Deliverability · Intermediate · an afternoon
How to stop email going to spam — Reputation Attaches to the Name, Not to the Mailbox
You can change mailbox, mail client and hosting provider without moving the thing filters are actually scoring, because what they score is the domain.
The short answer
Mail lands in spam because of what receiving servers know about the name it was sent from, and the name carries that history across mailboxes, clients and hosts. So the fix is never a new mailbox: it is finishing the authentication published in the domain's zone, separating the sending streams, and then rebuilding reputation slowly. Allow an afternoon at intermediate level.
Start with a mail-testing service, which scores SPF, DKIM, DMARC, reverse DNS and content in one pass and converts a vague complaint into a list. Most long-running cases end at authentication somebody never finished — five minutes to diagnose and roughly twenty to repair.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
Intermediate
Assumed knowledge
5
Stages end to end
Free
Support cost
Proven
Verification
Written for whoever holds the name rather than for whoever runs the server. Registry, registrar, DNS host and mail host are kept apart throughout, because most of the confusion in this subject comes from treating the four as one thing.
Nothing on this page is a one-way door. Where a change carries a clock with it — a cache timer, a registry lock, a renewal date — the page says so before you act rather than afterwards.
Reputation belongs to the name
Every large filter keeps a view of your domain: how much it sends, how steadily, how many people report it, how much of its mail authenticates. None of that is attached to a mailbox, a hosting account or a mail client, which is why changing any of the three achieves nothing on its own.
It is a strange thing to own and an easy one to forget. The name is the asset receiving servers are scoring, and every decision about how mail leaves it — which platform, which subdomain, what volume — is a decision about that asset.
Get a verdict before you form an opinion
Send one message to a mail-testing service. It returns SPF, DKIM, DMARC, reverse DNS and a content score in a single pass, which turns 'our email goes to spam' into a list of specific failures with names attached.
Do this before changing anything. The commonest outcome by a wide margin is that authentication was never finished — an SPF record voided by a duplicate, a DKIM selector published in a zone that is no longer authoritative — and no amount of rewriting subject lines addresses that.
A second-hand name arrives with somebody else's history
Names get dropped, re-registered and resold constantly. A domain bought at auction, or picked up the week after it expired, may have spent its previous life sending exactly the sort of mail filters remember. You inherit that alongside the registration.
Check the name before you assume the fault is yours: look at what is published about it, look at its history in the archives, and expect a longer warm-up than a brand-new registration would need. Where the history is genuinely bad, a different name is a cheaper repair than a year of patient sending.
Keep the streams apart, and preferably on separate names
Everyday correspondence and bulk campaigns are judged together if they leave under the same name. A newsletter that annoys people drags your invoices down with it, and forcing campaign volume through hosting SMTP poisons the reputation both kinds of mail depend on.
The standard separation is a dedicated subdomain for bulk — news.yourdomain, say — sent through a proper email service, with its own DKIM selector and its own place in your DMARC reports. A separate registered name goes further still, at the cost of a second reputation to build.
What content can and cannot rescue. Link shorteners, single-image bodies, bought lists and overselling subject lines will tip a borderline message the wrong way. Content is a real input, and it is the last one to matter: it only comes into play once the technical layer underneath is clean.
Warm up in the meantime. Steady, modest volume to people who genuinely open the mail, and each large provider's postmaster tools to tell you exactly how they currently rate the name. Recipient behaviour is the one signal no bulk sender can manufacture.
The account these records were published on
Guides written against a hypothetical registrar age badly. These were written at the same zone editor, client area and deliverability screen your own account opens on.
Support is a person at any hour, and the remit runs to the awkward practical questions: a stuck transfer, a record that will not resolve, a bounce nobody can account for.
- Written against the account you will actually open
- Organised by the name, not by the server
- Anything with a clock on it called out up front
- Help at any hour, mid-walkthrough included
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
The parts the account already handles
Certificates, daily copies and application installs look after themselves, so the page only covers what is genuinely yours to decide.
Registry, registrar, host — kept apart
Each term is defined where it first appears, or linked to the jargon buster. Nothing here uses the four words as though they meant one thing.
Honest about the size of it
Rebuilding a name's sending reputation is intermediate-level work — allow an afternoon, with the stages the account already handles marked as such.
The silent failure, named first
The mistake this task actually produces is described before step one, which is how an afternoon stays an afternoon.
The way back, printed beside the way in
Anything carrying a clock or a lock is marked, together with exactly how to reverse it.
Checked at the panel, not imagined
Every instruction was carried out on the platform we run, against a name delegated to our own nameservers. No 'your provider may differ' hedging.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Send one message to a mail-testing service and read the whole score
It grades SPF, DKIM, DMARC, reverse DNS and content in a single pass. That turns a vague complaint into a checklist of named failures, which is the difference between repairing something and guessing at it.
- 2
Finish the authentication trio in the delegated zone
SPF, DKIM and DMARC, all passing and all aligned with your domain, published where the nameservers actually answer. Half-finished authentication scores the same as none, and it is the commonest single cause.
- 3
Find out what the name did before you held it
For a domain bought second-hand, at auction or shortly after it dropped, the previous owner's sending is part of what you acquired. Look into its history and plan for a slower start than a fresh registration would need.
- 4
Move bulk sending onto its own subdomain and its own service
Campaigns through a dedicated email platform on news.yourdomain or similar, everyday mail through hosting. Each gets its own DKIM selector, and a bad campaign stops taking your invoices down with it.
- 5
Warm up slowly, then watch the postmaster tools
Modest, steady volume to people who genuinely open it. Each big provider publishes postmaster tools showing how it currently rates the name, which is the only feedback that reflects the decision being made about you.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer plans
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- The first year of the name included when you order annually
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old certificate lapses
- Softaculous bundled, for one-click application installs
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- A renewal figure identical to the one you registered at
- cPanel, the panel most of the industry already standardised on
- WordPress and 400+ other applications in one click
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
I bought this domain second-hand. Can its old reputation follow it?
It can, and it frequently does. Filters remember domains, not owners, so a name that was used for bulk mail in a previous life carries that history into your hands along with the registration. Give it a longer, slower warm-up than a new name would need, and treat a genuinely poor history as a reason to choose a different name rather than a problem to be argued with.
Should marketing mail go out on a subdomain?
Usually, yes. A dedicated sending subdomain gives campaigns their own DKIM selector and their own line in the DMARC reports, so a bad campaign damages the subdomain's standing rather than the name your invoices go out under. The parent domain's policy still covers it by default, so it costs you one record and no extra registration.
What is the uptime commitment, and what happens in a month that misses it?
99.9%, watched around the clock. Where a month falls below that through a fault on our side, our terms entitle you to a pro-rated credit — ask and we apply it. Calling it a target rather than a contractual SLA is deliberate rather than evasive, and hardware and network faults usually surface through monitoring before the first customer notices.
Does a hosting plan include mail on my own name?
Yes. Every hosting plan comes with mailboxes at the name you hold, webmail, IMAP, POP and SMTP, and spam filtering enabled from the start. Standalone email hosting exists too, for a name whose website lives elsewhere.
Keep reading
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Publish on a name you own, structured so the effort keeps compounding — beginner, about an afternoon.
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