Ask HN: Why do various services send email with the From header saying "via"?

1 point by itazula 1 year ago | 3 comments
To be more concrete, my company uses services such as Zendesk, Zoom, Zapier, and PayPal. For example, from Zendesk, we receive email with a "From" address of 'Zendesk Status' via [the alias for info@myCompanyDomain]. The email is addressed to an email address belonging to my company. We already know that Zendesk is one of our service providers, so there is no need for them to say "via". Why don't they just use their own email address? Note that the "Reply To" email address is set to status@status.zendesk.com.
  • gRoberts84 1 year ago
    Commonly it's because emails are not being sent from mycompanydomain's own SMTP server and via the service provider's own.

    When setting up the service, account owners are required to setup DNS records that authorise the service providers SMTP server to send on behalf of mycompanydomain so that the emails don't get rejected or end up in the spam folder.

    • itazula 1 year ago
      To prevent Zendesk's email from being consider spam, my company's SPF record contains include:mail.zendesk.com, but I still don't understand why, when they send email to my company, they say Zendesk "via" an email address at my company. There really doesn't seem to be any reason to not just use their own email address in the "From" header.

      Thank you for your reply, but I think there is something I'm missing ...

      • gRoberts84 1 year ago
        They've probably just setup that once you've opted in for them to send emails on behalf of your domain, they will use it for everything relating to your account.