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Are questions related to email hosting on-topic at Pro Webmasters?

We get a fair number of questions about email such as:

  • What is X problem with DNS MX records?
  • Problem X when sending email through host Y
  • All email I send from my domain is marked as spam
  • How do I configure my mail server to do X?
  • Problem X with my website's email newsletter
  • How do I use the cPanel settting X for email?

Which of these and other email questions, if any, are on-topic here?

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  • I ask because I have been closing email questions not directly related to a website or website marketing as off-topic. I've gotten some feedback from users that email hosting is intrinsically linked to web hosting and they are surprised that email questions are off-topic.
    – Stephen Ostermiller Mod
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 6:48
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    Email is often part of webhosting, but seeing as we have serverfault I would have thought that's a good place for it to go.
    – paulmorriss
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 13:25
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    Server Fault only applies to seriously techy email server questions when most of what we get here is about DNS or cPanel/Plesk setup. If you asked Server Fault about adding an email account to 1&1 you'd be way out of place.
    – Andrew Lott
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 21:44

1 Answer 1

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I think any questions related to email can be divided into six camps:

  1. Software client questions (i.e. What isn't my email software like Outlook working?) belong on Super User.

  2. Server software installation, email server management, and spam filter installation belongs on Server Fault.

  3. Web-based email issues (i.e. sending email via Gmail) belongs on Web Applications.

  4. Coding based email questions (i.e. Why isn't my mail form sending my email?) belongs at Stack Overflow.

  5. Cpanel email setup, emails sent marked as spam (either through a website or domain controlled by the user), and sending emails from localhost for development belong at Webmasters.

  6. Any questions about how what other sites are doing about email or how their email services work are off-topic.

Serverfault also seems to handle DNS questions related to email but we seem to get a bunch of them here. We should ask their moderators their thoughts on where those may best belong. I'm cool with having them here but they may get faster help over there.

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  • The problem I see with those other sites is that they require questions to be by and for professionals of those fields. Almost any professional Webmaster is going to have to handle email somehow, but relatively few of them would also be professional web hosts or professional coders, etc.
    – DKing
    Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 19:33

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