My email doesn't arrive or ends up in spam: here's how to figure it out

Does an email you send not arrive, or does it end up in the recipient's spam? With this step-by-step plan you can usually find the cause yourself. Go through the steps in this order.

1. Check whether the mail was sent and what came back

• Did you get an error message back? Such a bounce comes from Mail Delivery System or MAILER-DAEMON. It almost always states why the mail didn't arrive. A code starting with a 5, such as 550 5.1.1, means it was definitively rejected. A code starting with a 4 is temporary: our server will try again later. You can read what the most common messages mean in Mail delivery failed: how to read the error message and what the codes mean.
• No error message? Look up the mail using Email Tracing in DirectAdmin. You'll see whether it was delivered, deferred or failed, and what the receiving server replied. See Checking whether an email has arrived with Email Tracing.

Has the mail been delivered according to Email Tracing? Then it has arrived at the recipient's server. Ask the recipient to check their spam folder or Junk Email folder.

2. Check SPF, DKIM and DMARC

With these three records in your DNS you show that the mail really comes from your domain. If one is missing, your mail is more likely to end up in spam or be rejected. Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo in particular are strict about this.

1. Open the product page of your package in My WebOké and check the Set up email card. Are MX, A (mail), SPF, DKIM and DMARC marked as correct? If not, you'll see exactly which value to enter.
2. Also check the Domain / Email health card on the domain page. There you can fix a number of issues immediately with a button.

Don't have an account handy? At www.weboke.nl/en/email-check and www.weboke.nl/en/domain-health you can check any domain for free.

3. Is the mail server on a blacklist?

If the error message contains something like blocked using, listed at, Spamhaus or RBL, then an IP address is on a blacklist. Which IP address it is is usually stated in the error message itself. That's the address of the server that sent your mail.

Note: the Blacklist Status in the email check checks the IP address of the domain's first MX. That's the server that receives mail for that domain, not necessarily the server that sends your mail. So a green Blacklist Status doesn't guarantee your sending server is clean. For that, look at the IP address in the error message, or in the header lines of a sent email.

• Is it a WebOké IP address? We monitor our servers and request removal ourselves. If you notice it first, create a ticket with the full error message.
• Is it the IP address of your own internet connection? Then your mail program isn't sending through our server. Set our mail server as the outgoing server, with login, on port 465 or 587.

4. Mail from your website or contact form

Doesn't mail from your website arrive? Often the form uses the visitor's address as the sender. That address doesn't belong to your domain, and then the mail gets rejected or marked as spam.

• Set a sender from your own domain in the form, such as info@yourdomain.nl, and put the visitor's address in Reply-To.
• Have your website send mail via SMTP with a real mailbox, instead of the PHP function mail(). In WordPress you do this with an SMTP plugin. See How do I get the correct sender in PHP with mail()?
• Is your mail hosted elsewhere, such as Microsoft 365? Then read Sending mail via PHP doesn't work, the MX records point elsewhere.

5. Other causes

• A lot of mail at once. There's a default sending limit of 300 emails per day per package; for some packages this is lower. Send newsletters via a newsletter service. See Limit for sending mail.
• The content looks like spam. Just a large image, many or shortened links, or words like FREE in capital letters score badly.
• You're forwarding to Gmail or Outlook.com. Forwarded mail is often seen as spam there. It's better to retrieve your mail with IMAP.
• You just changed something in your DNS. A change isn't always visible everywhere immediately. Test again after an hour.
• Check your emails from WebOké. If something is structurally going wrong with mail from your package, we'll send you an email about it, with what you can do.

Can't figure it out?

Create a ticket via the Support Centre. Include the full error message, including the line with the code, and state the sender address, the recipient's address and the time of sending. Then we can look up the mail directly.

See also in the DirectAdmin manual: My mail ends up in the recipient's spam, Sending refused: blacklists and limits and Sending or receiving doesn't work: how to fix it.

Detailed explanation with screenshots: Mail doesn't arrive: checking it yourself and Domain and email health: checking and fixing in the WebOké manual.