Error: 550 This message was classified as SPAM and may not be delivered

Our shared hosting server all have outbound spam filtering enabled.

When you send an email from your hosting account it must pass our outbound spam filters before it is delivered to your recipient.  Our outbound spam filters have a very low false-positive rate which means that they rarely block legitimate emails.

If you send an email and receive a bounce-back with the message below it means that our spam filter classified your email as spam and the email will not be sent.

550 This message was classified as SPAM and may not be delivered

Here are a few common tips to help avoid this error:

1 – Modify your subject and email content

Our outbound email servers use a spam evaluation process that is set moderately low. This means it is unlikely for your emails to be classified as spam and prevented from reaching your recipient unless they have multiple ‘spam’ characteristics. If you are still getting blocked by the spam filter, you will want to evaluate both the subject line and body content of your email.

• Avoid using a single word as the subject and if you do want to use a single word it should be a common dictionary word.
• Don’t use all caps in the subject line
• Avoid spelling mistakes
• Don’t use exclamation marks in the subject
• View a list of common spam filter triggers to avoid

2 – Turn on SMTP Authentication if you use Outlook

Microsoft Outlook tends to be causing email messages to score higher than normal, causing emails that otherwise would be allowed through to be classified as spam. This is commonly caused by not having SMTP Authentication enabled in the Outlook.  You need to make sure SMTP authentication is enabled in Outlook and the username is your full email address along with the password for your email account.