Check Your PTR and SPF Records
A quick note on mail flow issues i have seen pop up in the past few months.
Spam appliances and servers are becoming more and more aggressive. Im starting to see legit mail being blocked due to this. I have also noticed that this problem is not black and white. Some servers will block all your messages and others will only block some messages due to each message individual spam score. What I have found is that this may be due to my clients internet host records having errors and omissions in them. Some sites may not have a PTR record at all. As spam appliances and services start to check the SPF on incoming mail, servers with improper records will have these mail flow issues.
Over the corse of many years my client's internet host records are changed and updated. Often there is no maintenance on them. Sometimes these records are forgotten altogether. To make sure your outgoing mail is not blocked, check to make sure your PTR record is proper (there should only be one PTR record) and your SPF record is proper. Normally you have to contact your ISP for these changes but i know some of my clients can control this direct. I also recommend to go over your domains and make sure they are all proper and following a naming standard. Basically you may want to check on all your records and domains to make sure everything is proper. You may have mail being blocked you don't know about.
For proper domain naming I suggest:
mail.yourdomain. for your mail server
smtp.yourdoamin. for your spam box and MX records. (incoming with the option of outgoing mail)
You can have as many domains point to you these and your other servers, but these standards are a best practice for mail flow.
As always, if there is anything you need, drop me an email.
Last updated Thu, Apr 11, 2013 10:39 AM
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