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Is Xero not going to address the deliverability issues then? This does not seem like it was a productive response to address most of the reasons for the request.

An important and simple request that is now 10 years old - can we please implement this now Xero Team?

basic feature. $5 wordpress extesions provide such features

I can't understand why this isn't already a feature. FreeAgent provides this feature and has for some time. Stripe also has this as an option when using their invoicing. A simple DNS change for users to implement and it's ready to go.

This should be a standard option. I have to manually send all my emails and it is a pain.

I am shocked this is not a feature! None of my clients are receiving the emails and going straight to SPAM. SMTP Server is a basic feature and its insane that XERO has not fixed this issue yet.

Very surprised this isn't a feature.

Marked as spam and never recieved by my customer. EVERY email I have to resend.
Our own SMTP server means control over SPF, etc.

With prices of your product going up, I'd like a few new features like this one!

The inability to send domain-based authenticated mail represents is a cybersecurity threat. They may as well leave a back-door open. If it has not happened yet, the supply chain of a big business with significant financials will be compromised though XERO and will use this very message board to prove that XERO are aware of the risk, were repeatedly reminded... and did nothing. In court they will not be able to claim innocence, liability would be proven, and significant costs claimed.

For the moment, I set all my customers email to whatever@mydomain.com.au and I then manually forward that email to the real customers email address. It does take time, but the email comes from me, has my logo, is sent authorized through my DKIM/DMARC/SPF and my customers know it is ME.

I did for a moment automate this having an individual email address per customer with automatic forwarding, but I often add a short note to the email. Rather than adding the text in XERO, I just add it in Outlook now. When customers reply, it is also comes to me.

Perhaps if everyone reminds XERO of litigation risk, maybe profit loss will be there motivation??

As a result of the invoices coming from message-service@post.xero.com my client is unable to send direct to their main supplier as another one of their suppliers uses that email address and every supplier has to have a unique email address. As a result my client now has the cumbersome job of having to email the invoice/statement to their own email address and forward direct from it. Defeats the purpose of having xero for invoicing. Client not impressed and will likely revert back to Sage. Something xero must in my opinion address ASAP.

@Tim Sneller

What you're suggesting is that xero could have an in-built email client, configurable perhaps using IMAP or POP to send emails through your own email server. That's possible and would work for many customers, you're right.

That said, what most accounting and crm software does is a little different and It's not as difficult as you might think. Emails for a particular domain don't have to come all from the same server. If they did, applications like Gmail for business and Office 365 wouldn't be able to work.

It's possible to send emails for a domain from any server, provided, the DNS records for that domain allow it. In fact, that's how email is always set up these days, there's nothing unusual about it. Without being too technical, you'll see terms like SPF, DKIM and DMARC referring to the settings that need to be put in place in your domain's DNS record.

As others have said, it's not in the least bit dodgy, fake or even unusual, it's just basic email setup. I get that some people might not be comfortable, but there are step-by-step guides on the internet to do this and as a last resort, folks who really can't manage it can use the existing workflow.

Very disappointing this hasn't be done yet. With so many emails going out from Xero they may get overlooked or be unrecognised by new customers and or caught in spam. (Xero even this acknowledge this see https://central.xero.com/s/article/Contact-not-receiving-an-email-sent-through-Xero).

I am an email hosting company and email hosting expert.
Xero have two options. Yes, they could do some programming work to facilitate their servers connecting via OAuth2 to either smtp.gmail.com or smtp.outlook.com. However, it is possible for them to send out emails for accounts@customerdomain.com from their own email servers, *without* causing a problem with Google and other provider flagging it as SPAM. This is done by the insertion of the correct SPF and DKIM entries into the DNS control panel of the customer's domain name (eg at GoDaddy, or wherever else the domain name in question is registered). Once this is done, Xero's SMTP servers will be able to send out perfectly kosher emails with the right SMTP headers so as not to be flagged as spam.

Plus in any event, lots of our outgoing invoices and statements are ALREADY being flagged as spam right now, because of Xero's inaction and inattentiveness to this topic. We do not need Xero to deliver a perfect solution in terms of email deliverability - that's not possible anyway. We only need them to improve deliverability of outgoing emails substantially, which it is absolutely within their remit and gift to do, they're just choosing not to.

"If Xero allowed us to effectively SPOOF the FROM address, many recipient email servers, such as Google, would mark it as SPAM, because the headers do not look correct. This might well be worse than the current situation."

this absolutely *would* be worse. About 30% of our invoices are filtered to spam as it is. Add in a spoofed reply-to or From address, and it gets worse.

What Xero needs to do here is not hard. It's a very simple thing to set up, and it's how it's done in, for example, Quickbooks. We used Quickbooks desktop for 20 years, and for the past 15 or so, we had all outgoing emails sent from our mail server.

That is not how it works at all Tim. Anybody can update their email domains "SPF" record to allow any server to send....

I believe that If the email message was actually sent using XERO's email server, then it should use an email address ending in @???.xero.com. In order to send from your own email address, it needs to be sent from your OWN email server/service. It is ABSOLUTELY possible to do this, but will require some development work from Xero. You would need to be able to configure your own email server's address, port, username and password. Xero could then send using YOUR server, and all the headers etc would be correct.

If Xero allowed us to effectively SPOOF the FROM address, many recipient email servers, such as Google, would mark it as SPAM, because the headers do not look correct. This might well be worse than the current situation.

Its not a "fake" email address.

As an IT provider nearly all of our clients use multiple systems to send from their email domain :) Its very normal and not hard to do at all.

You can currently set your own reply-to address, as this is not checked by an email server when sending a message. Go to https://go.xero.com/Settings/Email/ to configure this. Then, when someone repies to an email, it does go to YOU and not to a black hole at Xero. BEWARE THOUGH, once you have set an email address and a NAME, it is difficult, if not impossible, to change the name on THAT email address - SO CHOOSE CAREFULLY...

I get that it is difficult to allow email to be sent out from Xero's system with what would effectively be a fake FROM email address, especially with increases in message security on many email servers around the world, to prevent spam. However, at the very least, as an interim measure, Xero need to allow us to specify an email address such as "company-name@post.xero.com.
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The proper solution would be to allow us to configure our own email service, address, and password within the Admin settings. Then emails would be sent out from our NORMAL email servers. Many smaller companies might not know how to set this up, so the current system could be the default, but ADVANCED users could add their own message service settings.

However, if messages failed to be sent, it would be down to individual companies to fix it, probably without assistance of Xero support. HOWEVER, I have seen such options give the support company an excuse for email failing, and just blaming the user.

Absolutely mental that this isn't possible.

Everyone marks @post.xero.com as spam.

We just had a response back from a client as to why an invoice of 15% of our years revenue was delayed, apparently it went to their junk. The bank overdraft fees on this one are significant.

Really weighing up whether we can continue with Xero without being able to send emails from our domain on automated invoices. It is a lot of hassle to move, but the alternative is starting to look worse...

Such a simple thing to fix...