Exact Hosting Email Deliverability Best Practices

Whether you are sending or receiving mail, a few good habits go a long way toward keeping your messages out of the spam folder. This article walks through the technical and content-side practices that most affect deliverability for Exact Hosting email customers.

About email deliverability

Deliverability is the rate at which the messages you send actually reach the recipient's inbox, not the spam folder, and not rejected outright. It depends on a mix of factors: authentication records in your DNS, the content of your messages, the reputation of your sending IP and domain, and how recipients react to your mail.

Authenticate your domain with SPF and DKIM

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) are DNS records that prove a message really came from your domain. Mailbox providers check them on every incoming message and treat authenticated mail far more favorably than unauthenticated mail.

If Exact Hosting is your email provider, the standard SPF record is:

v=spf1 include:spf.exacthosting.com mx ~all

Your DKIM record is generated for your domain and must also be added to your DNS. See Setting Up SPF Records for Exact Hosting Email for full instructions, and contact Support if you need help generating or testing your DKIM record.

Tip: SPF and DKIM are also prerequisites for DMARC, which Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo now require for bulk senders. See Understanding Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo DMARC Requirements for Hosted Email.

Use a recognizable sender name

Recipients are more likely to open mail from a name they recognize. Set your From name to a combination of your personal name and your brand or business name, and use an email address on a domain that matches the brand the recipient expects.

Write subject lines that pass filters

A good subject line is 30 to 50 characters, including spaces, tells the reader what the email is about, and creates a clear reason to open it.

Avoid the patterns spam filters are tuned to catch:

• Spammy keywords. Words like urgent, buy now, win, and free raise spam scores quickly.
• All uppercase letters. ALL CAPS reads as shouting to both readers and filters.
• Typos. Misspellings reduce reader trust and trigger spam heuristics.
• Overuse of emojis. One or two is fine; long emoji strings look promotional.
• Deceptive subjects. The subject must match the message body.
• HTML in the subject line. Colored fonts or styling in subjects look suspicious.
• Blank subject lines. Empty subjects are often filtered automatically.

Keep message content clean

Spam filters scan the body of every incoming message. You can pass these checks easily by keeping the content readable and avoiding common spam patterns.

• Skip ALL CAPS body text. Use normal sentence case.
• Use punctuation normally. Avoid strings of exclamation points or question marks.
• Avoid red fonts and other alarming styling. Style consistently with your brand.
• Limit spam trigger words. Words like free, cheap, pre-approved, $$$, 100% free, urgent, and don't wait add up quickly.
• Test your HTML. Broken markup, missing tags, and inline scripts increase spam scores.
• Balance images and text. An email that is mostly images with little text often gets filtered.
• Limit links. A handful of relevant links is fine; dozens of links read as bulk advertising.
• Avoid large attachments. Use a file-sharing service like Dropbox or Google Drive instead. Oversized attachments may be rejected outright because they cannot be scanned.

Tip: See Reducing Spam Scores When Sending Email for a deeper look at the specific content patterns that increase your spam score.

Protect your IP reputation

The reputation of the IP address sending your mail is one of the strongest deliverability signals. If your IP has been used to send spam, by you or by a previous user of the address, receivers are more likely to send your mail to the spam folder or reject it.

You can check your sending IP and look it up on common blocklists using free tools such as ifconfig.me, to find your IP, and MxToolbox, to check blocklists.

Warning: If your residential or office IP appears on a blocklist, contact your ISP. They can investigate the listing, help you get a new IP if needed, and clean up the source of the listing.

Build and protect your domain reputation

Mailbox providers also track the reputation of your sending domain, and that reputation follows you across providers. Switching email or marketing platforms does not erase a damaged domain reputation; only sustained good sending behavior does.

To protect your domain reputation:

• Send to people who asked to hear from you. Use opt-in lists, not purchased ones.
• Honor unsubscribes immediately. Continuing to mail after an unsubscribe is the fastest way to damage reputation.
• Keep your lists clean. Remove hard bounces and long-inactive subscribers regularly.
• Send consistent volumes. Sudden large sends from a low-volume domain look like spam runs.

Keep your website secure

If your website hosts the domain your mail is sent from, a compromised website can harm your email deliverability and even get your domain blocklisted.

• Update software, themes, and plugins. Out-of-date components are the most common source of compromises.
• Scan for malware regularly. Many control panels include malware scanning.
• Repair compromises immediately. The longer a site stays compromised, the more reputation damage it does.

Tip: Exact Hosting offers Managed WordPress plans that include automated software updates and malware scanning. See Managed WordPress hosting for details.

Manage spam reports in your own inbox

You also help train spam filters by handling your own mail correctly.

• Mark unwanted mail as spam. Right-click the message and choose Mark as spam, or drag it to the Spam folder.
• Recover legitimate mail. If real mail is filtered, right-click it and choose Not spam, or drag it back to the Inbox. This teaches the filter what to allow through.
• Review your Spam folder occasionally. Messages in Spam are deleted automatically after 30 days.

Manually marking an email as spam

Marking a message as spam tells the mail server about the sender, headers, and content patterns of that message. The filter uses that data to catch similar messages in the future.

1. Select the message and choose Mark as spam.
2. If prompted, click Accept to confirm.

Note: If you agree to share spam data with our partner, you will not be prompted again. If you decline, you will be asked each time you mark a message as spam.

Tip: For legitimate marketing emails, use the Unsubscribe link instead of marking as spam. Marking a known sender as spam does not stop their mail and may impact their broader deliverability.

Next steps

• Add or verify your SPF record. See Setting Up SPF Records for Exact Hosting Email.
• Add a DMARC record. See Understanding Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo DMARC Requirements for Hosted Email.
• Investigate any rejections or bounces. See Exact Hosting Hostedemail Spam and Rejections Guide.

Questions? Contact Exact Hosting Support.