Problem sending email to hotmail

[lordg]

For some odd reason, I can no longer send emails to a hotmail address. I can still send mail to gmail and yahoo, although the mail always ends up in the yahoo junk folder.

Anyone else experiencing the same thing?

[Jeff]

Hi,

I think I may have worked with you on this issue previously, but if not:

1. Do you have a reverse DNS entry for your primary interface?
If not, please fill out the following form: https://my.myriadnetwork.com/?x=form&fid=vps/reverse

2. Are you getting any bounce/error messages at any time? If so, what do they say?

3. Have you contacted Hotmail or gmail to find out why this happens?
If so, what did they say?

[lordg]

Hi,

I think I may have worked with you on this issue previously, but if not:

1. Do you have a reverse DNS entry for your primary interface?
If not, please fill out the following form: https://my.myriadnetwork.com/?x=form&fid=vps/reverse

2. Are you getting any bounce/error messages at any time? If so, what do they say?

3. Have you contacted Hotmail or gmail to find out why this happens?
If so, what did they say?


This is the first time I had this problem.

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is a reverse DNS entry for my primary interface?

I'm not getting error messages.

I haven't contacted Hotmail yet. Maybe I should...

[Jeff]

Ah ok - there was another customer who had reported this recently as well. They had mentioned they could be contacting Hotmail to find out why this happens, but I have not heard any updates yet.

A reverse DNS entry for your primary interface means that the first IP address on your VDS (which is where all email is sent from) resolves to the hostname of your VDS.

Here is an example of a forward DNS lookup:


$ host google.com
google.com has address 64.233.167.99


And here is an example of a reverse DNS lookup:


$ host 64.233.167.99
99.167.233.64.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer py-in-f99.google.com.


In the reverse lookup example - which is a DNS lookup by IP address (vice the hostname) - the IP address 64.233.167.99 resolves to a hostname. This is because Google has a "PTR" record (also called an "RDNS" or "reverse DNS" record) in DNS for that IP address.

Sometimes hosts will not accept email, or may possibly flag email as junk/spam if the sending host does not have this PTR record. We can add such records for our VDS customers at any time.

To determine your hostname, please run this command:

/bin/hostname

To determine the IP address of your primary interface, please run this command:

/sbin/ifconfig venet0:0 | grep inet | cut -d : -f 3 | awk '{print $1}'

You would then enter those into the form here: https://my.myriadnetwork.com/?x=form&fid=vps/reverse
and we will add the PTR record for you, which may or may not resolve this issue.

If it does not, my recommendation would be to contact Hotmail and gmail and ask them why your emails are being delivered to the junk/spam folder.
Our IP addresses are clean, and have belonged to Myriad Network for quite some time. I cannot imagine why this would be happening, but the folks at Hotmail and gmail should have a reasonable explanation. We will do whatever we can to work with them to prevent this from happening if our assistance is needed.

[Jeff]

Hi lordg,

Did adding the PTR record for you resolve this issue? If not, we may have some more information for you that could help. We just recently had another customer battling the Hotmail issue, and I think they've got it all figured out. All of the email sent from their VDS was getting delivered to the user's junk/spam box, and they've now got it set up where most email is actually delivered to the user's inbox without issue.

We're going to let their changes propagate for the next 24-48 hours or so, at which time the customer is going to update us on the status.

Essentially it comes down to 3 things:

1. Having the PTR record for the primary interface,

2. Having an SPF record for the domain,

3. Ensuring the email address that the email is being sent from actually exists.
In other words, you wouldn't want to send from "no-reply@domain.com" unless that account actually existed on your server. Sometimes folks will use no-reply type email addresses when email is only meant to ever be sent, but not responded to. Thus there would be no need to actually create the "no-reply@domain.com" email address. However, you would want to make sure that whatever email address you're sending from is a valid one.

We'll be glad to assist with anything mentioned above, or anything else you'd like. Thanks!

[lordg]

Adding the PTR record itself did not solve the problem. I had to set up the SPF record which finally allow me to send emails to Hotmail, however all the emails are being delivered to the spam box.

I'm not sure why, and yes, the emails I'm sending from are valid.

[rhinkle395]

Has anyone found anything that resolves the issue with sending emails to HotMail? I am able to send from the main hosting domain on my VDS and the emails are received, however, if I email from one of the other hosted domains the emails are not received.

The PTR records has been set up and I also have SPF configured on the domain I am having an issue with.

Any ideas or does anyone know the reason HotMail has an issue with emails sent from such accounts?