As of June 15, 2024, the use of Less Secure Apps along with plain password authentication will no longer be supported by Google. This means if you are using Gmail SMTP Relay via smtp.gmail.com to send email from Gibbon, you will need to use an App Password to continue sending email. Please see our updated documentation for instructions about how to enable 2FA on your email account and add an App Password: SMTP Instructions.
Luckily, the above steps are easy to take and don’t require any code changes. However, in future versions we will still be looking into adding alternate options, such as mailing using Service Accounts and using API mailing services such as Amazon SES, Mailgun, and Mandril, to ensure schools have a variety of email sending options to work with.
Dear community, the following is an important update about the use of Gmail SMTP-relay:
Even with the above changes in place, recently some schools have encountered issues with emails being bounced back as rejected by the Gmail SMTP-relay servers after successfully sending from Gibbon. I wanted to update the community, since this is unfortunately not an issue on Gibbon’s end, but rather with the SMTP-relay service itself.
The Issue
Gmail SMTP-relay is a free service provided by Google. As such, they impose a lot of spam protection filters on this mail system so that it is not abused.
Although emails sent from Gibbon are not spam, they may inadvertently triggered these filters because of the high volume of similar content sent via Messenger.
Unfortunately, Google keeps the exact working of many of their algorithms undisclosed, particularly spam detection, to prevent the algorithms being circumvented. They are also continuously changing their spam detection without warning.
Recently we have found that even with verified SPF, DKIM and DMARC settings, the SMTP-relay server may block or reject emails without warning.
The Solution
If you school sends a large volume of emails from Gibbon, particularly through Messenger, and have encountered bounce-backs from the SMTP Relay, we recommend looking into an alternate SMTP solution.
Generally, this will mean needing to use a paid SMTP service. Although Gibbon is free, the sending of email does require access to mail servers to send email, and if your school sends a high volume of email from Gibbon (2000+ per day), then a paid service may be the most reliable option.
Schools that I work with have recently successfully switched to using MailGun. This can be done by setting up a MailGun account, adding a domain to their system, and following the steps in their setup process to add the necessary DNS settings to DNS zone for your domain.
Other email services that provide SMTP credentials would also likely work just as effectively.
You can find the Gibbon STMP settings in System Admin > Third Party Settings.
Hope this helps any schools who have encountered bounce-back issues with the Gmail SMTP-relay.