Best Practices

Setting up MX Guarddog is fairly straight forward, however there are a few things you need to ensure you have done (or have not done) to allow smooth delivery from MX Guarddog.

Disable local spam protection

Let MX Guarddog do his job - he is good at it. Having spam protection on our server and your server causes confusion and should be turned off.

Disable SPF checking

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) allows domain name owners to publish a list of IP addresses that are allowed to send email for their domain. If a message is received from a server that is not on the list, email servers have the option of rejecting the message.

The system works well, but you cannot have multiple servers checking SPF records. MX Guarddog will check the SPF status of all incoming email for you, if you have SPF checking enabled on your server it may mistake incoming email as forged because it is passing through MX Guarddog servers before reaching you.

Server Hardening

If you are blocking access to your email server through the use of a firewall or other form of security - ensure you allow MX Guarddog to connect to your servers.

We think server hardening through the use of firewalls and non standard port operation is a great way to secure your servers... just make sure you accept email from us... We publish a list of IP Addresses that we send from, you need keep access open on your firewall or we will be unable to deliver your mail.