Sending mail through a Gmail address via a PHPmailer SMTP script gets flagged as spam

June 6, 2015 5.3k views
PHP Email DigitalOcean Ubuntu
parrella20
By:
parrella20

Hi y'all,

I have a Web form I'm building for some staff members of my online community to use to notify members that their account has been suspended and for how long. No big deal, using html to POST to a PHPmailer script with all of Google's SMTP settings (TLS mode) and the server Gmail account information filled in. It sends fine, but any account other than the backup account for the address (my personal email) receives it in the spam folder.

Now, I can understand if it was getting flagged as spam coming directly from my server, but it's getting flagged after my server is authenticated through Google and sends it through the Gmail address.

Any idea why this is happening and what I can do to fix it? Is it because my IP (or the DO IP range) was flagged for spam from some other user?? Let me know if you need to see any of the scripts or my hosts file or anything, but everything is pretty much default.

Thanks!

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4 Answers
Aprexer June 6, 2015

When you're sending things, could you state the content in the email. Some words trigger gmail spam filter.

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  • parrella20 June 6, 2015

    This is the content (straight from $body in my file):

    "Attention account holder,<br \>This is a notice informing you that your ******** account has been suspended. Please review the following information.<br \><br \>Account Name: $email<br \>Character Name: $charname<br \>Server: $servername<br \>Ban Reason: $banreason<br \>Ban Type: $bantype<br \>Ban End Date: $date $time Server Time<br \>Banning staff member: $gmname<br \><br \>If you would like to appeal your ban because you feel that you were incorrectly punished, please follow the instructions in the following thread: (link here, removed)<br \><br \>DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.";

    I had a tiny.cc link that I removed and it appears to be working on gmail accounts now, but my friend who has outlook/hotmail/etc is still getting it sent to spam.

eldin June 6, 2015

Look if reverse DNS work http://remote.12dt.com/, if not rename your Droplet to e.g. example.com
To do this go to Droplet,Settings,Rename

Every mail without reverse DNS is SPAM for Google

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  • parrella20 June 6, 2015

    It says:
    Results
    (unable to resolve 45.55.************)

    I have multiple domains on this server, does it matter which one I rename it to?

parrella20 June 6, 2015
[deleted]
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eldin June 6, 2015

@parrella20 it doesn't matter. But I would prefer to use your main domain.

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