Is this problem unique to Gmail? Do owners of self-hosted mail servers also have problems sending mail to Yahoo, Outlook, AOL, iCloud?
Do these providers have a better mechanism for getting yourself un-blocked?
Do these providers have a better mechanism for getting yourself un-blocked?
I desperately wish Gmail would offer some sort of registration program that would let me attest to my identity and thereby give my server the benefit of the doubt. I'd happily cough up my private medical records if that meant my family's emails reached Gmail's inboxes most of the time.
* Enforce a DMARC policy instead of explicitly disabling it.
* Enforce a strict SPF policy instead of ~all.
* Send over IPv6. Usually stricter rules are applied and not-up-to-snuff emails are rejected at the SMTP level.
* Your provider hosts lots of spammers for their size. Consider switching.
* Enable MTA-STS.
The first two I'd consider obvious glaring mistakes. The next two are less important, but would help. MTA-STS is a nice-to-have.
I can't analyse your DKIM setup, since I don't know your selector. Feel free to send me a sample email if interested.
No arguments about my provider. Any tips on how to select a better one? I'm thinking someone who adds some friction to unblocking outbound port 25, e.g. Vultr, might be better.
Properly configured mailing lists shouldn't modify contents of emails causing DKIM to fail.
I personally use Linode and would recommend them. But basically any tier 1/2 provider, i.e. too big/popular to block, will do. However, I would avoid DigitalOcean per my experience due to them completely blocking SMTP on IPv6 in addition to badly implemented IPv6 support and seemingly subpar support.