We've made a recent switch from a third-party service to something in-house to address the demand for better spam protection. With the observed benefit of meeting a better spam-free email environment, this change also affords us quicker turnarounds for new features, stability, closer alignment with our acceptable use policy, and better outbound IP protection from external blacklists.
Our development team is hard at work implementing a new feature to the new spam solution to intelligently adjust spam policies based on everyday user interaction with our hostedemail product.
Troubleshooting guide
| Ensure the user's domain's MX records are properly configured |
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Make sure the user is not rejecting spam but instead letting it pass to the spam folder. |
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| Ensure that the user is not blocking the sender's IP/domain. |
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| Check whether the sender Y's DMARC, DKIM, and SPF policy match what's found in user X's mail headers. |
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Customers cannot send emails to another user
It's important that we distinguish the difference between an SMTP-reject and a bounce-reject.
An SMTP-reject is when the user email client or webmail client produces a notification stating that this message cannot be sent. This means that we are not allowing the message to be sent.
A bounce-reject is when the user sends the email and later discovers a message in their inbox claiming the message was not successfully delivered. This means that the recipient email server rejected the message.
Manually marking an email as spam
Marking an email as spam reports various elements of the email like the sender, email headers, email contents, etc. to the email server. The spam filter will incorporate these elements and filter out future emails that are similar.
Reporting legitimate marketing emails as spam will be ineffective since they are considered a trusted sender. Unsubscribing from their mailing list will prevent future marketing emails.
Note: Marking an email as not spam will teach the spam filter which kinds of emails are considered safe.
- Mark the email as Spam.
- Press Accept to confirm the selected email as spam.
Important: If you confirm to share your data with our Spam partner, the pop-up will go away and you will not be prompted to make a selection going forward. Should you choose to decline, when you mark an email as Spam, the pop-up will appear each time.
SMTP reject troubleshooting
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Validate User X's status and sending capabilities |
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| Ask your user to save a draft of the message and review it yourself. |
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Bounceback reject troubleshooting
Ask the user for a copy of their auto-generated undelivered mail bounce message. The recipient email server, at its discretion, may or may not provide a reason why the message was rejected. If a reason is provided, attempt to self-serve and correct the problem.
Common reasons for rejection include:
- The recipient does not exist
- The recipient's mailbox is full
- The sender did not pass SPF, DKIM, DMARC policy check
- Sender's IP is blacklisted
- For this scenario, advise our support team. Depending on the blacklist, we may be able to have our IP delisted.
Additional troubleshooting
If you are still struggling to determine the reason for message delivery failure, email us at help@exacthosting.com.
For every troubleshooting case scenario, please provide:
- The name of your account
- The recipient's email address
- The sender's email address
- The date, timestamp, and timezone of the failure