Mail goes to spam when the receiving provider cannot confirm it is really from you, or does not trust where it came from. Fix authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) first; it solves most cases.
1. Check authentication
Send a message to a mailbox you control on a large provider, open it, and view the original headers. Find the Authentication-Results line:
spf=pass dkim=pass dmarc=passAny fail, softfail or none is the first thing to fix. See setting up SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
2. Website mail sent from the web server
Contact forms and WordPress notifications often send directly from the web server, which is not listed in your SPF record and does not sign with DKIM. Send them through your real mail provider instead: configure the site to use SMTP with a mailbox’s login, or use a transactional email service, and add that service to SPF and DKIM.
3. The sending server’s reputation
If you run your own mail server, check that:
- Its IP address has a reverse DNS (PTR) record matching its hostname. Your host sets this.
- The IP is not on public blocklists. Several free websites check many lists at once.
- It is not on a residential or dynamic address range, which providers distrust.
4. The message itself
- Send from a real address people can reply to, not
noreply@everywhere. - Avoid link shorteners and mismatched links.
- Include a plain-text version alongside HTML.
- For newsletters, use confirmed opt-in and a working unsubscribe link.
5. Ask recipients to mark it as not spam
Providers learn from recipients. A few people moving your messages to the inbox, or adding you to contacts, improves future delivery.
Something out of date? Software changes. If a step no longer works, tell us and we will check it and update the page.