If you sent me an email in the last year and it bounced with a message saying that it was rejected for having a high probability of SPAM, I apologize. It is hard to chase down a problem when I don’t know it is happening. The good news is the problem is now finally solved.
As much as I love and recommend my web host Siteground, they do something very stupid by default on their accounts. They enable a service called SpamExperts at the domain level. SpamExperts isn’t just rejecting email from sketchy accounts, but also from people I correspond with on a regular basis if it reads a link in the email it doesn’t like. One friend sent me an email with a link to a well-respected language learning site that was rejected. Another friend sent me a link to a health article about some recent research that was also rejected.
Photo by Sean MacEntee
All the email that is sent to me from this domain and the other domains I have is forwarded to GMail. GMail does an admirable job of SPAM filtering. And if they get something wrong, I can always go into the SPAM folder and recover the message. I can also teach GMail what isn’t a SPAM message and create custom filter rules. I can’t do that with SpamExperts, because the message is bounced.
I have referred several readers to Siteground. I stand by that recommendation, but you will need to take the following steps to shut off SpamExperts.
Disable the filtering by going to cPanel – MX Entry – select your domain from the dropdown at the top of the page – Disable SpamExperts.
Just be sure to disable SpamExperts, because they are far from experts when it comes to detecting SPAM.
2016 UPDATE: Siteground no longer lets you disable Spam Experts from the cPanel. You now need to open a support ticket to have it disabled. Trust me you want it disabled. SpamExperts is terrible.