PHPMail()

A decision made by our supplier was made to disable the use of mail() function as this was often used by malicious users on the network.

This was actioned to to protect the reputation of the network and IP Addresses used, as well as to ensure that your domains stay away from RBL’s and blacklists.

Their and our team recommend that customers use an e-mail library or plugin to send emails via SMTP. There are a few benefits to relaying messages via SMTP, including the fact that all outbound mail from our servers are relayed through MailChannels delivery service.

If you are using WordPress, we would recommend you add a Plugin to your WordPress installation, which allows you to relay messages via SMTP.

Why do you recommend against using PHPMail()?

When an email is sent from a PHP application using PHP mail, such as a contact form, the message is relayed via the server hostname similar to…

youruser@your.servername.tld

In our case, this would be…

youruser@server.cloudns.io

Whereas, your PHP application will be set to send emails from an alternative email address, such as ‘you@yourdomain.com’.

The problem here is that many recipient mailboxes will recognise this as ‘spoofing’, and will flag the message as SPAM.