Email Newsletter Problems with Sending HTML Emails

Hello, I have had the problem of not being able to send HTML emails. I have the Zen Cart version
Zen Cart 1.3.8a
Patch: 1::
Database Patch Level: 1.3.8
v1.3.8 [2008-09-22 18:06:37] (Fresh Installation)
v1.3.8 [2008-09-22 18:06:37] (Fresh Installation)

Here are some of the settings in my email thing:
E-Mail Options
Title Value Action
E-Mail Transport Method PHP
E-Mail Linefeeds LF Info
Use MIME HTML When Sending Emails true Info
Send E-Mails true Info

What the weird part is , is that when I am going to send the emails it gives me the screen, and lets me "create" the html email. When I go to send the message, it gives me a preview and "it looks like a html email" But once it is sent to people it is NOT , it is just a plain text. This email was test sent to people using all different kinds of emails, people with their own site, google, hotmail, yahoo, all of them. Everyone got a text mail only. =( So I have been adding every single customer in to my outlook for the past year and sending emails that way. I know my server can send html emails, cause my outlook is my email for my domain, and it sends straight off there. Someone please help me, I am starting to get so many contacts that it is ridiculous to keep manually adding them all.

Someone please tell me where to look or what to do. I have the Zen cart tutor book, and all of the settings they reccomend are checked. I need help. Thanks.

There's a big difference between sending email from outlook vs sending email from your website.
There are many security protections on a webserver to attempt to prevent spam and spoofing, and those protections also can directly remove HTML content from emails when those emails are sent from an application on the webserver. That kind of filtering is configured by your hosting company, and cannot be overridden by Zen Cart.
However, one approach that has often helped is to change from "PHP" as your transport method to "SMTPAUTH" and then fill in all the SMTP settings lower on the same screen. This causes the server to see the outgoing mail as something specifically requested from you, esp since you're logging in in order to send the email, and sometimes that makes it seem more similar to using something like Outlook for sending. Thus sometimes that will prevent the server from stripping the HTML content out of the emails it receives from your store, before it passes them on.

If that doesn't work, you'll need to ask your hosting company for help, since the problem lies somewhere in what their servers are doing to your messages after Zen Cart hands them over.

Related FAQ: http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshoot_-_Email_Problems

Thank you for the response. What you are saying does make sense. I have a question about this.....

"However, one approach that has often helped is to change from "PHP" as your transport method to "SMTPAUTH" and then fill in all the SMTP settings lower on the same screen.:

I just changed all of the SMTPauth settings, sent the test email to myself, and it is still not working, stull just sending the text only emails. =( Any other suggestions?

Jamie

Time to talk to your host.

P>S> Actually when I sent a coupon to myself using the smtppaut it said the email was not sent sucessfully. So it did not work at all

What do I ask my host?

Can someone please reply to me on this. I have changed hosts and have the same problem still. Could you tell me what I need to ask the host in order to fix this problem? Thanks.

I tried to ask my host and they say this
Hi,

By default on your server there is nothing configured which would stop you from sending images in email. Typically when sending email the image is being pulled from the server but I believe there are other ways to do this by pulling the image from a attached file. It really depends on how the emails are coded. As mentioned previously we'll need to reproduce this in order to give you a proper reply.

Thanks,

Tony P.

What should I be asking them or telling them specifically???

When you give Zen Cart the SMTP credentials, it simply logs into your email account and sends the email, just like your desktop computer does. If the emails aren't arriving after that, then something's wrong with whatever the email server is doing with the email after it receives it. That's not something we can fix for you, since only your hosting company can trace the email all the way from login to whenever it is actually passed on to the recipient's server.

When you've told your hosting company about the problem, what have they said?

And are you still on the old obsolete no-longer-supported v1.3.8? If so, upgrading is the first most important step, since a number of email matters were fixed since then.

Update: what exactly did you ask your host about?

This thread was talking about "newsletter problems", and their reply you quoted seems very specifically geared towards images.

When I sent the newsletter, the email is sent to everyone , but the HTML is stripped from it. Ie, no pictures.

This is what I sent them: I use Zen Cart for my site. There is an option to send HTML emails through a newsletter option.

When I go to send a newsletter to my customers, everything on Zencart works great, and it shows like it is sending an html email.

When the customers received the email (customers who select specifically to view html emails) ALL of the pics and html are stripped away.

I contacted a Zen Guru, there is nothing wrong with the Zen Cart side,.

They said that "There's a big difference between sending email from outlook vs sending email from your website.
There are many security protections on a webserver to attempt to prevent spam and spoofing, and those protections also can directly remove HTML content from emails when those emails are sent from an application on the webserver. That kind of filtering is configured by your hosting company, and cannot be overridden by Zen Cart." "ou'll need to ask your hosting company for help, since the problem lies somewhere in what their servers are doing to your messages after Zen Cart hands them over."

Please let me know what could be creating this problem. Please read the entire email. Thank you.

Hello? I answered back not sure what else to do from here

Apologies, but I don't know why it's not working on your site specifically.
I've already pointed you to the email troubleshooting guide. http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshoot_-_Email_Problems

Suggestions:

• figure out what code has been altered on your site to prevent the code from working properly: http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshoot_-_Diagnosing_Obscure_Issues
• get your hosting company to actually dig into the actual emails it's receiving and figure out why/where it's stripping the HTML part out
• if your host can't support HTML emails properly, then switch to using a dedicated newsletter mailing service like Constant Contact or Mailchimp
• upgrade to the latest supported version since it includes all known officially released bugfixes

Regardless what approach you take, you DO need to upgrade ASAP.

Just a post on here, I just paid someone to upgrade to v 1.3.9h and now the problem has fixed itself, Thank you.