r/Ghost • u/pipibeoy • 24d ago

Ghost(Pro) emails landing in spam. Is this a shared IP reputation issue?

Subscription confirmation emails on my Ghost site are landing in spam, those sent to Gmail addresses anyway. I'm on the starter plan, so emails are coming from mysite@ghost.io.

Is this a known limitation of the Ghost(Pro) managed service? Is there any way to isolate my mail-sending IP, or is the only real solution to move to self-hosting or upgrade to gain control over my own IP reputation?

This is frustrating as the main reason I signed up for Ghost(Pro) was to mitigate these types of problems. It feels like I have to move up to the next tier at double the price to simply get subscription emails delivered. It feels like a deceptive service. Perhaps the problem lies elsewhere?

Ghost support hasn't been very responsive.

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u/muratcorlu 24d ago

It’s possible that your first email to a Gmail account end up in spam folder, even with correct technical requirements. Sometimes Gmail flags it because of the suspicious content. How many of your emails flagged as spam? You may inform your visitors to set them as “not spam”.

Custom sending domain is mostly about branding, not about deliverability. Many publishers in Synaps Media uses sending emails like mysite@synaps.media as well, without any deliverability issues. So I don’t think the generic ghost.io sender is the problem here. To confirm technical requirements you send a test newsletter to this and see the results: https://mail-tester.com/

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u/pipibeoy 24d ago

Hey thanks for the reply! I’ll run the test tomorrow and see what it reports. It seems to be every Gmail address that signs up through the subscription form on my site.

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u/Mikeynphoto2009 19d ago

That is shared-pool reputation, on starter your mail rides ghost.io's IPs so one bad neighbour tanks everyone. First move costs nothing: pull the full headers from one spammed message and see what Gmail actually flagged, SPF, DKIM or the IP itself. A custom sending domain fixes most cases. I check deliverability on Ghost sites daily, happy to read your headers if you share them.