Forwarding email best practices in cPanel
We're having non-stop issues with forwarded mail on our cPanel server, customers complaining furiously that their emails don't seem to be getting through.
Many of these users have an xxxx@theirdomain.com email address which is set up as a forwarder to their AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail account. Sporadically, some legitimate messages don't arrive in their inbox.
Our current theory is that AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail are essentially "shooting the messenger" - these people receive quite a bit of spam which our server is diligently forwarding to their @aol.com, @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com email addresses. Because this mail is coming from our server, our messages get silently discarded after a while. The messages do not end up in the user's Spam folder, they get discarded entirely.
Is there anything we can do about this?
Many of these users have an xxxx@theirdomain.com email address which is set up as a forwarder to their AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail account. Sporadically, some legitimate messages don't arrive in their inbox.
Our current theory is that AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail are essentially "shooting the messenger" - these people receive quite a bit of spam which our server is diligently forwarding to their @aol.com, @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com email addresses. Because this mail is coming from our server, our messages get silently discarded after a while. The messages do not end up in the user's Spam folder, they get discarded entirely.
Is there anything we can do about this?
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If your clients have SPF records, then you will need to make sure that the IPs or IP range of your servers are ALSO listed in their SPF records.
If they don't have SPF records then they probably need to get them, some of the free email providers like AOL are getting picky on that stuff.
You may also want to check blacklists for each of your client domains, as well as, all the IPs of your SMTP servers.
If they don't have SPF records then they probably need to get them, some of the free email providers like AOL are getting picky on that stuff.
You may also want to check blacklists for each of your client domains, as well as, all the IPs of your SMTP servers.
Sadly, it's not free.
You'll have some work at first cause it will generate a few false positives, but if you send a daily report and you train your users to read it they can quickly release the legitimate email from quarantine.
HTH,
Dan