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Why are my outbound messages rejected by Gmail?

As of April 2024, Gmail has drastically increased enforcement of their requirement for all senders to use SPF and DKIM authentication.

If this is impacting you then you may receive a delivery failure (bounce message) that looks like one of these (highlighting added for emphasis):

john.doe@gmail.com: host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[142.251.116.26] said:
    550-5.7.26 This mail has been blocked because the sender is unauthenticated. 
    550-5.7.26 Gmail requires all senders to authenticate with either SPF or DKIM.
    550-5.7.26 Authentication results: 
    550-5.7.26 DKIM = did not pass
    550-5.7.26 SPF [mailserver.example.com] with ip: [216.172.106.39] = did not pass 
    550-5.7.26 For instructions on setting up authentication, go to 
    550 5.7.26 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication 
john.doe@gmail.com: host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] said:
    550-5.7.1 [xxx.xxx.xxxx.xxx] Our system has detected that this message is 
    550-5.7.1 likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail,
    550-5.7.1 this message has been blocked. Please visit 
    550-5.7.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=UnsolicitedMessageError 
    550 5.7.1 for more information.

These errors indicate that you probably need to enable SPF and DKIM for your domain.

See: How do I enable SPF and DKIM for emails sent from my domain?

Last updated April 19, 2024