pony doesn't send email to gmail address?

Question

I've got an entry form that asks for a persons name and email address. I save that email address to the session so I can access it after the form has been submitted. Then I use Pony to send a thank you/notification email to the person who submitted the form. However, while it sends without issue to a MobileMe address, it won't to a gmail address. The line I'm using to send is:

Pony.mail(:to => "#{@email}", :from => 'from@email.com', :subject => "Thanks for entering!", 
:body => "Thank you!")

The @email variable is defined in the handler and gets the value from the session.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Here's the helper method I use that uses Pony to send email using sendmail when in development on my Mac or via sendgrid on Heroku when in production. This works reliably and all of my test emails get sent to my various gmail addresses.

Possibly your problem is that your from address is invalid and Google is flagging that as spam. Also I note you are not setting the Content-Type header, which is typically text/html in my case.

def send_email(a_to_address, a_from_address , a_subject, a_type, a_message)
  begin
    case settings.environment
    when :development                          # assumed to be on your local machine
      Pony.mail :to => a_to_address, :via =>:sendmail,
        :from => a_from_address, :subject => a_subject,
        :headers => { 'Content-Type' => a_type }, :body => a_message
    when :production                         # assumed to be Heroku
      Pony.mail :to => a_to_address, :from => a_from_address, :subject => a_subject,
        :headers => { 'Content-Type' => a_type }, :body => a_message, :via => :smtp,
        :via_options => {
          :address => 'smtp.sendgrid.net',
          :port => 25,
          :authentication => :plain,
          :user_name => ENV['SENDGRID_USERNAME'],
          :password => ENV['SENDGRID_PASSWORD'],
          :domain => ENV['SENDGRID_DOMAIN'] }
    when :test
      # don't send any email but log a message instead.
      logger.debug "TESTING: Email would now be sent to #{to} from #{from} with subject #{subject}."
    end
  rescue StandardError => error
    logger.error "Error sending email: #{error.message}"
  end
end