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Mail from a domain lands in spam

When to use: recipients report messages in Junk/Spam, or a receiver bounces with a policy message (550-5.7.26 … DMARC, 550 5.7.1 … SPF). Preconditions: admin access; access to the domain’s DNS.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”
  1. Domains → → DNS & routing → Verify now. Fix every row that is not verified, in this priority: A (mail host), MX, SPF, DKIM, then DMARC and the SRV records. mismatch shows what is actually published — usually an old SPF record, or a DKIM key truncated or mangled on paste (whitespace inside p= is ignored, so line breaks alone do not cause a mismatch).
  2. Dashboard → Server reputation: every blocklist ok (otherwise The server IP is on a blocklist); rDNS / HELO ok — if not, set the PTR for the IP to the mail hostname at your VPS provider and make sure the hostname’s A record points at the IP; TLS certificate valid. That last one comes from the worker’s hourly reputation job and is reported on the dashboard — mailctl doctor checks only the certificate the web front ends present on HTTPS, not the one on the mail ports, so it cannot confirm this row.
  3. Send a message from a mailbox in the domain to a fresh https://www.mail-tester.com/ address and read the report: it names the exact failing check (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, rDNS, blocklists, HTML/text ratio). Aim for 10/10 — anything the report blames on DNS goes back to step 1.
  4. If SPF/DKIM/DMARC all pass and mail still lands in spam: the IP is new or “cold”. Send low volumes to engaged recipients for the first weeks (the server has a built-in warm-up schedule — see Outbound rate limits), avoid bulk sends, and check Google Postmaster Tools / Microsoft SNDS for domain reputation.
  5. DMARC: once reports look clean, tighten the published policy from p=none to p=quarantine, later p=reject — the verifier accepts any policy.

Verification

Section titled “Verification”

mail-tester.com reports 10/10; a message to Gmail shows spf=pass dkim=pass dmarc=pass under Show original; no open alerts on the dashboard.

Rollback

Section titled “Rollback”

DNS changes only; revert a record at the DNS provider if a change made things worse (the previous value is in the alert/observed list of the verification result).