The problem

Have you ever wondered if the email message you have sent to someone was deemed spam and mercilessly deleted? The story usually goes like this:

You click that "Send" button and forget about it for a while. Time passes by - no reply from her...

You wait and wait... Still nothing... Did $her_server read the message, but decided not to show it to her? Did $her_server's spam filter delete the message and she still doesn't know you sent it? Did $her_server learned that you are a bad boy from the online grey listing databases and refused to deliver your message?

You wait and wait... Still nothing... Should you resend? Or will $her_server get annoyed and pissed at you? Will $her_server block you from all future communications with her if you keep resending? Maybe you should keep resending so $her_server softens up and lets one of your messages through?

You wait and wait... Still nothing... What should you do? Help! Help! Help!

(To complete this story please replace $her_server system variable with the name of your favorite email service: gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.)

The solution

There are many ways to send email out there, including an online email services like gmail, yahoo, msn, a corporate email account at your employer, an email account at your small business web hosting provider, an email account given to you by the provider of your home Internet connection, or your own email server running work or home, etc.

It's your own choice which solution to use. If you use email casually there is probably nothing to worry about. But if you use email to deliver millions of units of email to your legit customers, things are different. And in order to avoid the sad story above and have the full control and the confidence in your email being delivered a lot of non-trivial work is required.

Here I will take you through basic steps of setting up email for a domain name www.abc.com. So here we go:

1. register a new domain name abc.com with the domain name registrar of your choice
2. make sure you are allowed to control various DNS records for this domain, specifically you need to have access to A record, C name, MX record and SPF records
3. let the registrar to fill in A record, C name and MX record as they see fit or change them to fit your purposes as described elsewhere
4. visit one of the online SPF record wizards to configure the SPF record for your domain; I am aware of the following FREE online wizards:
   • Sender Policy Framework Project wizard
   • Microsoft's Sender ID Framework SPF Record wizard
5. format the SPF record as recommended by the wizard and add it to the other DNS entries at the domain registrar; at certain registrars you might need to enable the support for SPF records for your domain before you can actually add or edit them
6. test the SPF record by sending test email to one of the FREE online services that will verify it for you and explain if SPF record was setup correctly and if the test email you have send appears as legit or as spam. You need to confirm that SPF check and Sender-ID checks report "pass"; at the moment I am aware of these FREE online SPF record checkers:
• with Port25 Solutions free service you simply need to send a test message to check-auth@verifier.port25.com, a reply e-mail will be sent back to you with an analysis of the message's authentication status; this service conducts SPF check, DomainKeys check, DKIM check and Sender-ID check
• with Email Service Provider Coalition free service you simply need to send a test message to a unique email address they provide on the home page; on the same page you will find a link to view the authentication status report after the test message was sent by you; in addition to SPF check, DomainKeys check, DKIM check, it also reports Sender-ID MFROM method check and Sender-ID PRA method check
7. if the test message is still deemed spam or has low authentication status go back to step 4 and play more with the SPF record wizard until you get it right

Final Word

Credits to GR for the 500 points IQ and the inner drive to reach perfection.