Email delivery bad reputation of cloudflare servers

[chucky_ea]

What is the name of the domain?

finaltask.in

What is the error number?

upstream

What is the error message?

upstream (hotmail-com.olc.protection.outlook.com.) temporary error: Unknown error: transient error (451): 4.7.650 The mail server [104.30.10.82] has been temporarily rate limited due to IP reputation. For e-mail delivery information, see https://postmaster.live.com (S775) [Name=Protocol Filter Agent][AGT=PFA][MxId=11BB7200F136B1ED] [BL6PEPF00022574.namprd02.prod.outlook.com 2025-07-02T15:37:28.862Z 08DDB900793347CC]

What is the issue you’re encountering

not delivering email due to poor server ip hygiene

What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?

talked to hotmail support

What are the steps to reproduce the issue?

send an email

Screenshot of the error

[cscharff]

Yep. You should find a real mail server to receive mail for your domain. Mail forwarding services are always going to run into this, Cloudflare’s especially.

[chucky_ea]

if cloudflare isnt able to forward mails whats the perpouse using this service? emails are pretty important i think. Or is there something wrong with spf dkim dmarc… it worked before what changed in 2 months?

[chucky_ea]

any free alternative you think is valid. Or whats a real mail server in your opinion?

[cscharff]

@chucky_ea

any free alternative you think is valid

Absolutely not.

@chucky_ea

Or whats a real mail server in your opinion?

One from your hosting provider? I get ‘free’ email from Dreamhost if I wanted it. I pay for an Office 365 account for other reasons and use it’s email instead. You have a .in domain, so Zoho has HQ in Chennai; they seem like nice enough folks.

[chucky_ea]

i fixed it. Seems to work again.

Summary

For best Hotmail deliverability:

1. Use ~all in SPF (not -all).
2. Include all your legitimate sending providers.
3. Set up DKIM + DMARC.
4. Avoid reliance on SPF if emails will be forwarded

[chucky_ea]

nevermind not fixed yet still unreliable

[DarkDeviL]

@chucky_ea

any free alternative

Considering this one, I’m wondering:

Do you have any paid set ups, … at all?

@chucky_ea

nevermind not fixed yet

You’re messing around with your SPF record, and in ways that you shouldn’t have.

In the time since your first mention of SPF, you’ve at least gone from having “include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:hotmail.com”, to be including invalid entries such as e.g. “ipv4:104.30.10.* ipv4:104.30.8.*”, and now to be be including “include:hotmail.com” twice, and also having both Google and the free Gmail domain included, with “include:gmail.com include:_spf.google.com”.

→

“include:spf.protection.outlook.com” should only be included, if you’re actually using a paid Microsoft Office 365 set up.

The duplicated “include:hotmail.com” seems a bit strange, and I’m curious where exactly you got that advice from, because it seems odd.

“include:gmail.com” should never be used, and “include:_spf.google.com” should only be included, if you’re actually using a paid Google Workspace set up.

The Hetzner IP address you’re having in your SPF, … does not follow the best practices for operating a mail server, and most likely have no purpose in the SPF record, at all.

That adds the question:

If you’re both using the paid Microsoft Office 365 AND the paid Google Workspace at the same time, … then why bother playing around with the Email Routing?

(And while I was writing all of the above, I see that you’ve ended up with yet another change to the SPF record!).