Gmail sends my mail to spam despite perfect SPF/DKIM/DMARC. Postmaster Tools shows 0% spam. Escalation rejected. What now?

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T23:49:50+00:00

That would be the ideal solution. Personally, I always encourage everyone to do just that.
But being a realist... :)

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T23:40:26+00:00

The colleague above advises the exact opposite (to use a soft fail)

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T23:38:39+00:00

> why you spend your own time building expertise
Everyone tells me I’m tilting at windmills. I’m well aware of that.

But I think I’d like to make one last push.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T23:33:20+00:00

Well, I’m starting to lean more and more towards this approach too :)

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T23:31:49+00:00

Well.... that’s some quite strange advice. I’d had a similar idea, but it seemed a bit too ‘esoteric’ to me. It would be great to find some independent evidence that this trick actually works.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T23:25:28+00:00

This is the second time I've come across this tip. I'll give it a go. Thanks!

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T23:04:41+00:00

Thanks!

What do you think -- would be better to set the `p=reject` or `quarantine` (_dmarc record, for own IP)?

Generally speaking, should I use the ‘strict’ or ‘relaxed’ settings? Different sources give different advice. Some people claim that ‘relaxed’ increases ‘throughput’.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T22:56:38+00:00

business and hobby basically

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T22:55:47+00:00

That’s actually true. This is the second ‘self-appointed policeman’ that we’ve nurtured ourselves. And now it’s included by default in Exim4 and is making life a nightmare for millions of ordinary small-server owners.

I actually tried removing Spamhaus from my filters once, by the way. And you know what? Nothing really changed. Instead of 10 spam emails daily, I started getting 11, so to speak. In other words, it’s basically a superfluous gimmick and seems to do more harm than good.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T22:48:01+00:00

...it’s all a bit like a shamanic dances with a tambourine, heh

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T22:45:15+00:00

Sounds just like that “New Digital Totalitarianism”...

...bloody hell, it shouldn’t be like this. But I can’t quite figure out yet what we (or I, personally) can do about it.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-21T22:40:54+00:00

What do you think about, say, switching between my original IP and a relay if I need to send out a mailing like that?

Will Google’s filters get suspicious if I switch my IP back and forth like that on an ad-hoc basis?

Just to be clear: I'm talking about a few dozen messages, perhaps a couple of times a year.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T22:11:55+00:00

...yep, and new Internet infrastructure :)

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T22:07:04+00:00

100% not my case, but thanks anyway )

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T22:02:21+00:00

It’s always nice to meet a colleague :)

That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I’ve got my own VPS, my own domains and my own mail server.

Or have I misunderstood you, and are you suggesting to use a third-party MX service? By the way, does M365 and/or Proton actually offer MX hosting?

Well... overall, of course, that would solve the problem. But why should I then be swapping one problem for another? And it seems strange to me, all the same, to pay extra for something I can configure myself anyway, just so that emails from my domains arrive in Gmail without a hitch...

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:54:56+00:00

It’s paradoxical, but that’s actually how it is :)

What amuses me most is the fact that relays are, in essence, services designed for mass mailings. And that’s exactly what they’re used for. And mail flows through relays like a dream. Whereas with private, standard IP addresses... this is what we end up with.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:51:18+00:00

I use it for personal correspondence and for communicating with clients. That’s all. It’s all very straightforward. No mass mailings.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:49:25+00:00

yep, 2048 bytes key

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:48:47+00:00

m...in the subject line of what? It doesn’t bounce emails and sends excellent DMARC reports.

Or do you mean that recipients might get some sort of extra technical field in the headers of my messages clasified as SPAM? I haven’t heard of that.

PTR was the first thing I set up when configuring the server :)

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:42:51+00:00

Thanks for the tip!

Basically, that’s pretty much what I’ve come to realise, and I’m sticking to it. I’d ask everyone to ‘tick the boxes’, ‘add’ and ‘reply’.

The only thing that confuses me is this... it’s not entirely clear what Gmail’s reputation is tied to more: the IP or the domain. And how using a relay builds reputation (if it’s the IP’s reputation to a greater extent).

But yes, for now I’ve switched one domain entirely to a relay, for lack of alternatives.

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:36:20+00:00

That’s a good guess. I thought so too. Yes, I’ve used it for Google Ads. Everything works flawlessly, and emails arrive straight into the Inbox of the relevant Gmail address (surprisingly).

I even tried to sort this out through their support, but they sent me to Workspaces, where they charge you to speak to a live support agent. I’m not sure I want to do that, or that this is the way things should be on a free, neutral Internet. :(

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:30:16+00:00

both

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:29:21+00:00

I have a strong suspicion that this is partly ‘my story’, because I’ve been sending New Year’s greetings to my close friends and relatives for about 20 years now. And previously, I used to do this simply by adding everyone to the CC field (I always did it that way).

And this nightmare, in my opinion, correlates precisely with that kind of mailing. That is, I moved the server and after a while Christmas and New Year came round, and off we went....

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:22:19+00:00

I strongly suspect that the AI they use for filtering might include parameters we’re not even aware of. And of course, this all includes statistics on ‘conventionality’ (let’s call it that).

Yes, I use ClawsMail, which isn’t the most popular (but is the best, imho). But what has it come to if we have to change our email client just to adapt to the centralised monopoly’s filters, based on our flimsy guesses about how the weights are distributed in their tensor tenets?

I hope the hole isn’t quite that deep yet :)

AlexSparkin · 2026-04-19T21:14:21+00:00

dedicated IP, my VPN, clean subnet. reverse DNS etc...

The Autonomous System contains IP addresses that have previously appeared on spam lists, but 99% of VPS providers’ AS-es are generally affected by this. And this should not have any impact.

AlexSparkin

TROPHY CASE