Relatively Clean DigitalOcean IP?

Help with Setup/Upgrade
1

I know there are a couple of older closed discussions related to this issue, but neither of them seemed to concretely answer this question…

Has anyone set up mailinabox on a DO IP that does NOT result in outgoing mail getting flagged as spam (especially with Gmail)? Which location are you using? I’d like to use DO for hosting, but despite having everything seemingly set up perfectly (everything checked off in admin panel and send/receive both work), my mail always ends up marked as spam when received by a Gmail address.

I figure if others have been using DO without this problem, I can just repeatedly destroy and re-create droplets in a specific location until I get an IP that’s known to be clean. Otherwise I guess I need a provider more suited for mail servers…

EDIT: Ah I was running 0.12c and not latest – updating now and will test again…

EDIT2: Nope. Running 0.13b, admin panel all checks out, and I’m still having mail appear in Gmail Spam folders.

EDIT3: Still broken – worked for 2-3 people and another person received my mail as spam. I might try to fill out https://support.google.com/mail/contact/msgdelivery as suggested by ThisIsXO.

2

I use a vultr server and running 0.13b, too and having same problems when maiiling to gmail or gapps email addresses. That’s really anoying! (needing to advise the receiver to visit his spam folder at gmail webmail panel to set my sent email from MiaB email address to be confirmed manually as not spam. Righ after this receiver address will have no more problems with my MiaB email address… But this additional step must be solved better early than late. Hope this helps to push it!

3

That’s what I’ve been doing, but that’s not acceptable as a long-term solution if you have to initiate contact with anyone using the MiaB email. Google isn’t helpful in this regard past repeating the same suggestion, but I would imagine there are people running MiaB on DO/Vultr who don’t have this problem.

In a previous thread I saw a reference to https://cleantalk.org/blacklists/AS62567 for DO (and https://cleantalk.org/blacklists/AS20473 for Vultr) suggesting that 50-60% of their IPs are blacklisted in some way, but I was hoping someone could point me towards a specific DO location that they know has some clean IPs so I can re-create my droplet a few times in hopes of getting assigned one. Past that I’m at a loss.

4

I haven’t had that problem as of yet. I run mine in Amsterdam.

Maybe try adding your IP to some whitelists, like dnswl.org

Or try contacting DO and see if they are able to help in any way, like giving you an IP after checking it.

5

Hmm I’ll look into that. I opened a DO ticket to ask if they can do anything too. I guess I can try relocating my box to Amsterdam if they can’t help me…

EDIT: DO couldn’t do much and suggested trying to move the droplet to a different location. So I’ll move it to Amsterdam to see if I can get a good IP, but other than trying to get Google to whitelist it, I don’t see a solution.

<removed solved message – seems to still be broken>

1 Like
6

I’m glad you got solve it!.. Following your guidelines I’ll try follow same way as you but a new Vultr one (different server location). I’ll post here final result at my side, too. Thanks for feedback.

7

Do you think the problem is that spammers have gone through lots of different Droplet IPs and gotten them all individually banned? Or that Gmail has had enough of spam from DO Droplets and they have preemptively blocked any IP range that they know is associated with DO?

I only ask because the answer might suggest different approaches to take to try to get a “clean” IP.

8

I believe it’s the former, unless a particular range is heavily abused and can be isolated for separate blacklisting.

9

I’ve been using DO for mine for months and the IP is fine, I’ve also spun up other droplets and never had issues with any of those IPs either. I guess it must be luck of the draw, I’ve also tried different regions with each of the installs I’ve done, haven’t had a single blacklisted IP.

By the way you can get your IP unblacklisted with gmail by using this form.

10

I guess I’ll take a look at that form.

For everyone’s reference – another gmail recipient had my mail marked as spam today (on the new Amsterdam IP). What’s bizarre is it DID work for 2-3 people before this one was marked as spam.

Back to the drawing board!

11

You can check if your IP is blacklisted, by going to http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx. Hope this link can help you.

12

I used both mxtoolbox and mail-tester, but everything passes with flying colors. I’ve been busy but I might troubleshoot again this weekend…

13

Hi, I also have a digital ocean server. When I first set the server up, it seemed to work fine with gmail. However, I have now noticed some mail is getting marked as spam by gmail. It is relatively hard to test, as the classification seems to vary with different mail-in-a-box and gmail accounts.

My box passes all the tests except I am unable to set a DNSSEC DS record, as my registrar currently does not support this. I also sometimes get a notification that the box’s reverse DNS is currently [Not Set], but this usually resolves itself in a few minutes. Other people have also reported this problem with Digital Ocean.

The relevant part of the email header (from an email marked as spam by gmail) also suggests the box was configured correctly:

Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of test@domain.com designates 123.123.123.123 as permitted sender) client-ip=123.123.123.123;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=pass (google.com: domain of test@domain.com designates 123.123.123.123 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=test@domain.com;
dkim=pass header.i=@domain.com;
dmarc=pass (p=QUARANTINE dis=NONE) header.from=domain.com

I was wondering if you had any success resolving this problem. Did you contact gmail, and if so what did you say?

14

Nope, been super busy – it’s on my todo list… But yes, it is a notoriously difficult problem to diagnose since it seems to be Gmail-specific. I do use DNSSEC (verified multiple times that it’s configured correctly).

The next step might just be dealing with that Gmail whitelisting form someone posted a few posts back.

15

Hi @advancedBASIC I got a new DO TOR1 droplet located at Canada then provided IP is a canadian one (note DO officially launched TOR1 datacenter one week ago then we could understand they never used canadian IP’s before).

  • I’m running this new DO-TOR1 MiaB server during last 48h. and reported GMail & GAPPS spam folder filtering didn’t happens again yet (hope will never happen again, that’s really a nightmare). Hope this helps enough to you too!

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