Oh yes, the countless email relay and forwarding threads!
I’ve been fiddling a bit with my Exim4 server and I must say, I ran out ideas.
My HestiaCP is on a Ubuntu 22.04 server and using Amazon SES as a relay.
I’d like my forwarded email to work with GMAIL. Seems like I’m forwarding the original FROM address, which is in some way conflicting with my SPF°DKIM records because whatever domains using the relay is not in these DNS records.
Exim4 logs:
2023-10-26 07:19:02 1qvpxX-000BYE-C9 Completed
2023-10-26 07:19:03 1qvpxe-000BYN-PX ** MY@EMAILADDRESS R=send_via_smtp_relay T=smtp_relay_smtp H=email-smtp.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com [15.222.108.99] X=TLS1.2:ECDHE_SECP256R1__RSA_SHA256__AES_256_GCM:256 CV=yes: SMTP error from remote mail server after MAIL FROM:<>: 501 Invalid MAIL FROM address provided
2023-10-26 07:19:03 1qvpxe-000BYN-PX Frozen (delivery error message)
My server doesn’t have a good reputation since it’s a cloud service IP. That’s precisely why I use Amazon SES.
In the end yes you’re right. It’s a bit impractical for low-tech users though, I’m all about saving them time and energy. I used to be able to do it with cPanel on my previous host. Some CDN such as CloufFlare also offers it.
It’s an absolute disaster over there, too. Delivery issues to Gmail are a regular topic in their Community. Forwarding still has a narrow scope of effective applications, but it has been unreliable for general purpose mailbox use for nearly a decade. I find it ironic that Cloudflare introduced an email forwarding application so long after it was no longer a reliable practice.
You are, of course, correct that it is easier to type in a forwarding address than enter POP details into Gmail. It’s arguably easier to configure the POP retrieval than it is the SMTP settings to send as the domain email, so this who have managed the latter, should be able to accomplish the former.
I tried to find a succinct guide on the POP retrieval process in the Google support docs, but didn’t manage when searching from mobile. I think they have one, but i haven’t looked at it in nearly a decade, so any opinion I may have on how cleary communicates is potentially outdated.