Upwork Emails always end up in Spam folder

[trevordaniel2]

Hi,

My email address is a hotmail one and I access it through Outlook.

Every email that comes through from Upwork ends up in the "Junk E-mail" folder.

I have manually selected the emails every time they come in and selected "Not Junk", "Never Block Sender" and even "Never Block Sender Domain".... and still they are categorised as Junk....

This must be a major problem for Upwork not just me...?

Why has Upwork got these strange email domains and all the emails are mark "On behalf of"?

"donotreply=upwork.com@mg.upwork.com; on behalf of; Upwork Notification <donotreply@upwork.com>"

Are Upwork falling for the old problem of trying to be too clever?

Whatever I do I cannot get Upwork emails to come into my Inbox...

Anyone else?

Any ideas?

Trev

[mtngigi]

I have the same issue. And I have set up "rules" in my Mac Mail account so that emails get sorted out and sent to specific folders. It works on everything except Upwork emails - I have scratched my head over this and given up trying to figure it out.

Upwork chats go to the right folder, as do open ticket responses, but everything else related to jobs, recommendations, milestone notices, unread messages, etc., all end up in the junk folder.

ETA: It's interesting to find out it may not just be me.

[kochubei_valeria]

Trevor and Virginia,

Thanks for letting us know about this. We'll have the team investigate this problem and will provide you with an update on this thread.

Edit: Could you please let us know if you noticed when Upwork emails started to go to your spam/junk folder?

[mtngigi]

Well, it's interesting to note that the problem may not be on my end.

As far as I can remember, Valeria, it's been doing this right from the start for me.. If not right away, as least early on ... it's been going on for a long while.

[kochubei_valeria]

Thanks for following up, Virginia. We are currently checking on our end as to why it may be happening. Could you please PM me the email headers for some of the emails that are marked as spam? Here is an article on how to view the email headers for different email providers.

We appreciate your collaboration.

[mtngigi]

I know how to view headers .... the one email in my junk folder has a header a mile long - are you sure you want to see it?

[kochubei_valeria]

That would be very helpful, Virginia. You can send it to me in a private message if it's more convenient.

[mtngigi]

Just did.

[mtngigi]

Any updates on this issue, Valeria?

[kochubei_valeria]

Virginia,

The team investigated and haven't found any known issues on our end. However, we suspect that there may been an issue connected to your email domain, which is a bit outdated. The team is working to confirm if that's the issue and whether we can still have the notifications delivered successfully to that email.

[mtngigi]

Okay ... thanks. Of course I get all my other UW notifications just fine.

[gareth_gotlegs]

I seem to be having the same problem. I have tried to set up rules but everytime a client sends me an email it ends up in my spam folder. I don't know how to move it to my inbox. 

[prestonhunter]

re: "I seem to be having the same problem. I have tried to set up rules but everytime a client sends me an email it ends up in my spam folder. I don't know how to move it to my inbox."

Unfortunately, Upwork does not know either.

Upwork can't help you with this problem.

This is something that you would need to work through with your email software, email vendor and/or internet provider.

Like any individual or organization that sends email, there are things they can do on their end to minimize the likelihood that a message ends up in a spam folder. Upwork already is doing many of those things. But Upwork has no control over that later stages of the email process.

[erikadawnprice]

I have the same issue. All upwork emails end up in my spam, even if I change my email inbox and spam filtration settings. It has been an issue for many months. Any tips would be very helpful as it has cost me some jobs, or at least cost me some clients' patience. 

[mtngigi]

I don't know how it can cost you jobs or try your client's patience. Don't you get instant notication when an email arrives?

[trevordaniel2]

---

@Virginia F wrote:

I don't know how it can cost you jobs or try your client's patience. Don't you get instant notication when an email arrives?

---

Perhaps beacuse you don't get notification if it goes into the spam folder???

[trevordaniel2]

The strange thing is that i always get notifictions of new post on forum threads....

which comes from Community Mailer <mailer@lithium.com>

[mtngigi]

I get notifications for all my emails, no matter which folder they fall into.

[kochubei_valeria]

Trevor and Erika,

Could you please also send me a private message with some headers of the messages from Upwor that end up in your spam/scam folder? We have a team investigating and trying to get to the bottom of this issue.

Thank you.

---

@Valeria K. wrote:

Thanks for following up, Virginia. We are currently checking on our end as to why it may be happening. Could you please PM me the email headers for some of the emails that are marked as spam? Hereis an article on how to view the email headers for different email providers.

---

[trevordaniel2]

Hi Valeria,

I have just PMd you headers from 2 example emails..

Trev

[walkerrowe]

If your rules in Outlook are not marking the mail as spam then the anti-spam system your email provider is using is doing that.  Your email provider will have to contact SpamHaus.org or other to get upwork removed from the blacklist.  

As Valerie said look at the header of the email.  Upwork uses different servers for difference messages, so some could get marked as spam and others not. And show that header to your email provider.

You can look yourself to see if Upwork is flagged as a spammer.  For example with this tool.

https://www.spamhaus.org/lookup

or

http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

And enter the IP address of the sending server (i.e, upwork's server which seems to be mailgun.net), which you can read from the email header like these two lines:

192.237.158.66

domain of mg.upwork.com designates 192.237.158.66 as permitted sender

Received: from do158-66.mailgun.net (do158-66.mailgun.net [192.237.158.66]) by mx.zohomail.com
 

[trevordaniel2]

this is still happening....

quite annoying.

i miss a lot of email notifications...

[kochubei_valeria]

Hi Trevor,

Could you please check your email settings and make sure there are any filters or limitations set to block Upwork notifications?

[d55f9f0e]

Upwork obviously has an issue with these types of email notifications. Either their SPF, DMARC, or DKIM records are incorrect because I have multiple email providers (exchange online and Apple mail) both rejecting these messages.

[pandoraharper]

---

@Christopher B wrote:
Upwork obviously has an issue with these types of email notifications. Either their SPF, DMARC, or DKIM records are incorrect because I have multiple email providers (exchange online and Apple mail) both rejecting these messages.

---

 You might want to reach out to the Customer Service team. Since this problem has not been reported by anyone else in the Forums (this is the Forums), the problem may not be a simple as it seems. 

Customer Service Link: https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us

[joshua-ogden]

this has been happening to me for a long time.  and my email is from my own website.  so its not some "outdated" host.  its really annoying.  upwork is obviously doing something wrong if people are having this issue.  seems silly to me that we have to contact our email providers and and try to get upwork unblacklisted in order for their emails to be recieved.  and it didnt do this for the first few months.  once i realized it, i had missed quite a few notifications.  very annoying.

[vladag]

Hi Joshua,

I'm sorry about the issue you're experiencing with receiving email notifications. Our team will reach out to you directly via a support ticket, take a closer look and provide more information.

[dreamingfilms]

I am having the same issue. I use Apple's icloud for my e-mails and it always markes them as spam, no matter how many times I try to flag them as No Junk. Specially from the address @mg.upwork.com

[egaruth]

Hi Flavio,

Thank you for reaching out to us. One of our team members will reach out to you directly via a support ticket to assist you further. You can access your tickets on this page.

[tlbp]

Try adding the email address to your "Safe Sender" list

https://helpcenter.taxcaddy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000083367-Updating-your-Safe-Senders-list-in-AO...

[6902ca01]

For anyone still looking for a solution in this year of our lord 2022: it's your domain, not necessarily Upwork's problem.

I use gmail, and the only way I could make them stay out of the Spam folder was to go into the Google Workspace Admin console and create a bypass filter on the domain level. Here's an article explaining how to get there and do it: https://support.google.com/a/answer/2368132

My guess is that in the past (or maybe currently, not sure) Upwork had a problem with spam severe enough that most of the major players in the email game flagged the Upwork domain as spam. These flags supercede any flags users try to apply to them. This is a hard rule that you can't bypass through typical email clients, rules, or settings. It has to be done at the organizational level/outside of your personal account as far as I understand. I'm not sure how to do this on a personal email - my suggestion would be to contact support and explain the problem.

Hope this helps folks searching for answers like I was.

[ca4188b7]

Wow, they have had 6 years to do something about this, and yet still this is an issue!  Does anyone know how to do this type of fix for microsoft office?