UCEPROTECTL2 Blacklist: 5 Things You Need to Know (Good News Inside)

1. UCEPROTECTL2 didn’t blacklist your IP directly, but an ENTIRE list of IP addresses of your host.

UCEPROTECTL2 means UCEPROTECT Level 2.

There are 3 levels of IP blacklisting with UCEPROTECT:

• UCEPROTECTL1 : listing of single particular IP addresses.
• UCEPROTECTL2 : listing of multiple IP addresses of your ISP / host / domain provider.
• UCEPROTECTL3 : listing of whole ranges of IP addresses of a ISP / host / domain provider.

What exactly is blacklisted in your case?

Let's say you bought your domain on Namecheap. That means there's one of Namecheap's IP addresses behind your domain (the host).

As most IP addresses of Namecheap are blacklisted on UCEPROTECTL2 and UCEPROTECTL3, then you can end up being listed in one of those, or both, as a Namecheap customer.

UCEPROTECTL2 blacklists lists of IP addresses of your host so it’s not your particular IP as a company or person.

In short, your IP is in this blocklist because UCEPROTECT considers that multiple IP addresses of your ISP / host are sending spam and that your host is not "strict enough against spammers".

2. UCEPROTECTL2 has little to no impact on your ability to land in inbox.

The major inbox providers are Google (Gmail and Google Workspace) and Microsoft (Outlook / Office 365 / Exchange). 

Those two big providers use their own proprietary filters and algorithms to decide if your emails will land in inbox or spam in the mailboxes of their users.

They have their own way of scoring your sender reputation and it's much more reliable than relying on external blacklists. 

And, as UCEPROTECTL2 is an external blacklist, in most cases, it's not taken into account by Google and Microsoft. 

But how do Google and Microsoft score your sender reputation?

That's simple: by checking how their users interact to your emails. 

Basically, if you send emails to Google inboxes and a significant part of them are opened, replied positively, marked as important, removed from spam, it tells Google that you’re an interesting sender and you deserve to land in inbox, not in spam. 

However, if your emails receive very few openings, replies, stars and worse, are marked as spam, it tells the inbox providers that you send irrelevant messages and deserve to land in spam. 

At MailReach, we regularly check our statistics and data to see the impact of blacklists on the deliverability and inbox placement of our customers.

Thousands of domains of our customers are linked to MailReach and a lot of them are listed on UCEPROTECTL2. For 99% of them, it doesn't have any impact on their deliverability. 

In other words, being listed on UCEPROTECTL2 won’t prevent you from getting a perfect deliverability. ‍

3. You can’t ask to be removed from UCEPROTECTL2, it's on your host's end but that’s OK. 

UCEPROTECT talks about it on their website : ‍

‍"Your provider didn't act fast enough to disconnect abusers, or has no clue how to install preventive measures against spammers. UCEPROTECT-Level 2 deescalates dynamic and removes the listed allocation if the number of Level 1 listed Impacts went below a predefined trashcount within the last 7 days.

Level 2 listings are removed automatically and free of charge as soon as they no longer meet the listing criteria in the policy for level 2

To get a netblock out of Level 2, the single IP addresses and their Impacts within that netblock at Level 1 have to be removed.

Normally, only your service provider can request for this.

If you never sent spam, never maintained an open proxy or open relay, but the netblock with your email server’s IP address inside is listed at LEVEL 2, we suggest you send a strong compliant to your service provider, and demand to have your IP address changed to a different netblock that is not known to be a SPAMMERHAVEN. [...]

Only your service provider can change your situation.”

‍But guess what, that’s OK as UCEPROTECTL2 has, as said above, no negative effect on deliverability.

Relax, let go and follow our guidelines below.‍

4. Your #1 priority is to run a proper deliverability test. We have the perfect (free) tool for that. 

As seen above, most external blacklists have little to no impact on deliverability towards Google and Microsoft inboxes (who own most of the inbox market shares). And, whether you're blacklisted or not, the ONLY thing that counts is where your emails land on the inboxes you actually target. 

Important: don't check where you land land on inboxes you never target. If you only contact professional inboxes (such as Google Workspace and Office365), it's definitely not relevant to check your deliverability towards personal inboxes (Gmail.com, Hotmail.com, Outlook.com). Why? Because the spam filtering is different between professional and personal mailboxes.

In all cases, you need to check how your deliverability is doing and take action if needed. ‍

To get your deliverability score and find out your inbox placement on the major providers, you can use MailReach’s Free Email Spam Test.

Basically, you simply have to send an email (in real sending conditions) to a list of 31 inboxes given by MailReach and we’ll give you a detailed report on your deliverability including all the things you can improve to land more in inbox. 

You get a score out of 10 and a report of checks (content, spam words, links, tracking, blacklists and many more).

5. If you regularly send emails, make sure to monitor, raise and maintain your sender reputation by using an efficient email warmer like MailReach.

To have the best deliverability and land all your emails to the inbox of your contacts, you need a high sender reputation. And this is mostly influenced by how your recipients interact with your emails. 

In other words, the more positive engagement you get on your emails, the more likely you are to reach the inbox. 

By getting positive interactions to your emails (openings, positive responses, stars, saving your emails from spam) it tells Google and Microsoft that you're a legitimate, interesting sender who deserves to land in inbox.

That’s what an email warm up tool like MailReach: generating a perfect email activity on your address by exchanging emails with a network of thousands of inboxes. Each of your warming emails are opened, replied positively, marked as important and saved from spam. It improves your sender reputation and, in turn, your deliverability. 

More information in this article : How an Email Warming Service Can Help You Improve Email Deliverability

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Final thoughts

Being listed on UCEPROTECTL2 like UCEPROTECTL3 is harmless most of the time and it’s not because of you directly but your hosting provider. 

That being said, we STRONGLY recommend you to check your deliverability by running an email spam test using our Spam Checker to see where your emails land and get a helpful report for potential improvements.

Landing in spam means losing customers and money.

A spam test will help you see how you're doing and if you don’t have 10/10 even when following the recommendations of the Spam Checker, that means there’s a high probability that you sender reputation needs to be improved. 

Consider using our email warm up service to monitor and maximize your sender reputation and make sure to avoid the spam folder.