email whitelist suggestions

[Matthew Seaman]

On 12/06/2019 16:28, David Banning wrote:
> I changed the IP address for my server recently having changed my ISP, and now mail from my server is getting continuously filtered into peoples spam folders.
>   
> I check my ip address on mxtoolbox.com fairly regularly - my IP never appears on a blacklist.
> 
> So now I'm thinking whitelist - but I don't have the money to lay out for this type of thing - at least not a large amount.
> 
> Anyone have a suggestion as to how to resolve my problem?
> 

I assume you have

   - ensured your mailserver address is both forward and reverse
     resolvable in the DNS.  Without a valid PTR record you aren't
     going to have much fun trying to do SMTP

   - Have updated SPF and DMARC records in the DNS to account for the
     new IP number

   - Have waited long enough for all the DNS TTLs to expire and the
     changed data to populate caches.

Whitelisting is unlikely to help you very much.  You'll find that all 
the usual methods to improve deliverability will give you the best results.

It's also pretty important that your mail server name doesn't look like 
its a typical dynamically assigned residential address.  Those are 
marked down by receiving systems on the basis that most e-mail 
originating from such locations is the result of virus infected hardware.

In principle you might run afoul of not having established a good 
reputation for your new IP.  In practice, if you're running a low volume 
system just for personal e-mail, reputation scoring is pretty unlikely 
have any effect on you.  It's worth checking though.  It is always 
possible that the previous user of your new IP number sent oodles of 
spam from it and has tarnished its reputation for a long time to come.

	Cheers,

	Matthew