This is not a bug, but merely a result of DNS propagation. Our tool queries the blocklist provider's DNS servers and returns the results. Sometimes a list will update DNS before or after their Web interface, which can provide different results.

Our tool acts in the same manner that a receiving mail server would, so if you see results on our tool, your mail delivery might be being impacted.

In order to minimize false positives due to connection problems by our monitoring services we ask that you please whitelist these IP ranges on your firewall or network security systems:

• US-EAST-1A: 44.194.168.193/32
• US-EAST-1B: 52.55.244.91/32
• US-EAST-1C: 18.205.72.90/32
• US-EAST-1D: 18.209.86.113/32

Backscatterer lists based on Misdirected Bounces or Misdirected Autoresponders or Sender Callouts. They do not offer delistings and will only remove you after they do not see this traffic for 30 days.

Keep in mind that this list is a "best practices" list and very few people block email based off this list. Many large mail systems, such as Windows Live Mail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc., end up on this list. If you are having delivery issues, there might be something else that needs to be addressed.

In short, they want you to not send bouncebacks for non-existent email accounts. Any vacation auto-responders or auto-replies should not send more than once in a 24-hour period, and your system should not use the VRFY command to check if an address is valid (few systems do by default anymore).

You can opt out of being alerted to a status change by going to your notification policy. You can find your notification policy by clicking on "Monitor", then "Notifications", then the appropriate policy (usually default).

You will find the "Filters" section at the bottom. You can choose to opt out of receiving alerts about any specific status change you wish by using the drop-down box.

Our anti-abuse system has banned your IP address for too many lookups. Please make sure that you are not using an automated system to perform lookups on our tools. If you are running an automated system to perform lookups, we suggest using our API.

More information about our API can be found here.

Once you are in Settings, do the following:

1. Click on Account.
2. Input the email address you would like to add.
3. Choose if you want the new user to have User or Editor rights.
4. Click on Add User.

All invoices are emailed with the subject "MxToolBox Invoice#" to the email address on file when we process the credit card on file. Please check your Spam/Junk Folder and ensure that our email address is on your Whitelist/Approved Senders.

You can access past invoices from the Billing tab in your Account Settings.

Once you are in your settings, click on the Billing tab:

1. Click on Billing Information Manager to update your credit card information.
2. Click on View to view your previous invoices.

If you are receiving alerts for your Mailflow monitor and you are still able to send and receive email, chances are we did not receive a test message back to our system.

Click on the monitor and let it populate in the right window of the page. Under the graph you will see Outages | History | Pings | Edit > Click on Pings.

There are two (2) different results under the Pings table.

1. A message with a Green Check is a successful message returned to us. You can click on the details link and it will provide you the full headers and more information about the test message.
2. A message with a Red X on it is a failed message. If you click on Error, this will show you the test message's subject.

If the message is failing:

• Use the message subject to check that it is not being filtering by an inbound appliance or spam software.
• Use the message subject to check your outbound SMTP logs to see if the message is leaving your gateway.

To remove a domain that you did not activate in the MxDelivery Center, follow these simple steps:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Click the MxDelivery Center link at the top of the screen, or on the specific monitor for the domain that you would like to remove (Delivery Report).
3. Click the Gear icon in the upper right of the screen.

4. Click Domain Setup.
5. Click "Remove" next to the domain.

**You should make sure that the domain that you want to remove is actually the domain next to the "Remove" option.

Please click the “Report a bug” link to open a ticket. Please include a description of what you have seen and any Steps to Reproduce, if you can supply them. If the error occurs on a specific URL, please include that, as well.

We appreciate your feedback!

All MxDelivery Center customers are automatically subscribed to a DMARC DNS record monitor.

You can find details about different warnings from our tools on the SMTP Problem Details page.

You can see details about different errors from our tools on the Blacklist Problem Details page.

You can see details about different warnings and errors from our tools on the Problem Details page.

Please describe the changes you need below and we will be in contact shortly.

You can update your credit card information by clicking 'Billing Information Manager' on the Billing Page.

MxToolbox is sorry to see you go! We hope you had a good experience with us and that you find use for our tools in the future.

If you are a current customer and want to cancel services, simply follow these instructions to delete your MxToolbox account:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Click “username@mxtoolbx.com” in top right corner for dropdown menu.
3. Click “Billing” option directly below username.
4. Click “Cancel Services” hyperlink above Billing Email field.
5. Click “OK” to confirm you want to cancel your account.

After the cancelation request is complete, your account will remain active until the end of your paid billing period. It will cancel prior to the next renewal date. If you are an annual customer, your account will remain active until the end of your annual billing period.

If we can improve anything to change your mind, please let us know. Thank you for being an MxToolbox customer!

You can update your credit card information by using the "Billing Information Manager" within your Billing Details Page.

Simply log in to your MxToolbox account, go the the following link, and click "Billing Information Manager":

https://mxtoolbox.com/Pro/wf/ProBilling.aspx#/

Have a great day!

To delete a monitor from the dashboard, follow these steps:

Download it now, right here! (W-9 forms do not expire). Or, you can copy the following URL and paste it into your browser: https://mxtoolbox.com/public/documents/MxToolBox_W9.pdf

To request a sales tax exemption, please open a Support Ticket by clicking the blue "Submit a Ticket" button. When submitting the ticket, be sure to select "Billing Inquiry" as the type. Once we have received your request, we will give you an email address of where to send your Sales Tax Exemption form.

If you would like to change your billing cycle from monthly to annual, please open a Support Ticket by clicking the blue "Submit a Ticket" button at the top right of this page. When submitting the ticket, be sure to select "Billing Inquiry" as the type.

Depending on the type of plan you have, in some cases, you might see a line item for "Adjustment for services added...". This is because we bill in advance for services for the upcoming billing period (e.g., month, quarter) and in arrears for services added during the previous period (e.g., month, quarter). This adjustment is the difference between what you paid the previous month/quarter and the services actually used.

This will only occur if you added new monitors to your account since your last billing period.

To change the billing email address associated with your MxToolbox account, simply follow the below steps:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Click “username@mxtoolbx.com” in top right corner for dropdown menu or use the following URL: https://mxtoolbox.com/user/billing.aspx.
3. Click “Billing” option directly below username.
4. Click “Edit” button to right of Billing Email field.
5. Enter the new email address you want to receive future billing information emails.
6. Click “Save” to confirm update to billing email address.
7. Your billing contact email is now ‘username@address.com’ message will appear.

Your changes have now been saved and billing notices will be sent to the new address.

The MxToolbox API is a RESTful Web Service allowing MxToolbox customers to query the status of their monitors and run lookups (e.g., blocklist, smtp, mx, etc.). Generally, programmers use this API to integrate MxToolbox into their products. For example, customers have created a dashboard on their site which shows the real-time status of their monitors.

To view the API documentation associated with your MxToolbox account, simply follow the below steps:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Click “username@mxtoolbx.com” in top right corner for dropdown menu.
3. Click “Settings” option directly below username.
4. Click “API” tab in main header section (seventh tab available).
5. Use the available API methods listed (e.g., Lookup, Monitor, Monitor Tags, Usage) as needed.

If you have any questions about API, please contact the MxToolbox Support Team.

Blocklists affect your email reputation and can impair the delivery of your messages. While there are many additional factors in email delivery, knowing if your IPs/domains are blocklisted is a critical aspect of email delivery.

Blocklists are private entities that can add or remove IPs/domains as they see fit. It can often be frustrating when trying to request removal, especially when the lists simply do not respond. Be aware that when requesting removal, you need to follow all of the instructions on the specific blocklist’s site and that you explain what actions you have taken to ensure your system is safe and secure. We recommend that you address the following aspects of your request for removal:

1. Ensure you have included all of the information requested. If there is a form to fill out, make sure the information is thorough and accurate. If an email or general input box is used, be sure to read through any text on the page. Often, lists will request something specific and if it is not included, your request will be ignored.
2. You must explain the actions you have taken to check your system. This should include actions such as virus scans, reviewing email logs, and using the Mxtoolbox SMTP Tool to check for an open relay. The more information you include about what you did to resolve the problem or check to ensure that your system is not compromised, the more likely your request will be successful.
3. Be nice. MxToolbox has worked with many of these lists, as well as users who have tried various tactics with the people running them, and we have found that rude, aggressive, or threatening messages never work. You are either messaging an automated system that will not care or, in some cases, a person who will likely disregard your request due to hostile language.
4. Be proactive about improving your email reputation and message delivery. If you repeat the same habits that caused your domain to be blocklisted, you run the risk of being listed again. Implementing DMARC is a major step toward blocklist avoidance. MxToolbox's Delivery Center also helps you maintain a healthy domain, so check to see how it can improve your business email.

Although MxToolbox does NOT blocklist IPs/domains, we report on blocklistings. For tips on being delisted from specific blocklists, click here: Blocklist Knowledge Base.

Our subscribers have direct access to the MxToolbox Support team for any delisting concerns. And our convenient blocklist alerts provide links to the necessary removal steps. We have many years of experience with blocklists and are eager to help you.

There could be a brief delay after DMARC setup is complete, so your email data might not be instantly available. The most common reasons why no data is populating the dashboard once you properly set up an MxToolbox DMARC Record include:

1. Incorrect Emailing Domain: This is fairly common. You added a domain and DMARC record, but you are sending from a different domain. | Solution: Confirm the domain that you are sending emails from. This is more common when you add a subdomain but send mail from the primary domain and vice versa.
2. DNS Propagation: This is not very common, but it does happen sometimes. | Solution: Wait 24 to 72 hours after confirming that the proper record was added and not changed.
3. After set up, you removed your DMARC record: Again, this is not very common, but it does occur. | Solution: Confirm that the proper DMARC record that MxToolbox requires is configured in the domain's DNS.
4. You are sending to recipient systems that do not report DMARC data. | Solution: There is no resolution for this, only an explanation. (i.e., If you believe you are only sending to Office 365 users, be aware that although Microsoft filters and delivers emails based on DMARC, they do not send the aggregate data for DMARC back to senders.

In the meantime, be sure to set up other important aspects of your Delivery Center subscription, including Configuration, Protection, and Inbox Data.

You can see details about different warnings and errors from our tools on the DNS Problem Details page.

We recommend that you contact your Domain's Registrar to update the name servers on record to include the server that is not listed at the Root Servers.

------------------------------------

Your Primary Name Server was not on the list of name servers given to us by the root.

If your name server is not listed at the root, it could cause impaired/incorrect lookups for your domain.

The Primary Name Server is the name server declared in your SOA file and is usually the name server that reads your records from zone files and is responsible for distributing that data to your secondary name servers. This problem is present when this primary name server is not included in the parent referrals and is almost always accompanied by a Local Parent Mismatch problem.

RFC 1035:

Here a primary name server acquires information about one or more zones by reading master files from its local file system, and answers queries about those zones that arrive from foreign resolvers. [RFC 1035]

If your Primary Name Server is not listed at your Parent or is not responding, then our DNS Propagation test tool will not operate properly. You will most likely also be experiencing other real-world problems with DNS queries for your domain. Users with Basic or Pro accounts can contact our Support Team for assistance with understanding any DNS warnings or errors with specific information about your domain. If you are still a free user, upgrading your account will give you access to support, as well as many other benefits.

Have a great day!

If you receive a DNS change alert from MxToolbox because of TTL changes, no need to panic. These incidents are typically caused by issues at your DNS hosting provider.

DNS TTL (time to live) is a setting that tells your DNS resolver how long to cache a query before requesting a new query. The gathered information is then stored in the cache of the recursive or local resolver for the TTL before it collects new, updated details.

For example, if your DNS TTL is set to 3,600 seconds (60 minutes), the DNS resolver will have to regather the details of a website (mxtoolbox.com) every hour. If 100 users visit our site during that time, they will all see the same visual until the resolvers update their TTL.

The TTL acts as a stopwatch for how long to keep a DNS record because it represents the time each step takes for DNS to cache a record. Recorded in seconds, using the best TTL time for your situation is key to your site's overall responsiveness.

MxToolbox often sees warning signs of issues and outages at DNS providers. Nearly every case is a problem with the specific DNS provider. For example, this outage occurred on May 5th, 2021, and affected customers' domain DNS servers: DNS outage.

To check the propagation of DNS records across your servers and see the selected TTLs, use our DNS Propagation Tool.

If you are receiving alerts for your Mailflow monitor and you are still able to send and receive email, chances are we did not receive a test message back to our system.

Click on the monitor and let it populate in the right window of the page. Under the graph you will see Outages | History | Pings | Edit > Click on Pings.

There are two (2) different results under the Pings table.

1. A message with a Green Check is a successful message returned to us. You can click on the details link and it will provide you the full headers and more information about the test message.
2. A message with a Red X on it is a failed message. If you click on Error, this will show you the test message's subject.

If the message is failing:

• Use the message subject to check that it is not being filtering by an inbound appliance or spam software.
• Use the message subject to check your outbound SMTP logs to see if the message is leaving your gateway.

The reverse IP address name (PTR) is not contained in the server HELO or EHLO banner. In the example below, the string "someotherdomain.com" is not found anywhere in the server banner, which is reporting "example.com". This is only a warning, and in some cases you might not have control over it.

Example of incorrectly matching pair:

220 mx.example.com StrongMail SMTP Service at Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:00:01 -0700

When a sending server makes a connection to the recipient server, the recipient server notes the sending IP address and performs a reverse lookup. This is done by sending a DNS query, which returns a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) registered for that IP address. If the sending SMTP address matches the domain, then it is much more likely that the message is legitimate and, therefore, will be passed on to the recipient. If the IP address does not match, it is much more likely that the sending address was spoofed and, therefore, much more likely that it is unwanted and could be considered spam.

A Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is associated to an IP with a valid PTR record. You want the domain name portion of the FQDN to match the domain of your email address (e.g., If your sending addresses follow the convention of name@mydomain.com, your PTR record should contain something like mailserver.mydomain.com). Only the organization that controls and owns the IP can set a PTR record. PTR record queries are sent to the owner of the IP address, which is the ISP, unlike other DNS queries which are sent to the DNS server of whoever owns the domain. For this reason, setting a PTR record on your own DNS servers is essentially useless since no one is asking your servers.

To make any changes to your rDNS, you will need to contact your ISP. Or, if you host your own DNS (rare), you will adjust it yourself. You will not be able to do this in your DNS control panel unless your ISP also hosts your DNS and gives you the functionality to add your own rDNS records.

We welcome suggestions that can make our SuperTools better. You can submit your suggestions/feedback to us by filling out our feedback form here. We cannot always add your idea, but we love to get feedback! Thank you.

Microsoft has updated the process to set up DKIM for Office 365. Designed to prevent spoofing attacks, DKIM works in tandem with SPF to attain DMARC compliancy. DKIM lets a company add a digital signature to sent emails in the message header, which allows recipient providers to use the signature as a validation point to determine if incoming mail is legitimate.

To enable DKIM for your custom domain in Office 365, complete the steps outlined here: DKIM for Office 365.

To change the email address associated with your MxToolbox account, simply follow the below steps:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Click “username@mxtoolbx.com” in top right corner for dropdown menu.
3. Click “Settings” option directly below username.
4. Enter the new email address you want associated with your account.
5. Click “Save Account Changes” to confirm update to email address.
6. Your settings have been updated message will appear.

Note: Changing your email address requires you to re-log in to your account after completing the above steps.

Yes, when you are using the Email Header Analyzer tool at the bottom of the page is a link to "Permanently forget this email header".

Clicking this will delete that message from our system. If you have lost the link to your header, we cannot retrieve it. All headers are automatically deleted after 40 days.

If you would like to change your email address, you must actually invite a new user to your account because your users are tied directly to email addresses.

However, this is very easy to do! Note: If your account is configured as a "View Only" account, you will need to ask a user listed as "Editor" or "Owner" to create the invitation.

1. Visit the User Management settings page.
2. Next to the "Invite User" option, type in the email address you would like to invite.
3. Select the level of access you would like to give this new account. Users have Read-Only access to the account, while Editors can make changes.
4. Click "Add User" to send the invitation
5. Once you accept the invitation and set your password on the new account, you can click "Remove" on the old account to clean it up.

Note:If you are an Owner, you will need to contact Support to transfer ownership to your new account.

There are three permission level roles of access that MxToolbox users can be assigned:

• Owner: Full permissions to modify all account settings. The owner cannot be changed online. If you need to move account ownership to a different user, please contact Support by opening a ticket at the top of this page.
• Edit Access: Full permissions to modify all account settings. Can be removed by other editors or the current owner.
• Read-Only Access: Can read and view only. This permission type cannot make any changes to the account other than modifying their own information.

Where do I set Permission Levels?

User permission levels are set when a new user is invited and can be updated on the Account Management page.

Which actions require Edit Access or higher?

The following is a list of common actions that require Edit Access:

• Adding/editing/deleting monitors
• Adding/removing Delivery Center domains
• Creating/updating notification alert policies
• Activating third-party integrations in Delivery Center
• Updating billing information
• Inviting new users
• And more

To set up SMS Email for your MxToolbox account, simply follow the below steps:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Click “username@mxtoolbox.com” in top right corner for dropdown menu.
3. Click “Settings” option directly below username.
4. Click "Account Settings" tab to access your Account Management information.
5. Find Account Users section (shown in below image).
6. In the Set SMS Email field, enter your phone number and your mobile carrier's designated email address, separated by the @ symbol (e.g., 1234567890@txt.att.net).
7. Click “Save” to confirm your SMS Email update.
8. A green "Your settings have been saved" message will appear.

MxToolbox's SMS Email option supports the SMS Email addresses entered because we do not currently support native messaging. Please see the following highlighted image for more information about our SMS Email setup:

MxToolbox supports SMS and Time-based One-time Password (TOTP).

Visit the MFA Settings Page to configure MFA. Note: You will be asked for your password a second time when accessing the MFA page to confirm that you are recently authenticated and should be able to enable or disable MFA on your account.

You can see the MFA status of other users on your account on the Account Management page.

For example, if your mobile phone number is 555-123-4567 and your carrier is AT&T, your SMS address would be 5551234567@txt.att.net. For non-US residents, the address must begin with your country code.

If you use one of the most popular carriers, here are some examples of what your "sender" email will appear as:

• AT&T: phonenumber@txt.att.net
• T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
• Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
• Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
• Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com

For comprehensive lists of SMS Email Address formats by carrier, see the following tables:

If you use a third-party provider, such as Mailchimp, Mailgun, or SendGrid, to send your outbound emails or marketing campaigns, you can still test your inbox placement pre-send with MxToolbox. Testing your inbox placement is beneficial for your email deliverability and shows you where your messages land: inbox, Spam/Junk, or failed to be delivered.

To set up inbox placement tests with senders like Mailchimp, Mailgun, and Sendgrid, follow these instructions: [link]

If you're seeing that you're listed on Spam RATS on our site, but you see that other sites, including the Spam RATS site itself show you as not listed that is due to the way Spam RATS handles certain IPs.

In cases of IPs that they are aware belong to providers (such as Google, Microsoft, etc) they may have a poor reputation. In that case, They ARE listed on Spam RATS and we will show them as listed, but do not show as listed on the Spam RATS website.

We have spoken with Spam RATS to let them know of possible confusion.

If you're having email delivery problems, you should speak with our representatives on what steps you can take for better email delivery by using the "Submit a Ticket" button on this page.

1. Please check your usage on our API Page to ensure you are within your API limits.
2. Check rate limiting, if the error returned is 403 HTML response then this is likely due to rate limiting. The rate limit is variable so we can't give you a specific number. Please see our article on Rate Limits and using an exponential backoff.
3. Check your lookup using the "Try It" button on the API Page.
4. Collect the following information and contact our support team (There's a submit ticket at the top of this page):
   
   
   • What IP(s) are the requests coming from?
   • How are you making the calls (single machine, distributed network, an appliance, web/mobile app, etc)?
   • How often are you looking to run lookups? Is this in short bursts, or throughout the day?
   • What is the purpose of the API calls (ie we're trying to check the MX Record of all of our customers)?
   • Have you already implemented an exponential backoff?
   • Which specific API call(s) are you trying to make? Have these calls worked before? Have any other API calls worked for you before?
   • Please provide the exact error you received as the timestamp. Please also include the full url you used for the API call and if you have code you can share with us, please include that as well.

1. Click on your email address in the top right corner and click on "Settings".

2. Click on Account Settings from the black navigation bar.

3. In the Invite User section, please:

1. Enter the email address of the invitee.
2. Select the permissions access level you want the new user to have. (For further details on the different permissions levels, click here: User Permission Types).

4. Click on Send Invitation.

The user will then receive an email invitation with the subject You're Invited to use MxToolbox! and will need to fill out their account settings and create a password.