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FWIW I run a service that sends a decent amount of email to GMail users. While it was a bit slow to get started (messages being marked as spam) once I had sent
by kevincox 4y ago
FWIW I run a service that sends a decent amount of email to GMail users. While it was a bit slow to get started (messages being marked as spam) once I had sent for a month or two and had a few users that marked the messages as not-spam I don't appear to have any problems. I say this sending from a Digital Ocean IP address that occasionally changes. It appears that Google highly values domain reputation and that once I have got onto their good list I am doing OK.
Disclaimers: I make sure to do everything else right. I have SPF and DKIM and my DMARC policy is to reject 100%. I also don't use IPv6 (DO Kube doesn't really support IPv6 well).
I have found other major providers to be much worse. Microsoft seems to rely almost entirely on IP reputation and marks everything as spam, even accounts that have marked messages as "not spam" many, many times. Apple outright blocks the IP range.
- AshamedCaptain 4y agoMy experience is that all of SPF, DKIM and DMARC are almost completely ignored by Gmail -- one day I simply stopped DKIM and DMARC and Google keep happily accepting emails (and to this day I still send emails without). In fact they will happily accept emails even when the SPF check didn't pass and the policy clearly says strict reject aka -all . While on the other hand I fully agree with TFA: I have _never_ been able to send an email to Gmail from a IPv6 address and have it not end up as spam, not even to accounts where I already whitelisted previous attempts. I don't think it's a reputation issue, since my IPv4 addresses likely have much worse reputation. It's as if they just handicap all IPv6 addresses.
- kevincox 4y agoGMail definitely respects my DMARC reject policy. But IDK how missing one of SPF or DKIM affect its spam decision. But with DMARC reject and both missing or invalid it will bounce the message every time I have seen.
- tomatocracy 4y agoAutomatic mail forwarding without altering the From address will cause DMARC alignment for SPF to break. This is a common enough legitimate setup that most providers seem to effectively downgrade the DMARC policy applied when they see this (usually reject becomes quarantine, quarantine becomes ignore).
- marcosdumay 4y ago> sends a decent amount of email to GMail users That's why your experience does not apply to the GP.
- andix 4y agoMy experience with digital ocean was, that their IP subnets have a horrible reputation for email. Google is easy, but try to get unblocked from Microsoft (office 365 or hotmail). In the end I switched to another provider.
- tzs 4y agoThe only thing I found that seemed to help with Microsoft is for the recipient to find the mail in the spam box and reply to it.
- kevincox 4y agoDigitalOcean definitely does have a terrible reputation (for good reason). IIUC they used to let anyone send mail and I don't think their current process of requesting unblocking is too strong of a prevention against spamr either. However ideally this would only hurt "first contact" for a domain assuming it is authenticated. In practice some providers will barely consider domain reputation even after a long history.
- andix 4y agoThere was a study somewhere once that concluded that digital ocean is the biggest single source of spam emails. And that the are responsible for around >20% of spam emails worldwide. I noticed that some providers completely block digital ocean IPs on their firewalls. So no way to get unblocked.