This. So many people don't take the 10 minutes to configure DMARC, DKIM and SPF. I've been hosting my own domains since 1996 and I haven't ever had a problem with any of them sending mail to any of the big hosters. If your DMARC passes and you actually have a policy set to REJECT you're almost guaranteed to not have a problem as long as your domain isn't a few days old. The first thing I do for any new domain I plan to use is get all of those items configured ASAP and start sending mail into Google and O365 to test and thereby end up in their domain analysis.
Given all the horror stories I've moved all but one domain off of Gmail (mainly to preserve my grandfathered G-Suite. I don't use `@ gmail dot com` for anything other than Google services. And if you are using GMail back it up! MailArchiva [0] is free for less than 10 mailboxes and works well. In this regard at least you still have access to your mail and can possibly prove something if those emails contain any identifying information (hopefully not, but you never know what will help).
If your email is that important to you then don't run it for free. Pay for someone to host it - I've been more than happy with Fastmail for many years and also use paid for ProtonMail accounts with custom domains.
At the end of the day if you don't control the domain and don't pay for the service I don't feel like I can trust the provider to do the right thing or expect any level of support. Bring email back from the monopolized "free" tier!
> So many people don't take the 10 minutes to configure DMARC, DKIM and SPF.
Having just done this recently, it's more than 10 minutes, especially if it's your first time. But yes, everyone should be doing it, as well as doing their best to get off of blacklists[0]. Still doesn't stop incompetents like MS mail admins (so, @hotmail.com, @msn.com, @live.com and @outlook.com) from keeping their own internal blocklists, that you can't get off of, no matter how many times you fill out their form[1].
> So many people don't take the 10 minutes to configure DMARC, DKIM and SPF.
Another commentator here mentioned this and the hint was worth gold. In the meantime, I changed/adjusted this in the interface of my website provider (I am also using his SMTP server) and solved an actual problem of this kind immediately (maybe also explaining the shortcomings in the past).
In general, I would admit that it is not a compelling excuse not to know something. The problem is, that I was not even aware of these keywords and after looking them up, I seemingly solved things quickly and - hopefully - permanently. People just don't constantly check all things. Especially with long term reliable services with rare, subtle and not obvious (in this case without any hint) errors.
> So many people don't take the 10 minutes to configure DMARC, DKIM and SPF.
Considering I've actually never heard of any of those things despite multiple people telling me to set up a mail server. I'm not sure why you're surprised.
Given all the horror stories I've moved all but one domain off of Gmail (mainly to preserve my grandfathered G-Suite. I don't use `@ gmail dot com` for anything other than Google services. And if you are using GMail back it up! MailArchiva [0] is free for less than 10 mailboxes and works well. In this regard at least you still have access to your mail and can possibly prove something if those emails contain any identifying information (hopefully not, but you never know what will help).
If your email is that important to you then don't run it for free. Pay for someone to host it - I've been more than happy with Fastmail for many years and also use paid for ProtonMail accounts with custom domains.
At the end of the day if you don't control the domain and don't pay for the service I don't feel like I can trust the provider to do the right thing or expect any level of support. Bring email back from the monopolized "free" tier!
[0] https://mailarchiva.com/