Anyware Web Design and Marketing

Why Your Email is Being Blocked

(and how to receive email to your domain name so it's never blocked)

Clients sometimes ask us, "why would my email setup stop working now after working fine for years - can't you just get it working again?"

Unfortunately, the answer is no. And this issue is so important that I felt the need to explain it with diagrams.

Your Online Brand

Your domain name is your brand online and when sending and receiving emails you want your customers to see your domain name (e.g. info@anyware.co.nz) not your mail providers (e.g. anyware@gmail.com).

If you have an email address with any provider (gmail.com, outlook.com, Xtra etc) and your domain name is not connected to your email address the simplest way to acheive this is to set up an email forward on your domain name so that all email is forwarded to your actual email address.

Email forwarding

For example, info@anyware.co.nz is forwarded to anyware@gmail.com. Your customers don't even know you have a gmail address because all they see is info@anyware.co.nz.

Before spammers came along this worked perfectly and everything was rainbows and unicorns.

The Problem with Forwarding Email

Email sending with forward

Mail providers are always looking for ways to block spam and they (especially outlook.com) have started blocking servers that forward spam, even though the server doing the forwarding is not the villain.

To understand why, have a look at the following diagram. This is what happens when somebody sends you an email that gets forwarded:

1. A customer clicks send in their email program.

2. The users email program looks up the MX (mail exchange) record in your domain name to discover the name of the server to send the email to.

3. The users email program sends the email to your "forwarding" server (usually the web server that hosts your website or the server that hosts your domain name).

4. Your forwarding server forwards your email to the server that provides your email service (gmail.com or outlook.com for example).

5. You open your email program and read your email.

The problem is between steps 3 and 4 (especially when outlook.com is the receiving mail server). If a spam email is forwarded from your forwarding server to your email provider, your email provider may put a black mark against your forwarding server. If enough spam is forwarded from your forwarding server to your email provider they may start to block or penalise your forwarding server.

This would not normally be a problem if yours were the only emails being forwarded from that server but they are not. There could be dozens or hundreds of customers whose emails are being forwarded and every spam sent to any of those customers could influence your email provider to block your forwarding server as a spammer.

The Solution

Email sending without forwardingIf we eliminate email forwarding, we eliminate the possibility that your emails will be blocked because somebody else is getting too much spam.

This means setting up the MX records for your domain name so they point directly to your mail service. The following (simpler) diagram shows what happens when somebody sends you an email:

1. A user clicks send in their email program.

2. The users email program looks up the MX (mail exchange) record in your domain name to discover the name of the server to send the email to.

3. The users email program sends the email directly to your email service (gmail.com or outlook.com for example).

5. You open your email program and read your email.

Now when your email provider blocks the server that sent the email, they are blocking the original sender. Your email system has one less moving part and we are back to rainbows and unicorns.

Email Provider Options

The 2 most popular free email providers are gmail.com and outlook.com. Unfortunately neither of them allow you to connect a domain name to your email account. You must upgrade to their paid services to get that feature.

The paid versions of both services (GSuite and Office365) both allow you to connect a domain name to your email account, as do most other paid services.
If you currently use outlook.com or (free) gmail.com and you want your domain name connected to your email, we recommend upgrading to the paid service (which has all sorts of other benefits too).

Is Email Forwarding Still An Option?

Yes it is. If you really want that free outlook.com or gmail.com account and you accept the risk that some of your emails (such as new customer enquries) will disappear into a black hole then we can set up an email forward for you. But we don't recommend it.

Is There A Free Service That Does Not Require A Forward?

Almost. You could add a mailbox via your domain name provider for around $60/year. Because the mailbox and domain name are provided by the same company there is no forwarding involved.
The down side is that the features in these mailboxes are rather limited compared to what you get even with a free gmail.com or outlook.com account. You can't sync across multiple devices and your mailbox can get full if you don't manage it well and this results in bounced (lost) emails.

For a monthly fee of around $10, GSuite or Office365 will make all these problems vanish.

Need Help?

If you have questions or would like us to connect your domain name to your email system for you then give us a call. We're always happy to help.

 

 

 

 

 

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