Resolved Email notifications senderAddress

[klowet]

Server operating system version

Debian 12

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.74 Update #1

Hi

In panel.ini, I have set this option:

[notification]
senderAddress = [email protected]

But, not all Plesk system notifications are from that senderAddress. Sometimes (eg. for notifications from failed backups) are send with a FROM of the 'Email address' that is defined in 'Administrator Profile'.

Problem: the address which is defined in the admin profile, is a different domain (group address of our sysadmin team). But the IP of the Plesk servers are not defined in the SPF-record of that domain. So that check fails and emails are dropped.

Question: is there another setting used to define sender email addresses for system notifications?

Thanks

 

[krupps]

I can confirm this behavior and add a reproducible test.

On our server, this is not just a suspicion. We verified that Plesk/PMM really uses the external! admin profile email as sender for backup notifications in at least some cases, even though [notification] senderAddress suggests there should be a central sender setting.

What we observed:

• PMM logged:
  mail_from: Admin Name<[email protected]>
• The same backup notification was then sent with:
  From: Admin Name <[email protected]>

So in this case the wrong sender was already chosen inside PMM, before normal mail transport.

We then changed the admin profile field in the GUI that corresponds to the backend admin email value to a unique canary address.

After that, later backup notifications were sent with that canary address as sender.

So this is reproducible:

1. admin profile email value = address A
2. backup notification sender = address A
3. change admin profile email value to address B
4. backup notification sender later becomes address B

Why this is a problem:

If the admin profile email belongs to a third-party provider/domain (GMX, Gmail, Outlook, etc.), the Plesk server is usually not authorized to send mail for that domain. That creates SPF/DMARC alignment problems and can easily cause backup notifications to be flagged as spam or rejected.

In other words, this is not just inconvenient — it is a deliverability problem.

The GUI/behavior is also misleading, because an admin profile/contact email does not look like a field that should define the actual sender identity of system-generated backup notifications.

So I can confirm the original report: in at least some notification paths, senderAddress is not respected and Plesk falls back to the administrator profile email as actual sender.

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

@krupps , there's an internal task (PPP-62303) registered to change this behavior, i.e. if the address defined belongs to a third-party MTA, Plesk should send the notification from "name@hostname" instead. I cannot provide an ETA on when the change will be implemented. For the time being, could you please try changing the sender of backup notifications according to the following guide and let us know if the issue still persists afterward:

• https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/...ubject-of-backup-email-notifications-in-Plesk

 

[krupps]

@krupps , there's an internal task (PPP-62303) registered to change this behavior, i.e. if the address defined belongs to a third-party MTA, Plesk should send the notification from "name@hostname" instead. I cannot provide an ETA on when the change will be implemented. For the time being, could you please try changing the sender of backup notifications according to the following guide and let us know if the issue still persists afterward:

• https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/...ubject-of-backup-email-notifications-in-Plesk

@Sebahat.hadzhi thanks for getting back to me. Well appreciated. We have solved the issue by simply putting an internal address in the "external address" field.

Brgds