Why We Do Not Recommend .info Domains for Cold Email

What is happening

SURBL, one of the blocklists most receiving servers check, has been listing newly registered .info domains. People are reporting it more and more, and it applies to fresh registrations rather than just domains with a bad sending history.

The cause is historical. For years .info was the cheapest TLD to register for the first year, which made it the default choice for spammers, scammers and phishing operations sending disposable volume. Enough of that accumulated that the extension itself now carries the reputation, not just the individual domains on it.

Why this hurts more than it looks

SURBL is a URI blocklist. It does not only judge the server that sent a message, it checks the domains that appear as links inside the message body. So a listed .info damages you in more places than people expect:

• As a sending domain, your mail is filtered before it reaches an inbox.
• As a custom tracking domain, every link in your email points at a listed domain, so even mail sent from clean infrastructure gets caught.
• As a redirect or landing domain, the same applies.

That third case is the one that catches people out. You can run perfectly warmed Azure or Google mailboxes on clean .com domains and still land in spam because your tracking link resolves to a .info.

What to do instead

Stick to .com. It is the most trusted extension, it is what recipients expect from a real business, and it does not carry a category-level reputation problem. If the .com you want is taken, .co and .net are reasonable second choices.

Avoid the cheap-first-year extensions generally. The reason .info ended up here is the same reason others will: low registration cost attracts high volume abuse, and blocklists eventually respond to the pattern rather than the individual domain.

If you already own .info domains

Do not assume they are permanently dead. Listings can be reviewed and removed, so it is worth checking those domains over the next few weeks to see whether they get de-listed.

In the meantime, do not send from them and do not use them as tracking domains. Move active campaigns onto clean domains first and treat the .info estate as paused rather than as something to salvage mid-campaign.