Why are my emails not sending?

If you are having trouble sending email from your hosting account, this guide covers the most common causes and how to fix them.

Common causes

Your account has been flagged for spam

When our system sees sending patterns or content that look like spam, your email account may be temporarily restricted. This protects the reputation of the mail server that all customers share.

Signs your account may be flagged:

• Emails bouncing back with spam-related error messages
• A sudden inability to send after a burst of messages
• Recipients reporting that your emails land in spam

Your message bounced back as “rSPAM”

If you send a message and it bounces back with a Mail Delivery Failed report that includes a line like this:

This message was classified as rSPAM and may not be delivered

then your outgoing message was stopped by our outbound spam protection. This means sending from your account is currently blocked. It usually happens when an account triggers spam detection, or when an account has been compromised and used to send spam.

Resending will not help, the message will keep bouncing. Contact support so we can check why the block was applied and request an unblock where appropriate. If you think your account may have been compromised, change your password first.

When you contact support, paste the full bounce message you received. It contains a reference that lets us trace the exact block and tell you why it happened.

Your account has been compromised

If someone gains access to your account, they may use it to send spam, which trips our security measures.

Warning signs:

• Messages in your sent folder that you did not send
• Unfamiliar login locations or times in your email logs
• Contacts receiving spam from your address
• A sudden rise in bounce-back messages

You have reached your sending limit

Every email account can send up to 200 emails per day, and a single message can have up to 100 recipients. Going over either limit will stop your mail from sending. For the full details, see Email sending limits.

These limits suit normal business email and transactional messages. If you send transactional email in volume, for example a scheduled job that emails many invoices at once, contact support to request a higher limit rather than working around the cap.

Sending higher volumes responsibly

If your sending is legitimate and you need more headroom, a few habits keep your mail flowing and your reputation healthy:

• Space your sending out rather than firing everything in a few minutes
• Request a limit increase from support before a scheduled high-volume run
• Keep your recipient lists clean so messages do not bounce
• Watch your own sending so you notice problems early

Marketing campaigns and newsletters are not allowed on our hosting, even to people who opted in. Those belong on a dedicated email marketing platform. Transactional email, such as invoices, password resets, and one-time passwords, is fine.

Keeping an eye on deliverability

Two numbers tell you whether your mail is healthy.

Bounce rate (keep it under 1%). A bounce is an email that could not be delivered and came back. Hard bounces are permanent, where the address or domain does not exist. Soft bounces are temporary, where the mailbox is full or the server is briefly unavailable. Bounce rate is (bounced / sent) x 100. Sending 1000 and having 8 bounce is 0.8%, which is fine.

Complaint rate (keep it under 0.30%). A complaint is when someone marks your message as spam. Providers like Gmail and Yahoo report these back to us through feedback loops. Complaint rate is (complaints / delivered) x 100. Two complaints on 1000 delivered is 0.2%, which is fine.

How to fix sending problems

Immediate steps:

1. Check your email logs in DirectAdmin for error messages
2. Change your email password to something strong and unique if you suspect compromise
3. Review your recent sending to see whether you went over a limit
4. Clean your recipient list to remove invalid addresses that cause bounces

For better long-term deliverability:

• Use clear, relevant subject lines and avoid spam trigger words
• Configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for your domain
• Send from authenticated domains and keep your volumes steady

When to contact support

Get in touch with support if:

• Your account looks compromised
• Your messages bounce back as classified rSPAM and need to be unblocked
• You have followed the steps above and still cannot send
• You need help setting up SPF, DKIM, or DMARC
• Your legitimate transactional email is being blocked
• You need a higher sending limit

When you contact us, please include your domain and email address, any error messages or full bounce reports you are seeing, your recent sending volumes, and examples of messages that failed.