Emails from my website are getting marked as spam or not being received at all!?

Mail being sent either from the website itself or through a contact form can often can be marked as spam resulting in the mail either going straight to the spam folder or being caught by a spam filter before reaching the inbox.

You can help ensure the success of your mail delivery by setting up a couple authentication protocols for your domain.

Send using SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)

To configure SMTP for your website, install a WordPress SMTP plugin such as Easy WP SMTP or SendGrid.

Wondering which one is the best for you? Easy WP SMTP should be adequate for any personal blog or low traffic website, SendGrid is great for businesses who plan to manage email campaigns etc through their website.

Once you have installed the plugin, configure the plugin to send mail using SSL connection. If you are hosted by Serversaurus, you are able to find out what your mail configuration settings are by reading our guide on setting up your mail client, the manual configuration settings mentioned in the article will be the same settings to configure your SMTP plugin.

Note: You are able to configure SMTP to send using your Google, Yahoo, Outlook or any other external mail service however take into consideration that configuring SMTP to send from the server where your website is hosted will give you higher delivery success.

SPF Authentication (Sender Policy Framework)

An SPF record is a entry you can add to your DNS records which shows that the server you are sending mail from is permitted to send mail on behalf of your domain.

Setting up a SPF record will differ dependant on your setup, if you are unsure or would like help please write to us at support@serversaurus.com.au so we can help you identify which providers you will need to include in your SPF record.

Secure your contact form using Captcha

It is a common issue for contact forms on website to be taken advantage of by spammers/bots who will submit spam through the websites contact form.

Secure your contact form by installing a contact form plugin that includes Captcha. This will prevent bots from being able to able to access the contact form. Unfortunately it is not possible to entirely prevent spammers from taking advantage of the contact form on your website.

When a spammer sends junk/spam mail through a form, our outgoing mail filter will identify the spam and lock the sender address to prevent harm.

You will receive the below bounce back message if your account is locked:

SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: 451 Your account has been locked. Please contact your administrator.

If this has happened to your service, please contact us at support@serversaurus.com.au so we can identify the cause and remove the lock so your outgoing mail service continues to function as expected.