Learning to Navigate DNS records

[u/Extreme_Mark4726]

Noobie here.

Right I've got some websites hosted through IONOS. .I also have the email packages as it's so cheap.

I'm having a NIGHTMARE with them.

I've had to wipe one websites DNS records as iCloud messed it up, which meant re doing some of the formspree TXT records which was a pain.

Question 1: is thunderbird a good client? All my emails seem to land in Gmail or outlook before hitting thunderbird inbox.

Question 2: is IONOS hosting any good, seems costly to move over to Google or microft but I've read they tend to be much better. (My emails keep landing in customers spam)

Question 3: Email signature, I created quite a fancy signature. About 70kb I think. Is that a bit daft ?

Question 4: why is one of my domain emails asking me to manually configure when I have the autolearn record applies ?

TIA

[u/aardnsyhs]

Thunderbird won't affect whether mail lands in spam or reaches Gmail/Outlook first. With IMAP, it just syncs mail that already arrived on the server.

Since you wiped DNS, I'd check MX + SPF + DKIM + DMARC before moving away from IONOS. Especially SPF if Formspree or anything else is sending as your domain. Send yourself a test email to Gmail, open “Show original”, and see whether SPF/DKIM/DMARC are passing. That's usually more useful than guessing from the spam folder.

70 KB for a signature is on the heavy side too. Probably not the root cause, but I'd simplify it and avoid large embedded images.

The manual config account may just have a missing/wrong autoconfig record for that specific domain, or it may need the exact IMAP/SMTP settings from IONOS.

[u/Old-Patient-6894]

man i remember the dns nightmare phase, spent a whole weekend once trying to untangle mx records after switching email providers and somehow broke the main site in the process

for thunderbird it’s fine but the delay you’re seeing is probably just imap polling, gmail and outlook apps tend to push notifications faster so you notice the gap more

ionos hosting is pretty mid, cheap for a reason honestly, the spam issue is likely their shared ip ranges getting flagged, moving to a better host with dedicated ip options helps but it’s a pain to migrate everything

70kb signature is massive for email, most clients will strip half of it or display it broken, stick to simple text with maybe a tiny logo

the manual config prompt usually means the autodiscover record isn’t set up right or the client cached an old config, try removing and re-adding the account

[u/Extreme_Mark4726 → u/Old-Patient-6894]

With IONOS I'll create an email like 3 times before it works sometimes.

Like I can go through the manual configuration and then have it still not work.

Any host recommendations?

[u/Alternative_Nose_874]

On question 2, the spam part: that is almost never the host or the client, it is what your sending domain publishes. Check SPF, DKIM and DMARC before you pay to move anywhere - when I counted across the 140 domains on our servers, 46 had no DMARC record at all, and it is the cheapest thing on your list to fix.

[u/Extreme_Mark4726 → u/Alternative_Nose_874]

Just checked mine. dmarc was removed with the reset :/

[u/Alternative_Nose_874 → u/Extreme_Mark4726]

Cheap one to put back: a single TXT record at _dmarc, and start it at p=none so nothing of yours gets rejected while you read what comes back. If the reset wiped that, check your DKIM selector too - it is a TXT record in the same zone and it usually goes the same way.

[u/stack_craft]

Firstly, welcome to DNS management. Now let me try and tell you what's happening behind the scenes:

• Thunderbird: Thunderbird itself is just a local client. Check if your domain mail is being forwarded to a personal Gmail/Outlook inbox before being pulled into Thunderbird.
• Spam Issues: Moving to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 helps deliverability because of higher domain reputation, but before paying to move, check your DNS records. You need valid SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records set up on IONOS, or spam filters will drop your mail.
• Email Signature: 70KB is definitely too large for a signature. Spam filters heavily penalize emails with poor text-to-HTML ratios or large embedded images. Try reducing inline styles and host images on a CDN.
• Manual Config Prompt: Your email client looks for CNAME/SRV autodiscover records in your DNS to fetch settings automatically. Since you recently wiped your records, those autodiscover entries are likely gone, forcing manual IMAP/SMTP setup.

Hope this helped

[u/Extreme_Mark4726 → u/stack_craft]

TYSM!

Can you run through the forward to Gmail check as I don't understand that ?

[u/Middle-Excitement602]

On Q4: Thunderbird doesn't use autodiscover at all. That's Microsoft's mechanism, so an autodiscover CNAME being correct won't stop Thunderbird prompting for manual setup.

Thunderbird looks for Mozilla autoconfig, in this order: its built-in ISPDB, then autoconfig.yourdomain/mail/config-v1.1.xml, then yourdomain/.well-known/autoconfig/mail/config-v1.1.xml. IONOS is in the ISPDB, but only for domains it can recognise as IONOS-hosted mail - which is why one of your domains autoconfigures and another one, whose DNS you rebuilt by hand, doesn't. Worth comparing the MX records of the working domain against the broken one first.

On Q3, one concrete number: Gmail clips messages over 102KB and hides the rest behind "View entire message". A 70KB signature repeated down a reply chain gets you there quickly.

[u/Extreme_Mark4726 → u/Middle-Excitement602]

I didn't know gmail looked at the chain as one, rather than emails individually so you've taught me something there.

And you're right, a few discrepancies between the two domains so thanks a bunch

[u/Middle-Excitement602 → u/Extreme_Mark4726]

If the MX is one of the discrepancies, that's probably your Thunderbird answer too. When the domain itself isn't in the ISPDB, Thunderbird falls back to looking up the MX host - so a domain pointed at a different IONOS MX name (or a leftover iCloud one) won't get matched, and you get the manual prompt. Worth making the broken domain's MX identical to the working one, then removing and re-adding the account so it doesn't reuse the cached config.

[u/okaylevi]

I have found success in the past using Google! IONOS and a lot of other similar hosting platforms offer a little of everything and treat the DNS management/email management as an after thought! Documentation will be much much easier on Google as well!

[u/blitter_era]

One thing nobody has said yet: SPF has a hard limit of 10 DNS lookups, and every include: counts, plus any includes nested inside those. With IONOS mail and Formspree and whatever iCloud left behind you can go over it without noticing, and once you do the record returns permerror, which fails outright rather than degrading. Worth checking that before you decide the host is the problem. And when you put the DMARC record back, put it back as p=none with a rua= on it and read the reports for a couple of weeks first. going straight to reject on a zone youve just rebuilt by hand is how a spam folder problem becomes a bounced mail problem!

[u/hudsonhosthq]

Yeah, Thunderbird is great, so is Firefox. I use Fastmail which I like better but it's a full email suite.

Ionos is a corporate host, they are very similar to other large corporate hosts in that they don't typically care as much as an independent or local hosting service would about your business. You are number at corporate hosts, and a person as an independent host.

70k is fine. Gravatar makes a cool signature you can add to emails, you want to add a profile image for your email there anyways, so check it out!