Is Your Email Going to Spam? How to Check & Fix It

You send a quote to a potential client. They never respond. A week later, you follow up and hear those dreaded words: “Sorry, I never got your email.”

For Sydney business owners, this scenario is more than frustrating. It costs real money. Missed quotes, ignored invoices, and lost opportunities add up quickly when your emails consistently land in spam folders instead of inboxes.

The good news? Email deliverability problems are fixable. In most cases, the issue traces back to how your website and domain are configured, something a quality web build should address from day one.

Here is how to diagnose the problem and get your emails back on track.

How to check if your emails are going to spam

Before you can fix the problem, you need to confirm it exists. Several free tools let you test your email deliverability in minutes.

Mail Tester (mail-tester.com) gives you a simple score out of 10. Send an email to their temporary address, and they analyse everything from your spam score to your authentication records. Anything below 7 needs attention.

MXToolbox (mxtoolbox.com) checks whether your domain or server IP address appears on major blacklists. If your domain is blacklisted, most email providers will automatically route your messages to spam or block them entirely.

Google Postmaster Tools shows how Gmail specifically treats your domain. Since Gmail dominates the Australian market, this data matters enormously for local businesses.

When you run these tests, pay attention to three key terms: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These are email authentication protocols that prove to receiving servers that your emails are legitimate and not forged by spammers.

Think of them as your email passport. Without proper stamps, border control (the spam filter) gets suspicious.

Common reasons business emails land in spam

Understanding why emails get flagged helps you prevent future problems. Here are the culprits we see most often when auditing Sydney business websites.

Missing or misconfigured authentication records

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records live in your domain’s DNS settings. If they are missing, incomplete, or pointing to the wrong servers, your emails look untrustworthy to receiving mail servers.

This happens frequently when businesses set up their website with one provider, their email with another, and their contact forms with a third party tool. Each service needs proper authentication, and the records must align.

Cheap shared hosting with bad IP reputation

Budget hosting plans cram hundreds of websites onto a single server sharing the same IP address. If even one of those sites sends spam, the entire IP gets flagged, and your legitimate emails suffer.

This is one of the strongest arguments for quality hosting as part of your web design investment. A clean IP reputation is invisible until something goes wrong, then it becomes extremely visible in your inbox delivery rates.

Contact forms sending emails incorrectly

Your WordPress contact form seems simple enough. Someone fills it out, you receive an email. But the technical details matter.

Many default configurations send form submissions “from” the visitor’s email address using your server. To spam filters, this looks like spoofing, because your server is claiming to send mail on behalf of a domain it does not control.

Properly configured forms send from your own domain (like forms@yourdomain.com.au) with the visitor’s address in the reply-to field. Small difference, big impact.

WordPress plugins that bypass proper email routing

Some plugins send emails directly through PHP mail functions rather than through a proper SMTP connection. This skips authentication entirely and dramatically increases spam likelihood.

We see this constantly with booking plugins, WooCommerce notifications, and membership sites. The fix usually involves an SMTP plugin and a transactional email service, but it needs to be configured correctly to work.

How to fix email deliverability for your website

Now for the practical steps. Depending on your technical comfort level, you can tackle these yourself or bring in professional help.

Step 1: Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records

Your SPF record tells receiving servers which mail servers are authorised to send email for your domain. DKIM adds a digital signature proving the email has not been tampered with. DMARC tells servers what to do with emails that fail these checks.

You add these as TXT records in your domain’s DNS settings. Your hosting provider and email service should provide the specific values. Getting them wrong can make deliverability worse, so double check before saving.

Step 2: Use a dedicated SMTP service

Transactional email services like Mailgun, SendGrid, Postmark, or Amazon SES specialise in delivering emails reliably. They maintain clean IP reputations, handle authentication automatically, and provide delivery tracking.

For most small business websites, the free tiers are more than sufficient. You typically get 1,000 to 10,000 emails per month at no cost.

Step 3: Configure WordPress properly

Install an SMTP plugin like WP Mail SMTP or FluentSMTP. Connect it to your transactional email service. Test thoroughly using the plugin’s built in tools.

Make sure your contact form plugin is set to send from your domain, not from the visitor’s email address. Check that WooCommerce, booking systems, and any other plugins sending emails route through your SMTP configuration.

Step 4: Consider upgrading your hosting

If you are on bottom tier shared hosting and experiencing persistent deliverability issues, upgrading to managed WordPress hosting or a VPS with a dedicated IP address often solves the problem.

The monthly cost difference is usually modest compared to the revenue lost from emails that never arrive.

Frequently asked Questions

When to call in the professionals

Some email deliverability problems have straightforward fixes. Others involve tangled DNS records, multiple conflicting services, and configurations that require careful unpicking.

Signs you need expert help include:

• Your domain appears on multiple blacklists and removal requests are not working
• You have tried the steps above and your spam score has not improved
• Your website, email, and CRM are hosted across different providers with unclear authentication
• You are losing significant business and need the problem fixed quickly

At Kinski & Bourke, we build WordPress websites with email deliverability baked in from the start. Proper hosting, correct authentication, SMTP configuration, and contact forms that actually work. No surprise spam folder problems six months after launch.

If your current website is causing email headaches, a rebuild might cost less than the clients you are losing to the spam folder.

Get your emails delivered

Email deliverability is not glamorous, but it is fundamental. Every message that lands in spam instead of the inbox represents a potential client who thinks you never replied, an invoice that goes unpaid longer than necessary, or an opportunity that slips away silently.

Take 10 minutes today to run your domain through Mail Tester and MXToolbox. If your scores are strong, excellent. If not, you now know where to start, or who to call.

Need help fixing your website’s email deliverability? Contact Kinski & Bourke for a no obligation chat about your site.

Header Photo by Moose Photos