I have just subscribed to the Mailinblack solution for our domains climont.fr and kphilus.com. I have the basic MX Plan offer with OVH. Basically, everything works fine, except the forwards (pers1@climont.fr → pers2@climont.fr), which are flagged as spam by Mailinblack (SPF issue).
The goal of the forwards is that two collaborators can view and manage the messages independently (especially orders, which follow two streams: order preparation and accounting, roughly, and are handled by two different people). I am open to other possibilities if they provide the same ease of managing received messages.
Mailinblack cannot do anything, but another offering from OVH might perhaps solve the SPF‑related problem. I would like to be sure, and the links to contact someone at OVH (technical, sales) lead to an AI tightly linked to the documentation or here, without the possibility to speak with a person (the idea of chatting with a knowledgeable representative appealed to me). I haven't found anything equivalent in the community archives. If you know of a similar topic or have suggestions, I will read them with pleasure, thank you!
Is it possible to create an alias that would let me send mail to alias@climont.fr, which would forward to pers1 and pers2@climont.fr, without triggering a spam classification because of SPF? If so, which plan would support this? With my current plan I can only set up forwards.
The issue you describe with redirects is a known technical conflict between OVH’s redirection system and Mailinblack’s SPF verification.
When your mailbox pers1@climont.fr redirects an email to pers2@climont.fr, the OVH server forwards it. The problem is that the destination server (the one for pers2) sees that the email comes from OVH’s IP, but the SPF record of the domain that sent the original mail (the sender’s domain) does not include OVH as an authorized server. Since Mailinblack is strict, it blocks it due to an SPF failure.
In your case, with the MX Plan offering, you can create aliases. Instead of creating a redirect from pers1@climont.fr to pers2@climont.fr, create an alias: pers1@climont.fr that delivers the mail to the mailbox of pers2@climont.fr. This way, the email goes directly to pers2’s mailbox and the forwarding that triggers the SPF failure does not occur.
I would try an alias first; if it doesn’t work, you’ll need to look into the fixed IP with OVH.
Hello, thank you for your suggestion. I had indeed read that an alias can be a solution, but in the OVH interface I only see the possibility to set up redirects. I suppose the alias functionality is not included in the MX Plan offer I have. Could you tell me which offer(s) allow creating aliases, or having a fixed IP?
If you don’t see a specific column called “Alias” in the OVH interface, you’re probably looking at the legacy version of the MX Plan offering. In that version, the alias functionality is implemented via redirections. To achieve what you need (having an address receive mail without causing SPF issues), you should use this “redirection” feature as if it were an alias.
Give it a try and let us know just in case I’m mistaken
Yes, we do have a historic version of MX Plan, indeed. I use the redirects offered in this plan. For example, I create the redirect from pers1@climont.fr to pers2@climont.fr, with the box checked “Keep a copy at OVH”. Pers1 and Pers2 each receive the messages in their mailboxes (IMAP) and can manage them independently (for example, orders must follow different paths depending on the service involved). With this method, as you explained, there is an SPF failure when passing through Mailinblack for Pers2.
I therefore don’t see how to make the redirect work like an alias.
In principle, I’m happy to change the MX Plan offering, but I’d like to be sure to have one that no longer causes problems, and I haven’t managed to contact anyone at OVH via the help/contact to confirm this.
The alternatives, such as configuring the same account pers1@climont.fr in two mail clients (Thunderbird, IMAP) for each of the people involved, involve synchronization with the server, and as soon as one person reads the message, archives or deletes it, the second person does not see the message “unread”.
The problem is that the redirection forwards the email and that causes an SPF failure with Mailinblack. The solution is to use an alias, which delivers the email directly without forwarding it and does not generate that problem.
In your historic MX Plan, aliases are created from the email accounts list. Find the account pers2@climont.fr and in the column “Alias” add pers1@climont.fr. That way both will receive the emails without SPF failing.
If you don’t see the column “Alias”, contact OVH support so they can confirm whether your version allows it or if you need to migrate to Email Pro, which does include it and lets you manage it without issues.
In that guide, under the “Create an alias” section, it states that you can add aliases both from an MX Plan service and from Exchange or Email Pro. The process is similar: you go to the “Email accounts” tab, look for the “Alias” column and add the address you want to act as a mask.
Yes, I have the “MX Plan Roundcube” version, for which it is specified “To create an alias on an MX Plan Roundcube email account, you must do it the same way as a forward.” I don’t have the ability to create aliases. I’ll see if I can switch to a recent MX Plan offering.
Contact support and request a migration of your MX Plan Roundcube to the modern version (with OWA webmail). Once migrated, you can create the alias pers1@climont.fr on the pers2@climont.fr account from the panel, and the SPF issue with Mailinblack will be resolved at the source, because the alias does not forward—it delivers directly.
However, to avoid any mistakes, have Support confirm whether this is indeed the case :wink:
With IMAP the synchronization works properly. If one of the two users who have access to this mailbox reads it, it will be marked as read. They can always revert the status to “unread”.
If they delete it, it will be deleted for everyone.
If they move it to a folder, that will also be for everyone.
If you really want there to be no coordination between your managers who use the same mailbox, you can use POP3 but you will quickly regret it.
Hello, yes, it is confirmed in the official OVH documentation. The migration to Zimbra affects exclusively the MX Plan, not the professional solutions.
You can see it in this OVH status notice: it states that the migration is to “migrate the MXPLAN accounts under Outlook Web Access (OWA) to Zimbra”.
And on the product pages for Email Pro and Hosted Exchange, the webmail remains Outlook Web Access (OWA) as clearly specified. Therefore, if you migrate to one of these offers, OWA stays unchanged.
Today you can no longer order a Mail Pro account that runs on Microsoft OWA. Zimbra is automatically offered.
However, Exchange (hosted or private) remains Exchange, and it is necessarily Microsoft. We’re talking about something else and it’s at a different price.
I hope that the French <> Spanish cross translations are reliable.
I don't speak Spanish, but the translations seem good to me, yes
Zimbra should do the job, I have no apprehension on that front (although the Zimbra version with Monbureannumerique, for schools, isn’t very ergonomic on a smartphone but we’re almost exclusively on PC at work anyway). I have a request pending with OVH to choose a good offer, I’m waiting for their reply (hard to reach them despite everything!). Thanks for all your help.
just in case I’m mistaken 
