Liz Gehret from the QIIME 2 Forum asks about Gmail’s new bulk email requirements and whether Discourse adheres to them, particularly regarding DKIM and other email security standards Liz Gehret. Thomas Rother clarifies that Discourse functions as a mail client, meaning email security protocols like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC are managed by the SMTP provider, not Discourse itself Thomas Rother. He explains that these settings are handled via DNS records and are essential for secure email delivery, advising Liz to ensure proper configuration with her email provider, SparkMail.
I checked our forum digest email frequency, and we don’t meet the daily email frequency threshold that these requirements are for - but I was curious on Discourse’s email standards as a whole. Does Discourse use DKIM? And more generally, do you have to adhere to these requirements:
Hi Liz,
maybe a small misunderstanding: Discourse acts as a mail client in this case, similar to a local mail application. Security settings for mail transport like DMARC, DKIM and SPF are provided by the SMTP server handling incoming mail from a (self-hosted) Discourse instance. These technologies are required by all major mail providers to avoid spam and increase secure deliverability.
In my case (self hosted Discourse at https://forum.netzwissen.de) the mail is sent to https://duocircle.com as the mail provider. The DKIM record comes from the DNS domain settings (TXT record) and is checked by the SMTP provider. As another measure of spam protection, SPF (sender policy framework) defines the mail servers which are allowed to handle incoming mail from my domain @netzwissen.de.
In your case I would guess that you need proper settings for the incoming mail at sparkmailapp.com.
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