[strzzz]

I'm surprised that someone is having problem sending email to gmail from their own smtp server. I am doing this for years with tens of thousands emails delivered every week (sometimes daily), yet had no issues. Here are few advises:

- ensure your external IP reputation is good. Check blacklists.

- configure correct dns/reverse dns (PTR) records.

- setup SPF (maybe DKIM with DMARC but I'm not using these)

- do not spam.

Thats it.

[sneak]

If only it were that easy! This usually isn’t enough anymore.

First off, you don’t really have control over your external IP reputation, unless you have your own IP space, which most people don’t.

You’re at the mercy of your colo/hosting, really. You get whatever IP they give you, baggage included. I think the reputation is also subnet-based, not IP based, so your potential to be included in someone else’s blast radius is increased.

Also, even with a clean IP, the steps you outlined are not sufficient to send significant numbers of non-spam messages and not get spamboxed. Gmail seems to be mostly okay with erring on the side of false positives.

Source: been running my own email servers for 25 years

[buboard]

then how do the email services , who post massive amounts of emails and many of them are spam manage to get through? do they have some kind of deliverability deals with gmail?

(btw my mails also seem to get through and i haven't even set up DKIM)

[marcosdumay]

Short story, yes, they do.

Plenty of people report that there is a minimum amount of email you have to send so that you can contact gmail and ask them to unlock you. They, of course have a set of rules you have to follow.

But you won't get them to receive your email if you just send some 3 messages a week.