Email Problems Yet Again

I’m having a similar problem to the one I had three months ago: I can receive emails, but I can’t send them. I’ve spent hours on the phone with the hosting service trying to sort it out, but no luck so far.

If you’ve been sending emails, I probably got them, but couldn’t reply. I hope to resolve this tomorrow.

All this hassle has delayed other posts. I’ll be putting up the news feed, but nothing else tonight.

9 thoughts on “Email Problems Yet Again

  1. Email Problems.

    Hello Ned,

    Grab a coffee and relax. Important to relax since frustration clouds the mind.

    Then read this slowly and work through the points 1 by 1. Draw a picture if this helps to calm you.

    I presume you use an email client installed on a Windows machine.

    Understanding: There are the following components.

    1] Your laptop (or PC)
    2] Your Internet-Router
    3] The email server in the internet for sending email.
    4] The email server in the internet for receiving email.
    5] A computer program on your laptop for creating the connections.

    Draw a picture to help you, if you need to.

    When you send or receive email,

    a] you start your email program on your laptop.
    b] The program then connects to a INBOUND email server (it’s called POP or IMAP – named after the communication protocol)
    c] if it finds mail, it will appear in your inbox.
    d] If you have email in your out tray, the program may try to connect to an OUTBOUND email server (it’s called POP or IMAP – named after the communication protocol)
    f] It will move the email from the out tray to sent.

    b) Windows can block ports and connections (check your firewall if it fails). Routers can block ports and connections (but this is unusual).

    That’s it.

    So when you can’t send an email where could the problem lie.

    i) The connection to the outbound server cannot be created, it may be because
    – Windows Virus protection is blocking the outbound port.
    – The router is blocking the outbound port.
    – The outbound email server is not allowing a connection.
    – The outbound email server is not forwarding your email, because your server has been marked as BLACKLISTED.

    With an “email server”, you sometimes have a web interface too. You can log on directly.
    Why do this?

    If you can send and receive there, you can determine the problem is local (laptop or router).
    If you can’t send and receive there, you can determine the problem is remote (server).

    If you find the problem is local, you can use a 2nd computer (or cell phone) and try sending/receiving from there. If for example your laptop hard drive is full, this could cause problems. A virus too.

    The trick is simply to dismiss each possibility one by one.
    What remains, is the source of your problem.

    Hope this helps.

    BTW:

    I checked your email server chromatism.net – You DO seem to be blacklisted. I don’t know if this is causing your problem.

    Look here for details.
    https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3achromatism.net&run=toolpage

    Your friend!

    • Yes, I know all these things, more or less. Some of the problems you describe have been ruled out. Others I’m still looking at. I don’t like webmail, but I may be reduced to that.

      Chromatism.net is blacklisted by some companies. Comcast is one. I assume it’s because its current IP address (which it acquired 3 months ago) was recycled, and previously belonged to a spammer. That happened another time years ago with a different IP, and I think the problem company then was Microsoft, if I recall correctly.

  2. Not sure how many emails you need to send a month, but dnsexit offers fairly cheap outbound smtp relay service. Anyhow, it’s always good to have more than one outbound smtp service in case one goes down.

    https://dnsexit.com/services/email-smtp-relay-outbound/#pricing

    If you need to do bulk email marketing/tracking, you need something like sendgrid, mailchimp or east-smtp or some other smtp service.

  3. If you find you have to jump ship, I was just looking at protonmail.com which was started by some ex-CERN people about four years. You would need at least a 48 euro/year “Plus” account to get IMAP/SMTP access.

  4. The must have a web based interface. Use their web platform for emails. From your browser.

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