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I realized the truth of this this year, when I launched my own self-promotional website (just a portfolio site) and assiduously configured its email, which passes every single test on the range of spam-rating testers available.

Almost none of the mail gets through.

Now I am researching outsourcing the site's mail to one of the usual suspects: mxroute, FastMail, ProtonMail, Exchange, etc. Perfectly configured mail that no-one gets to read is worthless.

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How old is your domain? I have noticed that email providers are biased against new domains.

Yeah, domain reputation works more or less just like IP reputation for a lot of email providers. Holding onto the domain for a long time and sending some amount of email from it will help it get "known good" scores with the big providers. I would also recommend setting up DMARC reports because I've heard anecdotes (no evidence here!) that some providers give a positive bump to email from domains they can successfully return DMARC results to... and it'll at least make sure you know if you have an SPF/DKIM setup problem, especially if it's somehow a transient or subtle one (I've had this happen with config mistakes where not all outbound email was being handed to opendkim).

It takes a couple of years, at least, of sending spam-free mail at a rate of at least a dozen a day to establish a reputation. Well, I don't know - it might be worse than that. My domain started sending mail at tha kind of rate back in 2004; deliverability to gmail and especially hotmail was never something I'd bet my house on. Hotmail, in particular, would swallow mail and silently fail to deliver.

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