Gmail stubbornly puts PVE backup status mails to spam

[Ivan Dimitrov]

Hi, as in the title, gmail is constantly putting the PVE backup status emails to spam. I have rule to apply label on this mails and it is applied, I have added the email of my server in my contacts, I marked every mail as "Not a SPAM", but it still continues.
The issue seems to be that I have a static public IP and there is no email server which replies to queries. Also my ISP gives me a generic hostname like host-<ip>.<isp name>.<country code> This hostname also doesn't match the hostname of the server. The mails are not encrypted.

I understand the issue is not with ProxMox per se, but do you have any suggestions how to avoid this problem? How can I make the emails from PVE look "legit"?
Thanks.

 

[janssensm]

My personal suggestion: Don't use gmail.
There are friendlier services (and more privacy respecting)

A bit more technical: you could analyse your messages by looking at their full message source, to find out why they are flagged as spam.
This will probably will give a hint if you have to adjust your settings or move to another provider.
If you use gmail as your service you login to their servers, so your public ip should not matter (you are just an email client, not a server)

 

[BobhWasatch]

I run my own email server. So I've had this discussion with GMail <g>. Basically, you have to do certain things to look "legit" in today's spam-heavy environment. This applies not to just GMail but also Outlook/Hotmail and other large providers. Sending from a dynamic ISP-assigned IP is one big red flag to them. But there are other things as well.

A big one is whether or not the mail has SPF and/or DKIM signatures, and if present are they correct. if not present or wrong you get a bump to the spam score. You also have to avoid being put on any blacklists and most dynamic IP's already are (see above).

The bottom line is that it is actually kind of hard to convince GMail if you aren't sending from a "real" mail server, i.e. an ISP or corporate mail server with all the proper spam fighting stuff in place. That is certainly do-able, I've managed it and I'm a dummy. But it took some work and my mail server is a VPS that is separate from my ISP's dynamic IP.

If your ISP offers email service it might be easier to bounce the mail through there than to get all the ducks in a row to make GMail (and other large providers) happy. Or sign up with a third-party email provider if you don't like your ISP for whatever reason.

You also might want to ask in the Proxmox Mail Gateway forums for more help.