Emails go to SPAM since connecting to SendGrid

Need help Plugins
1

Hi,

Since connecting to SendGrid, all of my emails from my Bubble site go into the site users’ spam folders. I saw on one forum post someone said that after a couple of weeks this automatically stopped, but I’m wondering if it really will. I’ve tried the authentication thing on SendGrid with my domain host. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks.

2

Do you mean you followed through with the auth, as seen on How to set up domain authentication | Twilio?

Strange that you’re still having issues if you did complete the DKIM and SPF auth.

I like to use Mail Tester https://www.mail-tester.com to see how the email sender fairs in the eyes of spam protection systems and blacklists (gives you a breakdown of what could be going wrong). Simply setup a workflow in your app to send an email and enter the email address as seen on the Mail Tester website.

On one of my apps I upgraded my SendGrid account to enable a private IP address. It’s very possible that the IP SendGrid assigned your account is using a shared IP that someone else has recently gotten blacklisted, or the IP on your authorized domain/host is blacklisted.

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3

The likely issue is that your emails do not have a suppression (unsubscribe) mechanism.

Within SendGrid, try adding in an Unsubscribe function to your email template (SendGrid has a block for this) and have it point to a link on your website that triggers a subscription settings update.

A bit of related info here: https://sendgrid.com/docs/ui/sending-email/index-suppressions/

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4

Thanks. I don’t know about the DKIM and SPF acronyms but I followed the domain authentication steps. I used mail-tester, thanks - looks like a bunch of things are an issue! None of which I know how to resolve… Blasklisting isn’t one of the things that came up.

5

I saw others recommend this in another thread, but I don’t know how to edit the unsubscribe block. I can add it to the template but I don’t see where it’s editable! I feel like it should more intuitive than this! Are you able to tell me how to edit it?

6

Hi @dan1,

I’ve got this email going to spam problem as well but i’ve set everything up through sendgrid correctly as far as I can tell. Please see the screen shots below:

Sendgrid%20-%20domainverification
Sendgrid%20-%20domainverification932×552 26.1 KB

Sendgrid%20-%20bubbleemail
Sendgrid%20-%20bubbleemail344×586 16.9 KB

Sendgrid%20-%20received%20email
Sendgrid%20-%20received%20email1292×994 97 KB

Do you have any insights into what might be going wrong? Would appreciate any help. Thanks!

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7

Hi. I have exactly the same problem. In spite of successful verification of the sender auth by Sendgrid, my emails are still going to spam folder. Have you already managed to solve it?

8

Unfortunately not. When I talk to sendgrid support they suggest that it is because of a blacklisted IP which is a common issue for users of sendgrid’s free service. As a work around I’ve resorted to using Zapier with my existing hosted email service to make sure that the important emails get through. Crappy thing is i’m not sure how to do this for the sign-up confirmation email so i’ve just included a line saying “please check your spam folder if there appears to be a delay in receiving it”.

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9

This happens to me too. SendGrid team told me a lower plan (Essentials Plan) will give us a pool IP. If anyone in the list of the whole pool IP reports a spam, it will affect all users within the pool. It takes a few months to bring back a good reputation.

They suggest to buy a Pro plan ($79.95) to get a dedicated IP. This will solve the problem.

10

+1 completely agree with everyone’s viewpoint here. Authentication and Reputation are always the top problems. I m just summarising everything with my past experience with deliverability.

Top 3 reasons why your Sendgrid emails might be going to spam :hot_face::

  1. The low email reputation of the Sending IP address: Whether you’re on a dedicated IP address plan or sending emails via the default shared IP address network, low reputation problem can come with both. To debug this problem further, you need to download your email and get the sending IP address from the email header. Once, you got the IP address, pass it through the GradeMyEmail Blocklist Checker to get the list of places where the IP is listed.
  2. Standard Email authentication failure: Misconfiguration with any of the standard email authentication frameworks like SPF, DKIM and DMARC, can result in your emails been classified as spam. Multiple SPF, too many DNS lookups, newline character in DKIM, DMARC alignment issue are few of the most common reasons for the failure of email authentication frameworks.
  3. The Low email reputation of the Sending Domain: Most of the email ISP’s analyses your past email sending and engagement pattern to calculate the reputation of your sending domain. It’s a common myth among marketers and developers that using a new sending domain might help them to get a better reputation and inboxing. However, the fact is each new domain carries a neutral to negative reputation because of no sending history. On the flip side, if you’re using your existing business domain to send emails, then you should first consider checking the blocklist status of your domain with popular tools like GradeMyEmail, MultiRBL or MXToolBox.
  4. The Low Reputation of click-tracking domains: Similar to IP and domain reputation, the reputation of domains used in links/URL within your email is another factor which can get your emails to land in spam. Example; you might have used http://yourdomain.com/contactus.html within your email, but if you’re using the default click tracking feature of Sendgrid, then Sendgrid will mask these links to something like this: http://ct.sndgrid.net/wf/click?upn=sdfsdfsfsd. You can open any email received from Sendgrid in your spam, and look for the link URLs and check the reputation of those on GradeMyEmail or MultiRBL. Like in the above example, you should be checking the reputation of ct.sndgrid.net and yourdomain.com.
  5. Non-HTTPS links within your emails: While there is no specific restriction in the core SMTP protocol on the use of HTTP or HTTPS, but in recent past ISPs has started giving preference to secure HTTPS links within the emails. In the case of URL redirection, please make sure the landing and the source URLs are on HTTPS. Redirecting from an HTTP to HTTPS URL may get your emails flagged as suspicious/spam- especially in Gmail.

You can send a test email from your Sendgrid account to GradeMyEmail Email Tester to get a detailed analysis of the potential problems which is causing your Sendgrid emails to go in spam.

Apart from the above reasons, the content of the email can also trigger spam, but that should be worrying once the above checks are pass.

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11

Thank you for the suggestions. These are great checkpoints. That said, if on switching to another email provider, the same emails with the same content get sent perfectly, then the problem clearly is with SendGrid. In my case, everything (email content, links, sending domain) was exactly the same, I just switched to PostMark, and not even a single mail has been blocked.

12

God I’ve done everything and anything to get my mail delivery up with Sendgrid, but it’s not working at all. Everything goes into spam and all Outlook, Hotmail, AOL, Microsoft owned servers has blocked the IP address of the Sendgrid server sending my mail; thus, it’s being blocked.

Contacted Sendgrid, the only solutions they gave was 1) Upgrade to pro plan, then get your own dedicated IP or 2) Wait. Horrible options, don’t got an extra $90 to use lol. They also have such freaking slow customer support…

So I created a post on the forum a few days ago asking for alternatives to Sendgrid: Replacement for Sendgrid @Bubbleboy made the recommendation to check out Postmark. And I have to say, so far their mail delivery is great, support is great. The only pain is migrating from Sendgrid to Postmark.

13

Hi!

Is the pain involved with having to re-build the flows that send the emails? … Or … ?

14

Yup, exactly that

15

I see thanks. And best of luck with the re-build. (it is indeed painful to have to do rework …)

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16

Thanks :slight_smile:

17

Cheers. Does getting the SG pro edition always sort this problem out?

It is expensive at 90 dollar a month

18

You’d have to get your own dedicated IP to solve the issue or go with another email provider

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19

Going with PostMark or some other provider is a much cheaper alternative. We moved from SendGrid to PostMark (using the free rich PostMark plugin) and never looked back

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20

Same here :blush: