I have created a mailing software using PHPmailer. Everything is working ok apart from emails are going to Hotmail junk folder. Yahoo, Gmail, Aol and other domains are receiving the emails but not Hotmail.
I have set SPF on my hosting for the domain which I am sending the email from and When I check the source of the email on Hotmail, it shows this:
Authentication-Results: hotmail.com; spf=pass.
The emails I am sending is not classified as spam as I get it checked with some online tools. I also tried sending test emails as if I am sending an email to a friend. Still no luck
Has anyona any idea if there is anything else I should do?
Note1:I have checked other posts on here but I couldnt find an answer so I am posting my own with my own details.
Note2: I have also tried sending Gmail SMTP and still emails are going to junk folder.
Note3: I have also tried the hosting company email domain to send but still it goes into junk mail.
Thanks in advance.
Take a good look at the email headers on the receiving hotmail account. There will be clues as to why you're email is being classified as junk.
Take a look at this article.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn205071(v=exchg.150).aspx
You're looking for two header fields called
X-Forefront-Antispam-Report
X-Microsoft-Antispam
You're going to see a BCL, PCL, SRV with a colon after it and a value, depends on what those values are will be your clues as to why you're hitting the spam folder.
Without posting the full header, their's little information anyone is going provide other then telling you to try this and that. I'm a big proponent of telling people to use this mail tester, because it's the best around, but no mail testing program is going to solve every problem, but they are a good start.
Getting around email spam filters (as a legitimate sender) is a complicated issue.
Personally I recommend using Mailgun, Sparkpost, or another email service.
These guarantee delivery and most are free for the scale you'll be operating at. I personally recommend mailgun.
Related
I have my site hosted on bluehost which sends out daily mails to customers (with cron jobs). All mails are working fine except outlook and hotmail. Customers are not getting emails on their outlook/hotmail accounts. I checked the code and it working properly, returning true with php mail function.
MX records on hosting are set to gmail, bluehost supports says its a code issue or I need to consult with google but when I send direct mail through gmail account customers are getting them.
I am not sure how to debug and resolve this issue. Can someone suggest me the ways to resolve this or the possible reason behind this.
I know this is a few months later, but maybe I can help. I fought with this for a while. It depends on the mailer you're using, and your code a bit so it would be best to post it here.
Overall though, outlook and hotmail have extremely high spam filters, so there's a list of things you need to consider.
First - I've heard third party mailers will get blacklisted or blocked pretty quickly (check their reviews), so check that the IP address hasn't been blacklisted. You can contact outlook to do this (good luck), or send yourself an e-mail, find your ip in the header of your e-mail, and check a blacklist checker online somewhere.
Second - As part of USA's CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, you need to provide some sort of unsubscribe link as well to be in the good books.
Third - If you are using phpMailer or something along those lines, you'll need to remove anything that looks like this:
$mail->AddReplyTo("youremail#domain.com");
$mail->From = "youremail# domain.com";
Because that will get it marked as spam.
Fourth - If you end up trying to send your e-mails through your gmail instead, allow access to third party apps, then go here (https://accounts.google.com/b/0/DisplayUnlockCaptcha), it will show up in your hotmail just fine.
Be warned that if you test your hotmail too often with the same message, it'll get blocked again.
Hopefully this helps!
I'm using mailgun API for sending emails to the user accounts. I keep checking the mailgun log for checking the send statuses. My problem is everything is working fine when sending emails to gmail and yahoo. It is not working for hotmail. I have checked the junk folder in hotmail. I couldn't find the email. Here is the mailgun log for the delivered status to hotmail email account.
02/24/14 04:44 AM Delivered: decodedtool#sandboxunique.mailgun.org → vinodkumar.u93#outlook.com 'Welcome! Outlook Test'
Please help me to resolve this. Thanks in advance.
Although it seems as if it is delivered, in fact it was blocked by hotmail.
You should check your Bounce tab in mailgun but you probably won't find anything there too.
Take the following steps to try to narrow the causes:
Check the headers of a delivered email to see what mailgun server it was sent from.
Get this IP and search it for blacklisting. Especially in http://www.spamcannibal.org/
Lookup the same IP at SendScore.
Now, assuming that you don't have a dedicated IP from Mailgun, you'll notice that your IP might not be blacklisted but several other IPs from the same range might be. This is enough for hotmail to block your emails without giving you a reason.
Ask Mailgun to move you to a different IP and hope that a bad internet marketeer won't be using it too.
Hope this helps
Theodore
While the above answer does have a few helpful hints, it is inaccurate in a few respects.
First, Hotmail does not block emails based on a SpamCannibal listing. Hotmail's own IP's are listed with this blacklist as well as the IP's of every other major ESP. Second, the reason that the IP's are listed with SpamCannibal is that they are a blacklisting service that extorts payment in return for being delisted. Of course, once delisted, nothing stops SpamCannibal from placing the IP - or an entire subnet - back on the listing. Third, no reputable ESP uses SpamCannibal in their filtering decisions. Fourth, the only known service that relies on SpamCannibal is the obscure Linux spam filter Linux Magic, and that's only because that service does a lookup of the blacklists on MX Toolbox.
All in all, being listed on SpamCannibal will not affect email delivery, regardless of whatever email service you use. If you're being blocked by Hotmail, it could be due to your domain's reputation, your IP's reputation, or your email content (usually the last option). To see Hotmail's email policies, visit http://mail.live.com/mail/policies.aspx as well as this interesting discussion here http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/148/t/174524.aspx
I'm runnning an online store using Magento on a VPS I own with a dedicated IP address.
The problem I'm facing is that all emails are sent to SPAM.
I've read that shared servers / IPs can have problems and be flagged as SPAM but I believe my case is different.
When the email is sent, in the email header, I get something like: "Sent from example#mydomain.com through strange.server.name.com" like what happens for codewars.com emails (Codewars info#codewars.com through mail130.wdc02.mcdlv.net). Gmail sends the emails from my domain to SPAM but for codewars, to the inbox, so there is no problem in this.
What do I need to configure (in Magento and/or server) to solve this? I don't use any tool like cpanel...
We worked around this issue by first by configuring postfix correctly (take a look at your /etc/postfix files). The problem areas you should look for is the myhostname, myorigin and other local delivery maps if there are any.
Doing this, did work for us for a little bit (like a few weeks). However what gave us a more permanent solution was to move our outgoing mail (SMTP) via services like mailgun. There are tons of options including Google Apps for Business.
I have an app where i'm sending emails on certain events, but when i used my gmail account, i never receive the emails and they are not in my spam folder. When i send them to my work email, i receive them instantaneously.
What do i need to do to get the emails through to google?
I'm using the standard codeigniter email configs (which i think uses sendmail).
I'm using google apps for business and i have the MX records setup that google provides.
Do i need anything else? Also, i'm using subdomains in my app, does that affect what i may need to setup?
EDIT
When i use smtp like this example Sending email with gmail smtp with codeigniter email library, the page never seems to come back. It eventually just timesout.
The only plausible explanation for this behaviour is a SPF Check failure. SPF or Sender Policy Framework is a new technology that allows easy detection of spam. Gmail honours SPF unless you manually mark those emails as not spam. Regardless of this, if you have received emails on another address then they must have reached Gmail too. Check your spam thoroughly, as Gmail does not discard emails even on very high spam suspicion rather they end up in the Spam folder.
You can set up a SPF that allows your webserver to send emails which will result in Gmail accepting emails sent by your webserver as authentic. See http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-set-up-and-create-sender-policy-framework-spf-domain-dns-txt-record-with-wizard/ and a wizard from Microsoft.
You will probably see, that at some point in the future, you'll get them all appearing in Gmail. Google is most likely seeing if the sender is spam, and holding those messages. I've experienced that before setting up dev servers. I would suggest using a transactional email service, like Mandrill or SendGrid. You'll find you get a lot of info from those services that you forgo if you simply send an email through PHP.
The Filter Theory The other possibility is that the poster has a filter set up on their GMail account that is filtering out the emails.
I would make sure that you are sending the required header information as well. Have you tried registering a new gmail account and sending it to that user?
I recently did a mailing to a lot of hotmail addresses and now all the e-mails I send out (from PHP by the way) don't seem to reach their destination. So I figure hotmail banned my url...
Is there any way to get rid of this ban so my e-mails will reach the users again (like activation e-mails etc)?
If your server IP is blocked by Hotmail, try using an alternate SMTP to send the messages temporarily. Maybe Gmail's SMTP? if you have a Gmail account of course. Don't abuse it though.
I am almost 100% sure that Hotmail will remove your IP eventually from the blacklist. Most services run a 48-72 hours ban; if they don't receive any more requests from the banned IP, it will get removed from the list.
Is your domain really banned? Didn't those emails just end up in junk folder? If the former, then you'll really need to contact Hotmail. Either way, I recommend you to read this article to avoid ending up in junk folder or to get banned again in the future.
Are you using a mailing class like swiftmailer? I've found it solves most issues.