eMail Problems

[rtubbs]

emails that I send are not being received by the recipients.

I have two email accounts; one with my ISP and one with my internet host. My default account is the one with the host because it contains my company name. For the past 2 weeks, none of my messages that I sent using the default account has been received by the recipients. There is no problem with recipients receiving if I set the ISP account as my default. There is also no problem in my receiving email through either account.

My ISP says its my host's problem; my host says it's my ISP's problem. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[airphoto]

Ron,

Doesn't matter which account is your 'post office.' Whatever you enter in your e-mail program as your return addy will go out as your address .. use your choice! I enter airphoto@airphoto.org and all e-mails go out with that return address, despite that the e-mail server may be mail.airphoto.org, mail.citlink.net or mail.netscape.net.

 

[BigBlueGA]

The problem is your host account. You can be 99% sure of this. I have dealt a lot with hosting accounts and it has been my experience that the majority of them have very shoddy email systems.

The only solution besides trying multiple hosting accounts until you find a good one is to just use your ISP account and put your hosted address as the return address.

 

[Head Surfer]

Most ISP's block port 25 which is what the mail servers use to send email. What does this do? It PREVENTS you from sending email via any other mail server but your ISP's while you are connected via their service. They have been doing this for years. 90% of the ISP's block port 25.

Why do they do it? To prevent spamming while using their connection. They believe they have liability for customer spamming if the customer users their service to connect to the Internet. Even if you use another mail sever to send the email (such as your web hosts's for your domain account) the ISP could be held liable because you are connected through them. So they block port 25 which prevents you from sending email from other than their mail servers.

So do not blame your web host, in all probability your ISP is blocking port 25. I have a first class mail server with my dedicated server and can not use it to send email. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my server. It is my ISP blocking port 25.

Solution: Just use your ISP to send all your email! Put your domain account address in the "from" section and use your ISP's SMTP settings. When your recipient reads your email and hits reply it will come to your hosted account. The fact that you sent it via your ISP is of no consequence and no one will ever know (or care) unless they read the full headers of the email.

Hope this helps!

 

[rtubbs]

Thanks for responding Wayne. It's been a long day and I have a hard time understanding some of this. I really wasn't blaming my web host. I've spent about 3 hours talking with 3 different people at my ISP; they put me on hold and never come back but that's another story.

I have two accounts: one with my ISP and one with my web host. Both are configured with the ISP's SMTP setting as the outgoing mail. That's my confusion. Seems to me that if the SMTP (whatever that means) is the same on both that the mail should be delivered using both.

 

[Head Surfer]

Thanks for responding Wayne. It's been a long day and I have a hard time understanding some of this. I really wasn't blaming my web host. I've spent about 3 hours talking with 3 different people at my ISP; they put me on hold and never come back but that's another story.

I have two accounts: one with my ISP and one with my web host. Both are configured with the ISP's SMTP setting as the outgoing mail. That's my confusion. Seems to me that if the SMTP (whatever that means) is the same on both that the mail should be delivered using both.

If you have the SMTP's (simple mail transfer protocol) settings of your ISP for both accounts then you shouldn't have a problem sending email unless your settings are wrong in your email client. Just make sure that the one that doesn't work has the same settings as the one that works for the outgoing mail.

EXCEPT: There is one other possibility. Some mail servers require you to check your email before they will allow you to send email. (again another precaution against spammers). If you're checking your host account but sending email via your ISP then your ISP may not allow you to send. Just make sure your email client is set to check both your accounts when it starts up and you will not have a problem. If you're using Outlook Express this is under the "tools", then "accounts" section. The more I think about it the more I think this is probably your problem. You are not checking your ISP account before trying to use your ISP account to send email.

 

[rtubbs]

Still as confused. I have about 2 weeks worth of emails that were sent. They are being shown as sent and a copy is forwarded to my sent items folder.

I really believe that it might be with my host. He's a brother of one of the mortgage brokers that I do business with. I do know he has made some changes in his company in the last two weeks. I can't get in touch with the guy. His voice mail box is full and he won't return emails.

My last post today and I have a seminar tomorrow. Thanks for all the replies. Will check in the weekend. Will check with you Monday Wayne about changing my hosting.

 

[Dean House]

We have this same problem somtimes. I did some research on what was happening with us, and this is what we came up with.
First, many times an email was not recieved by a company, it was on their end. Some of these companies get so many emails each day, they misplace, or lose them. A lot of them use one central email address checked by many people. One of our clients uses Hotmail for their company email, and hotmail simply cant handle the size of an appraisal, which is typically 1-1.4 mb. So we send it, but they never recieve it.
Second, we were using web based email through our hosting company. It turns out that we only had a disk quota of 50mb, so at over 1mb per email, you can imagine how quickly that was used up if we forgot to delete our messages, and lower our used qouta. The problem was solved when i configured our web based email to run through microsoft outlook express. Using the SMTP provided from the hosting company, it now downloads our messages from their server to ours, giving us unlimited email disk space. This totally solved our problem. I also set the email to request a read reciept so it would notify me when my email was read, that way, a week later when the mortgage company calls me to complain that we did not send them the appraisal, i point out that we have a read reciept and although i will glady send them the deal again, someone in their office did retrieve it, but either did not pass it on, or deleted it.
Lastly, I dont understand why your SMTP is the same from your hosting company as your ISP. It dosnt make sense to me. Does your ISP provide your web hosting?
You may want to look into changing hosting companies.

 

[Head Surfer]

Hotmail and all of the free email addresses: Definitely a POOR choice for business email!

I can't believe that people trust their business to a free email account. Hotmail loses email frequently as does the other free services.

In addition, business use of Hotmail is AGAINST their terms of service! Anyone using it for business is illegally using Hotmail.

If one uses a free email account for business they don't place much importance on their business IMHO.

 

[BigBlueGA]

Hotmail gets so stopped up it's horrid too.. Most POP accounts are instant.. if you send something to one, it's delivered in a matter of seconds.. I've tested Hotmail before, 10 minutes at times for email to go through to a hotmail address.