The spam filters used by all e-mail providers are continuously updated to detect the latest spam threats. Therefore, even legitimate e-mails may occasionally be flagged as spam. In this article, we’ll show you what measures you can take to minimize the likelihood of this happening and to improve the delivery of your messages.
Follow Hostpoint recommendations
To ensure that your e-mails reach the recipient as intended, please follow these recommendations from Hostpoint:
- Add an SPF record for your domain
- Activate DKIM for your domain
- Activate DMARC for your domain
Add an SPF record for your domain
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a policy in the DNS zone of a domain that can be used by recipient mail servers to check whether a message originates from an authorized server. You’ll find further information on this in our detailed SPF article.
To use SPF, you need to add an SPF record in your DNS zone. Find out how this works in our article on creating SPF records.
Activate DKIM for your domain
DKIM is a method that helps recipients to verify the authenticity of an e-mail. The sender’s mail server adds a digital signature (not to be confused with a personal digital signature) to the messages. The recipient’s server can verify this signature with a public key stored in the DNS zone of the sender domain.
Further information can be found in our detailed DKIM article and our guide to enabling DKIM.
Activate DMARC for your domain
When using DMARC, a domain owner can define how e-mails should be handled that come from their domain and do not pass the SPF or DKIM test. The DMARC policy determines whether such e-mails should be rejected, sent to the spam folder or delivered normally.
Further information can be found in our detailed DMARC article and our guide to enabling DMARC.
Test deliverability
You can also test the deliverability of your e-mails using a tool (known as an e-mail spam checker). This will show you possible reasons for delivery problems.
In the case of shared hosting (web hosting), a server may land on a spam blacklist if insecure websites or e-mail forms are misused, for example. Normally, the server is removed from the list again after the problem has been resolved. Unfortunately, this is not always possible, as in the case of the UCEPROTECT blacklist. Part of our e-mail infrastructure is listed there, but you can ignore this. The few e-mail providers that use spam blacklists therefore often lose lots of “good” or legitimate e-mails.
Have your e-mail address added to the list of trusted senders
To ensure that your messages are not falsely flagged as spam by recipient spam filters, recipients may be able to add your e-mail address to their list of trusted senders.
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