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I've created an automated script that generates a custom HTML email using PHPMailer within PHP and sends it, from my custom domain email account, to whatever recipient.

The emails are all litmus tested and render perfectly in all clients, hold no comments whatsoever, no strings that seem to be spammy, all good. My domain is also not on any blacklist, etc.

The e-mails first pretty much dropped into the spam for every recipient.

I went back to my hosting service then, and they recommended me to create an SPF - record in the DNS zone of the domain of my e-mail.

This drastically improved the non-spam delivery rate of my emails.

Still, some clients still receive the emails of our company in their junk folder. I ran a spam-test using email on ACID, and all tests were passed, including SPF - record verifications, etc. The only warnings that showed up were, guess what, that for outlook.com and gmail.com, the emails eventually drop into the spam folder (without telling why) which is obviously a big problem.

And indeed, the only clients still complaining about the spam troubles are indeed gmail users, mainly.

I then came across this very interesting post, and learned that google recommends the setup of all, SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

I first of all included the include:_spf.google.com part in my SPF record, but when it comes to DKIM, I'm stuck.

I'm confused if, to have a working DKIM - register within the DNS of your domain, you actually need to have a Google Workspace account? Because apparently you can only create a DKIM Key within that Workspace account, and I'm worried that this will may expire after my 14-trial period of the Workspace account, and rather further damage my email domain reputation instead of actually improving it.

Or am I misunderstanding things, and there's a different solution to setup a DKIM (and then also DMARC) for a given mail client like gmail for a domain? I'm asking because I have no experience whatsoever in setting up DKIM.

DevelJoe
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In order to set up DKIM from the Admin console you definitely need to have a Google Workspace account. Using a Cloud Identity free subscription would not work as you are not going to have access to services like Gmail.

To simply generate the key from the Admin console you need the right subscription with access to Gmail, which is only available in Google Workspace subscriptions.

It will most likely stop working after your subscription expires since it is linked to the Admin console from the Google Workspace account where it was generated and once the subscription gets suspended everything stops working.

Fernando Lara
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  • Thought so, so it's probably best to not DKIM - sign for gmail at all; will likely cause only more trouble once the subscription expires. You agree? – DevelJoe Apr 06 '22 at 18:39
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    Yes, if you are not planning to use the subscription at all, then I would not recommend subscribing just for the DKIM key. If you already have another email provider for your domain, then they may also help you with this, or you can subscribe to another lest expensive service that could be more useful depending on your needs. – Fernando Lara Apr 06 '22 at 18:55
  • Nope, my host is pretty bad at support in that area, which is why I'm looking for help here ^^ Cheers, Fernando! If you know about external DKIM - Signature solutions that can be added to an email provider, just lemme know. But given the theoretical setup of DKIM, I doubt that there is such thing. – DevelJoe Apr 06 '22 at 19:23
  • Actually, a good tool which I can use to track if emails sent to gmail drop into spam or not would be excellent, as google's postmaster tool only reports spam rates for emails that are DKIM - signed... – DevelJoe Apr 06 '22 at 19:37
  • Email authentication in and of itself rarely solves deliverability problems. I’d sign up for gmail postmaster tools, which is free, ASAP, and start monitoring your domains’ reputation. Google inbox placement places a lot of weight on domain rep so it’s essential to track it. – Neil Anuskiewicz Nov 24 '22 at 19:39