Is your mailserver blacklisted?
Have you ever had your mail server blacklisted? It’s not a fun experience.
I’ve never been blacklisted before, that I know of, so I was shocked that SORBS was showing that I was blacklisted. When I got down to the final few pages of SORBS it turns out that I was blacklisted because my domain IP was within a range of 255 addresses, and someone in that range had been blacklisted!
Is there a solution? Well, for me, it means that it’s time to move hosts once again. One bad apple on your host can cause big problems with email delivery, and it’s not something you want to risk. Below you will find my favorite places I used to check my black listing, and the hosts that I recommend.
To check and see if you are blacklisted, you first want to find the IP address of your mailserver. Using a reverse DNS lookup can usually work, but only if you have your reverse lookup pointing back to your server (which you really need to do, if you are delivering email from that server). More info on how to do a reverse lookup on your IP address/domain is below.
To check your blacklisting status, have a look at these sites (in the order that I recommend their use):
- http://www.e-filtrate.com (a paid service, but well worth it, it includes the ability to check your email contents against spam content, let’s you re-phrase your content, and check for bounce backs. I’ve used this service for years and am quite happy with it, yes it is my affiliate link).
- http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx (a free service that does something others do not, it will check your domain’s IP in a range of IP addresses, just in case). I found this useful recently when it seems my IP address was within a range of a recent spammer!
- http://www.blacklistalert.org (a free service that also does something very useful, not provided by others services, it makes sure that your Forward DNS listing matches your Reverse DNS, this makes sure that your Forward-DNS and your Reverse-DNS are consistent).
You can check your reverse lookup IP (make sure your site’s IP addresses does a reverse lookup to your domain name) at 3 places I recommend:
- http://www.mxtoolbox.com/ (a free lookup, but also shows you the DNS lookup (the A record for your domain), the NS lookup (the nameserver definition for your server, the MX lookup, the mail server records for your domain, and the WHOIS lookup, the domain registrar records for your domain).
- http://www.robtex.com/ip/ (make sure that you click the link to your IP on the second page of this site to find all of the details on your Mailserver IP address.
- http://dnstools.com/ (a more ‘techie’ oriented approach, but this one will show you everything about your IP address/domain, free).
The hosts that I like to use, and recommend for email hosting include:
http://www.jtlnet.com (dedicated servers for as low as $49.00/month, and yes I’ve used one for over 1 year and they work just fine, if you are mailing larger volumes though you may want to go for more horsepower).
http://www.servint.com (one of the best in the industry that has been around a long time, their VPS hosting can serve you just fine, as well as their dedicated hosting)
If you need help integrating and setting up your mail server, please see my BGS Web Design company website and contact me there (Brett Simpson), I can provide you full setup/installation of mail server hosting/software.
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