Emails I send are periodically being misfiled by recipients as spam

[Misha]

Hello!

I wonder if anyone can help with a problem:

In the past few weeks, I've been told by correspondents a handful of times that emails I've sent them have wound up in their spam folders.

I've had the same email setup for several years, and (I think) never had this problem before. (I'm not sure if this recent mini-spate of false positives is just a coincidence, or represents a new problem. But it seems to have happened a few times...)

I wonder if anyone might have advice on why this might be happening, and/or any advice on how to fix it

My setup is this:

• I send emails through the smtp server at fastmail.
• My "from" address is at a domain (web.net) which I do not own or control.

I know I could probably fix this problem more easily if I used a "from" address that was at fastmail, or at a domain that I control. But it's very much my preference to keep using the address I've been using for many years.

Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas:

• Any reason why this problem might have started to happen recently after many years of (apparently) not happening?
• Any suggestions for things I can do to help minimize this risk of this happening with future emails?

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated!

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by Misha

Hello!

I wonder if anyone can help with a problem:

In the past few weeks, I've been told by correspondents a handful of times that emails I've sent them have wound up in their spam folders.

I've had the same email setup for several years, and (I think) never had this problem before. (I'm not sure if this recent mini-spate of false positives is just a coincidence, or represents a new problem. But it seems to have happened a few times...)

I wonder if anyone might have advice on why this might be happening, and/or any advice on how to fix it

My setup is this:

• I send emails through the smtp server at fastmail.
• My "from" address is at a domain (web.net) which I do not own or control.

I know I could probably fix this problem more easily if I used a "from" address that was at fastmail, or at a domain that I control. But it's very much my preference to keep using the address I've been using for many years.

Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas:

• Any reason why this problem might have started to happen recently after many years of (apparently) not happening?
• Any suggestions for things I can do to help minimize this risk of this happening with future emails?

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated!

Perhaps, this:will fit your needs:

1. Define an alias in FM that is similar to the web.net address you use (perhaps <samename>@allmail.net: choose the FM domain you ike). Use this as your "from" address for emails. This should resolve the spam issue which is probably caused by using a different SMTP server than is customary for web.net.
2. Use a "reply to" address with your web.net email address as in the past.

Your correspondent will probably not notice the difference.

As an alternative, I recently discovered that a Personality in FM can specify use of an external SMTP server. So, you could send through the SMTP server that is customary for web.net and resolve the issue that way.

[Misha]

Thanks for the reply, BritTim!

I looked into this matter some more, and discovered that a few months ago, the folks at web.net had changed their SPF records in a way that made my emails (and those of anyone with a web.net address using a non-web.net SMTP server) more likley to be tagged a spam. I talked to them about it and, to my surprise and delight, they changed the SPF record that very same day.

(For anyone comeing to this thread later looking for useful into: The way I ended up troubleshooting the problem was by using the very excellent tool at http://www.mail-tester.com/ that analyzes emails for spamminess. It spotted the problem right away!)

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by Misha

they changed the SPF record that very same day.

That is great service! I shall file that snippet of information away in case I have a reason to consider using them in the future. Do you know the rough size of their user base?

[Misha]

Originally Posted by BritTim

That is great service! I shall file that snippet of information away in case I have a reason to consider using them in the future. Do you know the rough size of their user base?

Yeah. I was kind of amazed they fixed it that fast.

I don't know the size of their userbase, but I think they are a pretty small place compared to something like fastmail. Their main business is building drupal sites for nonprofits and social enterprises. They email addresses are a sort side offering I think:
http://web.net/our-services/webnet-email
I use them just because I has an association with the organization going back to the mid-to-late-90's, and have liked having that same address for so long....