Can I Change My IP to Avoid Blacklisting?

Sometimes a country or email filter will subscribe to a blacklist that may disrupt some of your services. Your options to resolve this will depend on what type of server you host on and why the blacklisting occurred.

Email Blacklisting

If your email is being blacklisted, it is likely because of the IP of your local computer, your domain, or your server IP address. HostGator cannot assist with blacklists specifically identifying your domain or your local computer IP address.

Your option for resolving these issues will depend on the type of server you are hosting.

Shared Servers

With Shared hosting, all email is routed through common gateways shared by the entire server. These gateways are rotated regularly to ensure that clean IP addresses are being used to send your email.

Because of this, purchasing a dedicated IP address will not change the IP addresses your domain is routed through and would not affect blacklisting.

HostGator actively manages these gateways, removing them from blacklists and directly addressing any issues on our shared servers which may cause them to become blacklisted.

VPS and Dedicated Server

A VPS or Dedicated server may use one of its allotted IP addresses as a dedicated IP address for sending mail, and you may switch which IP address is used in order to use an IP that is not blacklisted. However, HostGator will not replace a blacklisted IP with a clean IP address. This option will only be effective up to the maximum number of IP addresses that you can purchase for your server.

It is a better and more effective long-term solution to prevent your server from being blacklisted and to actively work with blacklists to request de-listing if it does happen.

Firewall Blacklisting

Some countries may use firewalls to control the content that is displayed within the country. If your site can no longer be viewed in a country using a firewall because of your IP address, HostGator will not change your IP address.

We recommend upgrading to a VPS or Dedicated server. By upgrading, you will be provided with an environment with dedicated resources, your own dedicated IP addresses, and your own instance of WHM with no adjacent websites.

However, your new IP address may also get blacklisted if the cause of the blacklist is your website and not another website that was hosted on the same shared IP as yours. If this occurs, you might want to remove the content responsible for being blacklisted.