Issue with From Name Handling in Gravity Forms Notifications

[remcotolsma]

Hi Gravity Forms Support,

We’ve encountered an issue with how Gravity Forms handles the From name in email notifications when no name is explicitly set.

We are using the Gravity SMTP plugin to enforce a specific From email address for all outgoing emails. However, when a From name is not provided in the notification settings, Gravity Forms appears to fall back to using an email address instead—often the site’s admin email.

For example, instead of a properly formatted From header like:

From: Site Name <no-reply@wp-mail.example.com>

we sometimes see:

From: info@example.com <no-reply@wp-mail.example.com>

Here, info@example.com (which is not the actual sender) is used as the From name. This creates two main issues:

1. It introduces a mismatch between the From name and the enforced From email, making it look like the email is coming from info@example.com, even though it is actually sent from no-reply@wp-mail.example.com.
2. Spam filters may flag this as suspicious behavior, as email authentication mechanisms (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) may fail when the displayed sender (info@example.com) does not match the actual sending domain.

Since the From name is optional, we believe Gravity Forms should not default to an email address when no name is set. Instead, it would be preferable to leave the name empty rather than introduce a potentially misleading fallback.

Could you confirm if this behavior is intentional, and whether there’s a way to prevent Gravity Forms from assigning an email address as the From name when no name is specified?

Thanks in advance for your support!

Best regards,

Pronamic
Remco Tolsma

gravityforms/common.php

Lines 2367 to 2370 in 2efcab9

	$name = empty( $from_name ) ? $from : $from_name;
	$headers = array();
	$headers['From'] = 'From: "' . wp_strip_all_tags( $name, true ) . '" <' . $from . '>';

Submitted via https://www.gravityforms.com/open-support-ticket/technical/.

Thank you for contacting us.
We will reply to your inquiry as soon as possible.

Hi Remco, thank you for contacting Gravity support. This is an automated message to acknowledge that we have received your inquiry (#623593).

[rvdsteege]

@remcotolsma out of curiosity, any update on this issue?

[remcotolsma]

Not yet, I already sent a few reminders, just sent another reminder.

[remcotolsma]

Response from Gravity Forms:

Hi Remco. Thank you for your continued patience and for following up again. I want to acknowledge that you've been more than reasonable waiting for an update, and I understand the need to set expectations on your end.

At this time, we don't have a timeline for when this might be addressed. Because it appears to have a limited impact and has only been reported in this one instance, it's not currently prioritized for active development. That said, it's still on our radar and we're keeping track of any additional reports or related developments that might affect its priority.

I realize that's not the definitive answer you were hoping for, but I hope it clarifies where things stand. I appreciate you bringing this to our attention, and I'll continue to monitor and keep in touch if there are any future developments. Thank you.

[remcotolsma]

I followed up with Chris Hajer, a Support Engineer at Gravity Forms, several times, but it appears that Gravity Forms has not yet acknowledged the importance of this issue. Their most recent response dates back to May 19, 2025. I have now created a new ticket in the hope that another Gravity Forms support engineer will pick this up and recognize the urgency.

Hi Remco, thank you for contacting Gravity support. This is an automated message to acknowledge that we have received your inquiry (#705741).