Email Configuration

This article covers configuring and X2CRM for sending (and, in special cases, receiving) email.

Introduction

X2CRM provides the means to send email, natively, within the web application. Furthermore, with Professional Edition, the local mail transfer agent (MTA[[wikipedia:Message transfer agent]]: an email relay service, i.e. Postfix, QMail or Exim4.) can be configured to pass emails to X2CRM, to be automatically parsed, imported into the web application, and associated with the addressee's contact record.

Sending Mail

There are four options for methods of sending email, which can be found by going to Email Settings under the Email Configuration section in the Admin page:

1. PHP Mail
2. Sendmail
3. QMail
4. SMTP[[wikipedia:Simple Mail Transfer Protocol]]: a network protocol for sending email to a remote server, often involving password authentication and end-to-end SSL encryption.

PHP Mail, Sendmail and QMail

All three of these methods, while independent of any offsite, third-party service, require an MTA[[wikipedia:Message transfer agent]]: an email relay service, i.e. Postfix, QMail or Exim4.

Circumventing Spam Filters

While certain options for sending email within X2CRM may work immediately, a common problem encountered is that email goes into spam folders on the receiving end, or is not received at all. This is not a fault in X2CRM or PHPMailer (which X2CRM uses for mail delivery); rather, it is due to how the general proliferation of email spam through various means (but especially PHP scripts running on web servers) has resulted in greatly elevated standards in the spam-detection mechanisms and heuristics on all reputable email servers. This poses an entry barrier to avoiding having emails get filtered or blocked, and this is common to all web applications (i.e. Wordpress, Drupal, etc.), not just X2CRM. It is thus recommended that, before utilizing the email features of X2CRM, measures are taken to ensure that mail sent will have the best chance of avoiding spam filters.

Mail sending options

PHP Mail, Sendmail & QMail

Pro: No third-party mail services required

Con: To reduce chances of blacklisting, email addresses that end in x2vps.com must be used as the sender address (see "More info")

Work-around: Set up mail aliases through the Virtualmin control panel to use as sender addresses in X2CRM. Then, these addresses can be used to receive mail; when the recipient responds to an mail, their mail will be redirected to an arbitrary address (or even a list of addresses) specified by the forwarding alias.

More info: Each of these methods ultimately result in mail being sent using a mail transfer agent (MTA[[wikipedia:Message transfer agent]]: an email relay service, i.e. Postfix, QMail or Exim4.) daemon that runs on our server(s). The methods that we support are Sendmail and PHP Mail. Our hosting environment has a DKIM[http://www.dkim.org/ DomainKeys Identified Mail]: a system for digitally signing email that provides the means to securely verify that the email's origin is legitimate. (Domain Keys Identified Mail) signing service running on it, and it has been configured to sign for x2vps.com and all of its subdomains. Emails sent from such addresses will thus be far more likely to be recognized by mail servers worldwide as being from a reputable source, and thus less likely to go into spam folders. However, on the other hand, due to the secure nature of DKIM[http://www.dkim.org/ DomainKeys Identified Mail]: a system for digitally signing email that provides the means to securely verify that the email's origin is legitimate. and how its use is widespread (especially with GMail), sender addresses cannot be "spoofed." In other words: the MTA[[wikipedia:Message transfer agent]]: an email relay service, i.e. Postfix, QMail or Exim4. cannot legitimately sign emails that are "From" a different domain/hostname than its own. That is because, if the *actual* mail service (i.e. gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.) has DKIM[http://www.dkim.org/ DomainKeys Identified Mail]: a system for digitally signing email that provides the means to securely verify that the email's origin is legitimate. set up, mail servers will see that the DKIM[http://www.dkim.org/ DomainKeys Identified Mail]: a system for digitally signing email that provides the means to securely verify that the email's origin is legitimate. signature in the email doesn't properly correspond to the DKIM[http://www.dkim.org/ DomainKeys Identified Mail]: a system for digitally signing email that provides the means to securely verify that the email's origin is legitimate. record associated with the true, native mail server's domain. DKIM[http://www.dkim.org/ DomainKeys Identified Mail]: a system for digitally signing email that provides the means to securely verify that the email's origin is legitimate. does this by using a series of cryptographic algorithms for checking validity of the signature in the email's header.