Hey, thanks for replying. Just sticking your head over the parapet is pretty brave.
I have a contra story. One of no delivery issues to Gmail or Hotmail, none, zero, nada. I've run a private email server (friends/family/small business/private mailing lists) for two decades. It's kept pace with every possible factor for reliable delivery - SPF/DKIM/DMARC/ARC, valid client SSL, IPv6, correct PTRs, DNSSEC etc and have no sketchy affiliates. In that time the IPv4 address changed exactly once and has never been RBL'd. Our mail gets delivered AOK.
And yet, even though I think my compliance level is good, I still feel like the blind man groping an elephant. I'm hoping I'm perceiving things correctly; I have no idea if I'm missing something. It helps that I'm an old-school ISP engineering inmate and contributor to well-known MTAs and MDAs, but few folks are lucky enough to have exposure to so SMTP radiation.
My take on the Postmaster Tools is that they've been created entirely to serve Google's purposes, and thereby serve no-one well because (as you point out) it's ecosystem engagement that makes a difference. If you sincerely have an incentive to improve, there is an awful lot of work to do there. It's okay to push the burden of compliance back to the sender, but the Postmaster tools offer only the most rudimentary levers to pull and provide almost no useful information, particularly for smaller/indy senders.
The message that comes through is that Google only really gives a shit about other large scale entities and struggles to see other points of view. This stands in quite stark contrast to Google's effort level over HTTP certificates and webmaster tools.
I have a contra story. One of no delivery issues to Gmail or Hotmail, none, zero, nada. I've run a private email server (friends/family/small business/private mailing lists) for two decades. It's kept pace with every possible factor for reliable delivery - SPF/DKIM/DMARC/ARC, valid client SSL, IPv6, correct PTRs, DNSSEC etc and have no sketchy affiliates. In that time the IPv4 address changed exactly once and has never been RBL'd. Our mail gets delivered AOK.
And yet, even though I think my compliance level is good, I still feel like the blind man groping an elephant. I'm hoping I'm perceiving things correctly; I have no idea if I'm missing something. It helps that I'm an old-school ISP engineering inmate and contributor to well-known MTAs and MDAs, but few folks are lucky enough to have exposure to so SMTP radiation.
My take on the Postmaster Tools is that they've been created entirely to serve Google's purposes, and thereby serve no-one well because (as you point out) it's ecosystem engagement that makes a difference. If you sincerely have an incentive to improve, there is an awful lot of work to do there. It's okay to push the burden of compliance back to the sender, but the Postmaster tools offer only the most rudimentary levers to pull and provide almost no useful information, particularly for smaller/indy senders.
The message that comes through is that Google only really gives a shit about other large scale entities and struggles to see other points of view. This stands in quite stark contrast to Google's effort level over HTTP certificates and webmaster tools.