autoresponse mail going awol. Eg SPF, dmark, or dkim issues.

3

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction (I was probably to tired to even think about checking standards).

There is a header information that causes well behaved mail servers to not create a autoresponse when receiving bulk mails:

Basically the send mail has to include a “List-Id” and/or “Precedence: list”/“Precedence: bulk” header, PHPList does both.

In a better world that would work with all mail servers ;-).

1 Like
4

Great that you found the answer!