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Gmail 550 5.7.25: the sending IP has no PTR record

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Hard bounceYour sending reputationGmail / Google Workspace

The error

550-5.7.25 The IP address sending this message does not have a PTR record setup, or the corresponding forward DNS entry does not point to the sending IP.

What it means

Gmail blocked the message because the IP it arrived from has no reverse DNS record, or the record it has does not resolve back to that same IP.

The receiver is refusing your mail because of how your sending IP or domain behaves, not because of this particular message.

Why it happens

Reverse DNS is set by whoever owns the IP address — your hosting provider — not in your own domain's DNS, which is why it is so often missed. Gmail treats its absence as a strong signal of an unmanaged or compromised host, because legitimate mail servers essentially always have one.

How to fix it

  1. Find the sending IP in the bounce, then ask your hosting or VPS provider to set a PTR record for it.
  2. Point the PTR at a hostname you control, e.g. mail.example.com.
  3. Make sure that hostname resolves forward to the same IP — a PTR that does not round-trip fails the check just as an absent one does.
  4. Allow for DNS propagation before retrying.

Official documentation: Google: Gmail SMTP error codes.

Related guides

  • Gmail 4.7.28: temporarily rate limited — Gmail has seen an unusual volume from your IP and is throttling it. This is temporary and the mail is not lost — your server should retry.
  • Gmail 550 5.7.26: this mail is unauthenticated — Gmail rejected the message because it could not verify that you sent it. Gmail requires every sender to pass either SPF or DKIM, aligned with the domain in your From address, and this message passed neither.
  • 550 5.7.1: refused on policy grounds — The receiver refused to deliver the message for policy reasons. 5.7.1 is the most overloaded code in email — it covers authentication failures, relaying denials, blocklists, content rules and DMARC rejections.