Configure Anti-Spam settings

Spam filtering is enabled by default for all DreamHost-hosted email addresses in order to provide you with the best email experience possible.

This article is a basic breakdown of how to use spam filtering on your domain. If you would like to read more detailed information on spam filtering, please refer to the following article:

• Technical details on how anti-spam filters work

Blocklist entries are email addresses or domains you never want to receive email from. Emails from blocklisted senders are quarantined regardless of the email's spam score.

Allow list entries are email addresses or domains you always want to receive email from. Emails from Allow list senders are delivered to the inbox regardless of the email's spam score.

1. Navigate to the Spam Filters page.
2. Click the Edit Filter button to the right of your domain.
3. Select one of the following options on the domain's email page to create an Allow or Block:
   • Option 1 — Create an Allow/Block list for ALL emails on this domain
   • Option 2 — Create an Allow/Block list for a single email address

1. Navigate to the Spam Filters page.

   If you have enabled Google Workspace on your domain, your mail is hosted at Google where you must configure your filters. You will see this on the Spam Filters page to the right of your domain.

2. Click the Edit Filter button to the right of your domain. 
3. Click the Edit settings for example.com button at the top of the page.
4. In the Emails from the address field, enter the domain like this:

   @domain.com

   This sets the SPAM domain as Allowed or Blocked for all emails under your domain.
5. Click the Add Address button to save.

1. Navigate to the Spam Filters page.

   If you have enabled Google Workspace on your domain, your mail is hosted at Google where you must configure your filters. You will see this on the Spam Filters page to the right of your domain.

2. Click the Edit Filter button to the right of your domain.
3. Click the Edit button to the right of an email address.
4. Add an address or domain on the specific email address page to allow or block.
5. Click the Add Address button to save.

Emails from the address

• When entering an email, it can be individual email addresses user@EXAMPLE.com or one entry to cover an entire domain @EXAMPLE.com.
• The limit is 100 combined Allow and Block list entries.
• All addresses must be entered manually. There is no bulk import of addresses.
• If mail is correctly routed through MailChannels but is not being processed per the Allow/Block list, check the message headers. It's possible to use an email client to modify the headers to display one sender address when the message was actually sent from another address. You would then need to adjust your Allow/Block lists according to details found in the header.
• Emails that fail to pass the sender's DMARC, DKIM, or SPF policies will not be delivered to the Inbox, even if your sender is on the Allow list. These policies tell DreamHost how your sender wants mail handled if it fails these checks. When a message fails these checks, your sender's policies can tell DreamHost to override your Allow list and prohibit delivery of this message to the Inbox. Your sender must ensure that sent emails comply with their domain's policies, or the Allow list will be ignored.

Action

This is Always Allow or Always Block.

If you previously used a domain at DreamHost but did not enable spam filtering, DreamHost strongly recommends enabling it.

To enable spam filtering on an existing domain, first navigate to the Spam Filters page. Then, click the Enable Filter next to your domain (which only shows on domains with active email hosting).

View the following article for instructions on how to disable filtering on a domain.

• Disabling Spam filters

If you do not wish to use the anti-spam filtering feature that DreamHost offers through the panel, you have a few alternatives for filtering incoming mail before it's delivered to your hosted user with DreamHost.

Below is a description of alternative junk-message filters:

Message filters

These are available through your account panel at Message Filters. This feature allows you to customize and create your own filter rules for each user. You can refer to the following article for details about this feature:

• How do I enable message filters on my email address?

You can set up third-party mail filtering services for your domain as well and have those filtering services deliver the mail to DreamHost mail servers once the filtering is complete. This can be set up through your account panel at Custom MX.

You can read more about how to set this up in the following article:

• Mail Service Providers