Knowledgebase
My outgoing email is being blocked for being on a spam blacklist.

Your email is bouncing back with the subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender.

You may see a message such as:

  • Host blocked using Spamhaus.
  • Mail rejected due to being listed on RBL.
  • Mail from [IP] was not delivered.

This means someone's account on the server you are using was sending spam, and the shared server IP is now blocked from sending mail. This is a temporary block and it is likely we are already working on stopping the spam and requesting delisting.

This process can take a few days, unfortunately, as each of these services has their own timeline and criteria for delisting.

Why does this keep happening?

Spam is almost always sent from a site that has been hacked in order to send spam. This is why it's important to keep WordPress updated, as well as any other software, plugins, or themes you use. Unfortunately, this is a constant battle any web host faces nowadays.

Each server can have multiple IPs, but there is a main "shared" IP for each server for anyone not using a dedicated IP. Because so many websites share that IP, if any of these websites gets hacked to send spam, it affects that shared IP and anyone sending mail who is not using a dedicated IP.

How can I prevent myself from being affected by this? 

There are two main ways: 

  • Purchase a dedicated IP address through our customer portal for $2/month. After purchasing, make sure your outgoing mail server for your email client is set to your domain name, and not the server address.
  • Use a different email provider, like Gmail, that is not on a shared hosting provider.

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