[questioner18]

I have been running two different CS-cart stores. One since April and the other since August. We have processed thousands of transactions without any problems.

Starting about three days ago, all our order confirmation emails started showing up in our service spam folder. This is true for both accounts.

Our e-mail is hosted by Google Apps. Does anyone know of a google change in the last week that would account for this? Has it happened to anyone else? And, of course, any suggestions what we do about it?

I'm not sure what's happening in customer accounts but assume that what is impacting us is happening for them also.

Thanks

[StellarBytes]

Have you done the following which will help:

Create SPF Records for Google Apps

Create Domain Key for Google Apps

Also add your e-mail address to your Google Contact List (sounds stupid, but it works) or create an e-mail filter to send emails from @yourdomain.com to the Inbox.

How many e-mails going through your Google e-mail is also going to have a knock-on effect as they may have blacklisted your e-mail as a bulk sender. If more than 50 per day, see here. Follow the 'Not a bulk sender?' link.

[questioner18]

Thanks very much. A quick look into it and it appears that my hosting provider 1and1 does not allow for the creation of SPF text files so I'm likely in the hunt for a new web host -- bit of a nightmare during peak season.

[StellarBytes]

Thanks very much. A quick look into it and it appears that my hosting provider 1and1 does not allow for the creation of SPF text files so I'm likely in the hunt for a new web host -- bit of a nightmare during peak season.

Did you try the quick and simple fix of adding your e-mail address to your contact list and create an email filter to send @yourdomain.com emails to the Inbox?

Congratulations are in order nonetheless, a 1&1 customer with a working website. Suppose this is the time of year for miracles...

[colortone]

I don't know if the problem is gmail, but one thing for sure is having your domain on 1and1 will expose your site and email accounts to tons of spam.

I worked for a company with 3 domains on 1and1. 2 were moved to hostgator and hawkhost cPanels and the spam stopped. The one remaining in 1and1 still receive 100s of spam emails every day. 1and1 is cheap but I'll never put nothing there.

What I recommend to my customers, is register the domain in namecheap.com, and pay the hosting on any company with cPanel servers.

Hope you solve this problem soon.
Best.

[StellarBytes]

What I recommend to my customers, is register the domain in namecheap.com, and pay the hosting on any companay with cPanel servers.

Please don't advise to use 'any' hosting; digital suicide at its finest.

[questioner18]

Thanks for all the responses. After four days of messages going into Google apps spam, the spam system reversed and everything is back to working as normal.

I've no doubt that there are better options than 1and1 but our sites seem to work pretty well and we've had very little down time. I also haven't seen the spam but perhaps that's because we don't use 1and1 mail preferring to work through google apps. I will check out namecheap and cPanel next time around.