Spam filtering and mail rules

Every message arriving for your domain is checked by a spam filter. Mail it marks as spam goes to your Junk folder, where you can still read it. You can set how strict the filter is for a whole domain or for one mailbox, and add your own rules for filing mail.

Set the filter for the whole domain

1. In your control panel, choose Mailboxes and click your domain.
2. Open the Filtering & delivery tab.
3. In the Spam filtering card, choose How hard to filter:
   • Relaxed: only obvious spam goes to Junk. Some spam will reach the inbox.
   • Standard: the default, and right for most mailboxes.
   • Strict: more goes to Junk, including the occasional real message.
4. Under Never treat as spam, list senders you always trust, one per line. Write a whole domain as @example.com. These are still scanned for viruses.
5. Under Always treat as spam, list senders you never want in your inbox. Their mail goes straight to Junk rather than being refused, so a mistake can be undone.
6. Click Save filtering. It applies on the mail server's next cycle.

These settings only affect mail arriving for your domain, not what you send.

Set the filter for one mailbox

Different people want different things: whoever reads sales@ may want everything through, while invoices@ wants nothing doubtful.

1. On the Mailboxes tab, click Manage beside the mailbox.
2. Under Spam filtering, choose Same as the rest of the domain, Relaxed, Standard or Strict.
3. Untick File spam into the Junk folder if you would rather keep marked spam in the inbox, with its mark.
4. Click Save.

Every other address on the domain keeps the domain's setting.

Teach the filter

Moving a message into your Junk folder teaches the filter that it is spam. Moving one out of Junk teaches it that it is not. This works from webmail and from any mail app that moves mail between folders.

Good to know: What the filter learns is shared by every mailbox on the same mail server. That is why it improves quickly, and also why it is worth only marking real spam as Junk, not newsletters you no longer want. For those, unsubscribe or use a rule.

File mail with rules

Rules sort a mailbox's incoming mail for you.

1. On the Mailboxes tab, open the menu beside the mailbox's Manage button and choose Mail rules.
2. Click Add a rule and give it a name.
3. Choose what it looks at (sender, recipient or subject), how it compares (contains or is exactly), and the text to look for.
4. Choose what happens: move it to a folder (type the folder name), keep it in the inbox and stop, or delete it.
5. Click Save rules. The mail server picks them up on its next cycle.

Rules run in order and stop at the first one that matches. Spam is filed into Junk before your rules run, so a rule never acts on spam.

Good to know: delete it really deletes. The message is not kept in Trash.

Related

• Make sure your email arrives
• Read your email in webmail
• Forwarders, aliases, catch-all and auto-replies