Why do you need no-reply @ mail?

    Mail of the form noreply@domain.ru, no-reply@domain.ru and others is a call to common sense. Just think: these are valid mailboxes to which you can send a letter, but you do not need to do this. I know the same logical object - this is the "do not click" button. Here's something like this:



    There are such things - protocols, standards, accepted usage patterns. All of them unequivocally suggest that if there is a mailing address, you can write to it. If we needed a mailing address that cannot be written to, we would describe it together with the entire protocol stack, which ensures the operation of e-mail. But this is not stupid. And then our noreply appears on the scene.

    What is noreply @ mail used for?


    Let's figure it out when, in general, it occurs to a mentally healthy person to get something like noreply@domain.ru. The first obvious (and also the most common) case is when you have a robot that regularly sends out something. And you want to protect the user from dialogue with the robot. Since the robot needs a box, it is given a name like "no-write-here."

    Good technique for paranoid. I now know one major faction in an online game called Test Alliance Please Ignore. A great case of fun, drive and cognitive dissonance.

    In the case of mail, there is no such fan and drive. But there is a dissonance. Because, if you think about it, every case when a user (even sincerely not familiar with computers in general) writes someone a letter, this is some kind of information transaction. Which is at least important to this user. And she must get to a real person. And gradually it becomes clear that noreply is not protection against user error, but an attempt by one of the specialists to relieve himself of responsibility.

    I'll explain now.

    To begin with, I looked at what our robots are sending out within our own network of stores. A striking example is morning updates from warehouses, which show, for example, a product that has not been there for a long time, or a product that appeared on sale for the first time. The sender’s name is “Mosigra AutoLink”, the address is noreply. Logically, a user (for example, a purchaser) can respond to this letter with a bug report, just be surprised at something and ask to check the data. Or other useful information. Or not very useful, but funny, it also happens. Therefore, logically, if our common support box were in the senders, everyone would have lived easier. Pay attention, not only to users, but also in the final analysis and support, because timely accurate bug-fix saves up to 3-4 hours of working time. We will exchange such noreply for human addresses with the following update.

    Then there are mailings to the customer base. Everything is simple here - in the "where it was sent from" the technical garbage of the mailing list service, but in the "whom to answer" my mail. The buyer sees me (or in the last resort “sent on behalf of” before the mail). Not to be confused. On the other hand, I know a bunch of people who send me newsletters with noreply. When I have a question, I, according to the logic of their interface, should poke into the signature, and not use the obvious and simple UI-pattern of the “reply to email” behavior.

    And the third case - all sorts of technical notifications like suspension of services, payments for various services, etc. Here, someone specifically screwed up - while I was looking for noreply @ in my mail, I was surprised to find my answer to the auto-invoice requesting to renew the contract for a year. Naturally, no one answered me. I even know what happened next - after 3 days there was another provider of the same service. The funniest thing is that, like, the squinty idiot here I am, and the grandmother was not the one who set up his noreply.

    What i suggest


    It is clear that sending auto-mail from someone’s personal mailbox is an idea so-so for many reasons. But the mail protocol is a magic thing! - allows you to specify not only the real mail of the sender, but also “to whom to answer” (Reply-To). And almost all modern customers, including web services, show this to the user very transparently. He sees that the letter can be answered, and immediately sees where it will go. He does not need to think about the features of the implementation. Everything is simple.

    So, I suggest you take only two steps on the path to common sense:
    1. See where you use mail like noreply @.
    2. Replace this noreply @ with the real mail of the person responsible for this sector in “whom to answer”. In an extreme case, to info@domain.ru, because there is surely hell and waste, and the one who sits in this box will still send it to whoever needs it.

    As a bonus, I propose to admire the inbox on my noreply @ and marvel at the genre of "dialogs with the robot."

    Or maybe you have a situation where noreply is really needed?

    And yes, one more thing. For some time now I have had direct shipments from our noreply - there is nothing wrong with it. Even spam. A special pleasure, by the way, is to answer the next advertising agency by phone: “Yes, it is very interesting. Please send your offer to noreply@mosigra.ru ”.

    PS According to the results of a heated discussion, I want to add a small FAQ:
    - What is the problem of noreply?
    The fact is that the user either does not know that it is impossible to write to such boxes (for example, he does not understand English or thinks that it is something technical), or he may be mistaken by habitually pressing the answer button and answering. And the letter will be gone.
    - Why acting noreply? You can simply specify a nonexistent box and not even start it!
    The problem will become even worse - the letters will disappear without a result, or the user will receive a notification of an undelivered message. Which he may not see, not understand, or see and understand, and simply waste time rewriting the original letter again.
    - Why should I block a new outgoing mailbox?
    Do not. We are not interested in the actual outbox, only the Reply-To header is important. That is not where noreply @ should be.
    “But you need a means to write letters without the possibility of an answer?”
    The right tool from the point of view of the UI would be, for example, blocking the “reply” button at the protocol level. Now this is not, and users are mistaken.
    - If there is a robot, then how to prevent the recipient of the letter from confusing it with a living person?
    Make a forward from the robot box to a living person or use Reply-To. Before the heap, you can indicate explicitly in the sender’s name field that this is an auto-link or a robot.

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