email address best practices for no reply?

Question

right now my company structures our no reply emails like this:

noreply@[subdomin].[domain].com (example: noreply@foobar.example.com)

I want to know if something like this is acceptable:

noreply_[subdomain]@[domain].com (example: noreply_foobar@example.com)

Obviously the emails will send no problem, but my concern is being marked as spam when, of course, it's not, the user signed up with us. If you are wondering as to the why, it's due to how our Send Grid is set up.

I guess this boils down to: Is the first example any better than the second example in terms of deliverability?

Answer 1

There is, of-course, no single correct answer here. Ignoring that noreply email addresses are not a good look I would argue -

no_reply_subdomain@domain.com is likely to be MORE deliverable then no_reply@subdomain.domain.com because the former is more likely be correctly set up with MX records, SPF, DKIM etc then the latter, so more likely to pass spam checks.

Similarly (but likely vastly less important) is that where spam filters are looking to penalise noreply email addresses, they might pick noreply@ out of a string more easily then noreply_ - but even if not, they are unlikely to penalise noreply_ worse then noreply@ (Indeed if anyone were to think this through carefully they might realise that having an _ and a domain provides more accountability then noreply@)