When a user registers on my site they get a simple email with a link to a page that validates their account. Everything works fine with gmail but Hotmail decides that its junk mail. Has anybody any idea on what basis hotmail makes this decision? My email headers look like From: webmaster@xxxx.com\r\n Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Is there any way that i can check whether its possibly my host thats blacklisted?
Hotmail blacklists lots of mail even if it isn't from a blacklisted host unfortunately. DNSStuff has a Spam Database Lookup tool that you may find helpful - you can put in the IP of your host to see if it is blacklisted.
you can configure your settings in hotmail so that your email won't be placed in your bulk anymore the next time around.
Yeah, but that wont help his users very much.. I've had this same problem.. several times.. It seems that Hotmail, in their quest against spam has a very itchy 'filter' finger. Make sure your SPF and reverse DnS are setup right - also, check the Hotmail guidelines here: http://postmaster.msn.com/ If you still can't get mail into the INBOX, you can open a trouble-case on http://postmaster.msn.com/. I had to do that and discoverd that my host had some spammers, so Hotmail blacklisted the entire IP block.. Once I proved that I had a dedicated server and was responsible for all the email on MY IP, they got me fixed up...
Thanks very much for all your replies. I spoke with my host and they recon that if the mail is making it as far as junk mail then its not blacklisted. I was unaware of the whole SPF thing until you guys mentioned it so i'll give that a shot next. I'll also have a read of those hotmail guidelines. Cheers everyone
almost forgot this one: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/technologies/senderid/overview.mspx Microsoft uses "senderID", which is a modified SPF..
I got this issue solved and thought it might be useful to share what worked for me in case anybody else has the same issue. Firstly I looked into the spf record thing and my host told me that they already had one set up so i left it as it was. So I went back to looking at the mail headers in case there was something that hotmail looking for something in particular. After modifying my headers to look like the following it fixed the issue. Return-Path: X-Sender: From: Webmaster <webmaster@mydomain.com> Reply-To: Webmaster <webmaster@mydomain.com> X-MailerHP 5.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 i'm so glad its working now as it was a real problem for user signups.
how were your headers before the change? I ask because even though my Hotmail and AOL issues are resolved, GMail still Junk's all my stuff..
Tearabite, before the change they were just From: \r\n Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 MIME-Version: 1.0 i might have a play around with the working headers and see if i can get a clear answer as to what exactly works for each of the big email providers.