Set reverse DNS (PTR) for your dedicated IP

Reverse DNS (a PTR record) maps your IP address back to a hostname — the opposite of a normal A record. Most services never look at it. Mail is the big exception: receiving servers routinely check that a sending IP has a PTR, and that it matches the hostname the server introduces itself as. Get it wrong and your mail gets filed as spam or refused outright, no matter how clean your SPF and DKIM are.

On EQVPS you set the PTR yourself from the dashboard — no support ticket, no waiting on us.

Set it from the dashboard

1. Sign in and open Servers, then click the dedicated-IP server you want to set.
2. Find the Reverse DNS panel on the server page. (It only appears on dedicated-IP plans — a NAT server has no IP of its own to point.)
3. Enter the hostname you want the IP to resolve to — a fully-qualified domain you control, e.g. mail.yourdomain.com.
4. Save. The record is applied immediately.

The panel shows the current PTR, so you can come back and change it whenever the hostname changes.

Make it forward-confirmed

A PTR on its own isn't enough for mail. Strict receivers want forward-confirmed reverse DNS: the PTR points the IP at a hostname, and that hostname's A record points back at the same IP. Both directions have to agree.

So if your IP is 203.0.113.10 and you set the PTR to mail.yourdomain.com, also create an A record in your domain's DNS:

mail.yourdomain.com.  A  203.0.113.10

Now the loop closes: IP → hostname → IP.

Check it worked

From any machine:

# reverse: IP should return your hostname
dig -x 203.0.113.10 +short
# forward: hostname should return the same IP
dig mail.yourdomain.com +short

Both should point at each other. If the reverse lookup still shows a default provider hostname (something like static.203-0-113-10.rev.example-isp.net), the change hasn't propagated to the resolver you're using yet — wait a little and check again.

Honest limits

• Dedicated IP only. No IP of your own, no PTR — NAT plans can't do this.
• PTR is one piece, not the whole mail puzzle. For deliverability you also want SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the domain, and outbound port 25 open (it's closed by default on new servers to stop spam — ask once the rest is set up). Reverse DNS gets you past the first gate; it isn't a magic deliverability switch.
• One hostname per IP. A PTR maps the IP to a single name. Point it at your primary mail hostname.

If you're standing up a mail server from scratch, the mail server walkthrough covers SPF/DKIM/DMARC and the port-25 story alongside this. And if you're still deciding whether you even need a dedicated IP, here's the NAT-vs-dedicated breakdown.