Honest question... Why are people forwarding mail to an off-server email address in 2025? Would this situation be better solved if Microsoft allowed outlook.com email users to POP mail from other email accounts - like Gmail allows, and I believe outlook.com allowed this at one time?
My opinion is that forwarding mail off-server is just a casualty of all of the anti-spam measures put in place. Forwarding mail to an off-server email address is always going to break SPF (unless you use SRS, which can be messy - and I've yet to see a standard acceptance of SRS as a viable solution). Practically all email clients allow you to check multiple email accounts now. So what is the benefit of forwarding mail from one server to another mail server to collect mail into a single account? Most often I see the answer given as "I want my customers to see an @mydomain.com email address to write to me, it looks more professional, but I just want to check my hotmail.com email account." That "but" comes with a cost. If you want customers to write to an @mydomain.com email address, then consider setting up an actual @mydomain.com email account and check it directly (POP/IMAP) with an email client. Please don't interpret this as being condescending. I'm honestly wanting to hear what the reasons are for forwarding mail off of a server vs. checking the email account directly. In relation to Outlook.com I do wish they'd bring back the POP email from another email account, like Gmail offers. This feature with Gmail at least allows Gmail users to collect all of their mail in their Gmail account without the side effects of forwarding mail. If Outlook is going to punish based on SPF - which all forwarded emails will fail - then offering this as a "POP" solution would seem to be in their best interest.
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