Do emails get automatically blocked by Netlify DNS?

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1

Hi this is a weird one, I’m not sure if anyone else has had this issue.

I switched a cleints website over to have the DNS controlled by Netlify. I added the gmail MX records and emails were coming through. However, they told me that they stopped getting emails from websites like Angie’s list where they get leads.

I’m not sure how this could happen by my making this change especially since they were getting other emails. They insist it happened once I made the DNS switch. Could it be that these emails were being automatically blocked somehow?

I’ve since had to switch the site to be controlled by an external DNS

2

Hey @AleaV ,

They don’t get blocked automatically. If you’d like to share the domain I can look it both sets of dns entries and try to understand what’s going on.

-Dinos

3

Hi Dinos

The domain is https://emerald-demo.netlify.app/

Thanks for looking into it.

4

That’s the Netlify subdomain. The domain is: emeraldlc.com. But that’s not using Netlify DNS.

5

yes that’s the correct domain, I thought you needed the netlify.app name for some reason.
I had to change it to use an external DNS because they claimed it was blocking certain emails from coming in.

6

DNS cannot block emails as far as I’m aware. But as long as your setup is working, I think all is good.

7

Hey @AleaV, @hrishikesh is correct.

The Netlify DNS system is incredibly robust/fast/secure. Much more so than GoDaddy if that’s what you’re using.

I happen to notice that from emeraldlc.com Domain Health, the domain doesn’t have an spf or dmarc record. Spf might possibly have been an issue. Sometimes email systems get tripped up if things don’t match up exactly.

If you ever want to try Netlify DNS again - go for it. There are ways to track email deliverability and test why emails are failing to be received. Feel free to ping me - happy to help.

Dinos

8

thank you both for your help. I’m trying to understand what I need to do differently so I can use Netlify DNS again without any issues. Do you think if the domain had DMARC set up it would have solved the problem or there needed to be a txt file with the netlify setup? I use Netlify DNS for other setups and have never had this issue so it’s hard to know where to move forward.

@cdpapoulias I’d appreciate any tips on testing email deliverability so I can debug why it’s failing.

9

For emails, the only real requirement is the MX records. DMARC, SPF, all of those are provider-specific, some might choose to provide and some might not (though, most providers would).

For both, DMARC, as well as SPF, you should be adding the values as TXT records.

10

alright I think I got it now. It sounds like even though MX records are the only requirement to have the emails working, to prevent any issues I should at least add an SPF record and I can add a DMARC record for extra security or if the email provider requires it.

I only added the MX records before, so I guess it’s possible some of their emails went into the spam folder which is why they didn’t see them.