# Problems with Emails going to SPAM **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussion\ **Created:** [September 15, 2020, 2:44pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102 "2020-09-15T14:44:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![davidfinley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/davidfinley/32/3285_2.png) [@davidfinley](https://forum.mautic.org/u/davidfinley)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2020, 5:13am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/21 "2020-10-06T05:13:54Z")
It was my understanding that the Mautic feature for “email is valid” performed a test on the email to verify the domain has an MX record etc and basic formatting testing for the email address. Am I missing something. From the perspective of your thread here, I do understand email very well. What domain are you sending from via AWS? ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 6:27pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/22 "2020-10-13T18:27:21Z")
My domain is [saudeplena.org](http://saudeplena.org), at least this one is the most problematic one. There are a few other domains on the same Mautic account, but with lesser volume. I have a second mautic account with the domain abundanthealth.info, it sends from the same AWS account to a list of 1200 emails, and I have no problems at all with the email reputation. ---
**Author:** ![davidfinley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/davidfinley/32/3285_2.png) [@davidfinley](https://forum.mautic.org/u/davidfinley)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 8:16am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/23 "2020-10-14T08:16:08Z")
I can see that you have an SPF record that has no reference to SES / AWS. This will be part of the problem. ---
**Author:** ![joeyk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/joeyk/32/11164_2.png) [@joeyk](https://forum.mautic.org/u/joeyk)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 8:54am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/24 "2020-10-14T08:54:04Z")
This domain is a redirect right now. That is not good. The more hops you have in your domains, the worst it is. Mautic will make the first one if you use click tracking. Than you redirect again. No good. ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 11:14am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/25 "2020-10-14T11:14:32Z")
Yes, Amazon SES is not in the SPF record of [saudeplena.org](http://saudeplena.org). When I configured Amazon SES it requires a subdomain, so I configured it at [mail.saudeplena.org](http://mail.saudeplena.org). They asked me to put the following SPF record for [mail.saudeplena.org](http://mail.saudeplena.org): v=spf1 include:amazonses.com ~all Do I need to include this in the SPF of [saudeplena.org](http://saudeplena.org) as well? ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 11:16am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/26 "2020-10-14T11:16:21Z")
if you put in [https://www.saudeplena.org/](https://www.saudeplena.org/) there should be no redirect. ---
**Author:** ![joeyk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/joeyk/32/11164_2.png) [@joeyk](https://forum.mautic.org/u/joeyk)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 11:34am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/27 "2020-10-14T11:34:10Z")
I noticed, that many corona virus related websites have issues with inboxing. You might have the same issue. (Plz don’t ask why, I’m just sharing my observations.) ---
**Author:** ![davidfinley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/davidfinley/32/3285_2.png) [@davidfinley](https://forum.mautic.org/u/davidfinley)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 11:56am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/28 "2020-10-14T11:56:38Z")
> [@mneumann](#): > > [mail.saudeplena.org](http://mail.saudeplena.org) Are you messages coming from the @mail.saudeplena.org. or @saudeplena.org. ? Because if you are using the subdomain for configuration of SES, then you need to send from that subdomain. Or it will go to junk. ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 6:50pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/29 "2020-10-14T18:50:10Z")
Yes there are all kinds of issues with Corona. The keyword is blocked on Pinterest, and Google surely has its way of handling that too. I got my list with the Coronavirus Immunity Challenge. By the way, I did the same in English. Just in English I have 1200 contacts, and in Portuguese I got almost 8000 signups. Not sure if the list size influences. And after the challenge, I actually stopped talking much about corona, and focused on other health issues. So I hope they are not penalizing me for something of 4 months ago. I am just wondering, I was reading on some place that sloppy HTML can trigger SPAM filters. I used the blank template to start my email, but I have seen that they are not responsive on mobile. Fonts are quite small when I open emails on mobile phone. Could that influence somehow SPAM scores? ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 7:46pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/30 "2020-10-14T19:46:29Z")
The From email is [martin@saudeplena.org](mailto:martin@saudeplena.org). But I looked into the email source code, in the return path is something like this: Return-path: [010001751871b0fd-a15b950a-b2fe-4979-bda3-fbe17a4f56c6-000000@mail.saudeplena.org](mailto:010001751871b0fd-a15b950a-b2fe-4979-bda3-fbe17a4f56c6-000000@mail.saudeplena.org) So looks like it recognizes here [mail.saudeplena.org](http://mail.saudeplena.org) as the sending domain. And I did DMARC monitoring for a month, with thousands of records resolving correctly. I assume therefore that SPF and DKIM is working correctly. But if there is somebody more experienced than me, I would like to know whether I should add to the Amazon SES domain to the SPF of the main domain as well. ---
**Author:** ![davidfinley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/davidfinley/32/3285_2.png) [@davidfinley](https://forum.mautic.org/u/davidfinley)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 10:38pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/31 "2020-10-14T22:38:37Z")
Emails can have a from address, and a reply to address. Splitting these (having different ones) will increase the likelihood that your mail is identified as spam. This may be the root cause. Adding include:amazonses.com. to the other SPF will not hurt you, but it will also not likely fix this. Try testing to send via the [someone@mail.saudeplena.org](mailto:someone@mail.saudeplena.org) with that as the sending email and reply to email. Test if that is the cause. Remember that if you are testing to Gmail, they also rate on content, so it is hard to tell exactly why a message is gong to junk. Plus they have various kinds of junk and will grade content on things like tracking images that mautic use. So best to test to some location other than gmail. ---
**Author:** ![devsrealm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/devsrealm/32/3669_2.png) [@devsrealm](https://forum.mautic.org/u/devsrealm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 10:45pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/32 "2020-10-14T22:45:59Z")
This is a bit difficult to grasp, but here is the thing, SPF is used to specify which IP addresses and/or servers are allowed to send emails from a **particular domain**. Stressing it again, “it specifies which IP are allowed to send emails from a certain domain” For example, if you have the following SPF value: > “v=spf1 a mx ip4:709.33.44.22 ~all” This is saying all hosts listed in the MX records are allowed to send emails for your domain (any other domain is not allowed), and all other hosts are disallowed ip4:709.33.44.22 is the IP address of the mail server or domain that’s authorized to send an email for that domain. ~all - the “all” tag tells the receiving server how it should handle all messages sent from a domain, if it sees a domain in the header that’s not listed in the SPF record. The tilde (~) with the ‘a’ is a soft fail, this would mark a server that is not listed in the SPF as spam, you can use -a for a flat out rejection. > v=spf1 include:amazonses.com ~all In the case of amazon, you make sure are adding the SPF values in every domain you wanna send as, if you want to send as [foo.bar.com](http://foo.bar.com) you add the value in the [foo.bar.com](http://foo.bar.com) records. If you only wanna send with [bar.com](http://bar.com), you add the SPF value in the [bar.com](http://bar.com). If you added the value in [foo.bar.com](http://foo.bar.com), and you are sending it from [bar.com](http://bar.com), it would most likely end up in spam. _So, the TL;DR is SPF Records For Primary Domain doesn’t apply to subdomains and vice versa. you need to have separate SPF records for each subdomain you wish to send mail from._ and I agree with @davidfinley ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2020, 1:37pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/33 "2020-10-15T13:37:30Z")
I think I have a good understanding how SPF works. Just on the subdomains I was not completely clear. And does it depend on the from email address or the return path to determine which SPF record is used? Also do you say that with the soft fail the receiver may not send a fail in the DMARC report, but consider the email as SPAM? Because I have run the DMARC analysis for quite a while. Just checked, the last 2 weeks I have 6000 DMARC feedback records sent via Amazon SES that are 100% compliant on SPF and DKIM. I know the records are mainly from GMail and Yahoo, seems that Hotmail does not return any DMARC records. ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2020, 1:44pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/34 "2020-10-15T13:44:43Z")
OK, this is an interesting point. Just I have already that many contacts that have saved my email address [martin@saudeplena.org](mailto:martin@saudeplena.org). I wonder whether things are not going worse when I switch to a new email address. My favors with GMail for the moment have improved, but yes the thing about the tracking image I have seen already a warning in the Mautic settings. Anybody has experience whether tracking pixels and tracking redirects are really hurting SPAM rating in a significant way? It is something so widely used, so I am just wondering. At the moment I am concerned about my razor score that is consistently bad, and I have no success that far to fix it. ---
**Author:** ![davidfinley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/davidfinley/32/3285_2.png) [@davidfinley](https://forum.mautic.org/u/davidfinley)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2020, 10:46pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/35 "2020-10-15T22:46:33Z")
SPF is a delivery configuration, so it is looking at the domain or sub domain that the email is generated FROM. Nothing to do with return path. A soft fail will trigger as a soft fail to any software being used for monitoring inbound messages for spam. What happens after that is a matter for the mail spam filter administrator. Some systems will add a weighting to the message (variable and set by admins). A weighting addition to say for example some shitty content, and or a tracking image might be enough to trip it over the custom set trigger to put it in junk. Additionally some systems like [outlook.com](http://outlook.com) use AI and a bunch of black box stuff to look at spam. Who knows exactly how it is done, but definitely soft failing for SPF is undesirable. Remember too that the soft fail setting is just a suggestion that basically says… “Ok I have set up SPF but don’t really know what I am doing, so don’t block this if I screwed up the settings.” Technically soft fails are for testing, and hard fails should be set for SPF when used correctly and in conjunction with DKIM. There is a lot of advise around the net saying to set soft fails. These are usually from orgs that publish basic data on how to configure for their services. They really are not advise on how to configure and reliable email system. Kind of internet repetition. ---
**Author:** ![davidfinley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/davidfinley/32/3285_2.png) [@davidfinley](https://forum.mautic.org/u/davidfinley)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2020, 10:51pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/36 "2020-10-15T22:51:23Z")
> [@mneumann](#): > > razor score I have tested with the mautic tracking image and found that it was almost impossible to get gmail to put the content in “inbox” usually it was classified as “promotional”. But not Junk when correctly configured. Content was the tipping point to get it to “inbox” but it was unreliable at best. Send it once and you get a different result second time. Impossible to predict. By Razor score, are you talking about Razor2 Black List? I am a little confused to the reference? ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2020, 12:12am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/37 "2020-10-16T00:12:31Z")
Yes, SpamAssasin gives me 2 complains in relation to Razor2: 2.4 RAZOR2\_CF\_RANGE\_51\_100 Razor2 gives confidence level above 50% [cf: 100] 1.7 RAZOR2\_CHECK Listed in Razor2 ([http://razor.sf.net/](http://razor.sf.net/)) ---
**Author:** ![mneumann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/mneumann/32/2512_2.png) [@mneumann](https://forum.mautic.org/u/mneumann)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2020, 12:39pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/39 "2020-10-29T12:39:29Z")
I found this here yesterday? > **[Clickvio](https://www.getclickvio.com/onetime/sales)** The technology behind it is called MJML. Here the details: > **[MJML - The Responsive Email Framework](https://mjml.io/)** Basically it guarantees that the email templates are mobile responsive. I have seen that the templates I used in Mautic are not really mobile responsive. Are there other mautic templates that are able to resolve that problem? Or is it worthwhile to use this technology here? How much difference will it make to use well coded mobile responsive templates? ---
**Author:** ![steventhomas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/steventhomas/32/3883_2.png) [@steventhomas](https://forum.mautic.org/u/steventhomas)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 7:14pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/40 "2020-11-11T19:14:46Z")
Thank you, I also found the solution to this problem here! 👍 ---
**Author:** ![tonershop](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/tonershop/32/1530_2.png) [@tonershop](https://forum.mautic.org/u/tonershop)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102/41 "2020-11-23T20:37:24Z")
We use custom coded emails with tracking pixel in it and they go to gmails inbox all the time. [Previous page](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102.md?page=1) [Next page](https://forum.mautic.org/t/problems-with-emails-going-to-spam/16102.md?page=3)