Answers to common Email issues that you may encounter.
HELP, I am having trouble both SENDING and RECEIVING my email?
HELP, I am having trouble just SENDING my email?
HELP, I am having trouble RECEIVING my email?
HELP, My email password has stopped working?
Has my email address/domain name been blacklisted?
I receive an error mentioning SSL or SPA, when I download email in Outlook.
I’m not receiving the email that people have sent me. Why?
My email mailbox is full, how do I empty it?
Troubleshooting error messages produced by Microsoft Outlook...
Where can I find answers about spam emails?
Why are emails that are sent to me, being bounced back to the sender?
Why are emails that are sent to me, being returned back to sender as SPAM?
Why are my emails, not being received by the person I am sending them to?
HELP, I am having trouble both SENDING and RECEIVING my email?
If you find that you are having trouble with your email, please follow the steps below before you email us, as it can save a lot of time:
If you are having trouble BOTH sending and receiving your email, via your email client software(eg. Outlook Express), the issue will either be with your ISP(Internet Service Provider), the network your computer is connected to, or your firewall / internet security software on your computer. This is because your email is sent via your ISPs outgoing SMTP server, and doesn't go through our hosting network.
If you are having trouble both sending and and receiving email, please check the following:
- That you are using the correct email username and password, and incoming mail server. You can change your find your username (is usually the same as your email address) inside your hosting control panel, and you can also reset your password inside the control panel. You can login at http://www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/login-cp.php
- That your email client is configured to work with your firewall or internet security software on your computer. Try temporarily disabling it to make sure.
- Contact your ISP to make sure that they are not having issues with their network. Your email is sent via your ISP's outgoing SMTP mailserver, therefore if you are having issues sending email, it is very likely to be an issue with your ISPs network.
- If you computer is connected to an office network, check with your network administrator that your email, or the port your email uses, isn't being blocked by the networks security settings.
- Try logging into your email account using 'Webmail', to see if you can access your email that way. A link for accessing webmail, can be found on our Hosting Websites homepage, or in the email we originally sent you containing your hosting accounts settings.
- Check that you Outgoing Mailserver(SMTP) in your email client, is set to that of your ISPs Outgoing SMTP Mailserver (eg. for Telecom Xtra, it will be smtp.xtra.co.nz). Please contact your ISP if you don´t know what your ISPs outgoing mailserver (SMTP)settings are. Also check that your Incoming Mailserver (POP), is set to the correct setting. Some Antivirus software can change these settings, which can cause issues for incoming email. If you have recently installed new or updated your Antivirus, Firewall or Internet Security Software, and are now experiencing issues with your email, it is very likely that it is your software that is causing the issue.
- Check to see if your websites domain name loads when you type it into your web browser.
If that doesn't solve things, please follow the checklist below:
(1) Check that your hosting account hasn‘t gone over its disk space limits. Check the disk space usage inside your Control Panel.
(2) Check that your hosting account hasn‘t gone over its data transfer limits. Check the data transfer usage inside your Control Panel.
(3) Check that your hosting account hasn‘t been suspended for a breach of our Terms of Service, or due to non payment.
(4) Try to access other sites on the internet (both international and New Zealand websites). Most times it will just be your ISP that is having issues. Also check that your firewall and antivirus software isn‘t blocking your internet access, especially if you are connected to an office network.
(5) If you have recently joined us, also make sure that your DNS info for your domain name has propagated over to our servers. This process of propagation can take up to 3 days.
(6) Check the domain‘s nameservers, and make sure that they are configured correctly. You can check this by clicking here. Also check on this page, that your domain name hasn‘t yet EXPIRED, and requires renewing, as an expired domain name will also prevent your website loading. If your domain is registered through us, you can renew it via our Domain Manager at www.domains.loungenetwork.co.nz.
(7) Access our Server Status Page and see if there‘s an issue with your server. Your servers name is shown in your welcome - account details email as follows :
(8) You can also check the status of your site by using the "Spot Check" service at http://alertra.com. Enter your domain same into the box and click the "check" button. This will then check the accessibility of your domain from 4 different geographical locations. This will show if there‘s an issue with your ISP. We also do recommend testing your website by connecting to another ISP, preferably on a different computer and network.
(9) If you see that the server you are on is non-reachable, according to the above steps, please access our Server Status Page for information about the issue and what is being done to rectify the situation. This page will keep you fully up to date should an issue occur.
You should only email us if no announcement has been made on our Server Status Page.
If you need to email us to investigate the issue, please make sure that your email contains as much detail as possible. It should include the name of the software you are using, and the exact error messages you are receiving, as well as your email accounts username and password, and the SMTP and POP settings you are using. This is so we can can personally test your email account. In most cases contacting your ISP first, will locate the problem if there are any issues with your ISP's route to your server.
Most importantly, if there is an issue with the server, do not panic. Please keep calm while the Server Technicians rectify the situation on your server. Cool heads are needed should any issues occur with the servers, so the Server Technicians can rectify the issue as quickly as possible.
HELP, I am having trouble just SENDING my email?
All email that you send out is called your 'Outgoing Email'. Your Outgoing Email is sent and handled by your ISPs Outgoing Mailserver(SMTP). Therefore if you are having trouble sending email, but can receive it okay, the issue will either be with your ISP (Internet Service Provider), the network your computer s connected to, or your 'firewall / internet security software on your computer. If it is a problem with your ISP (the company that you connect to the internet with), before you contact them please do make sure that you do the following first...
(1) Check that you Outgoing Mailserver(SMTP) in your email client, is set to that of your ISPs Outgoing SMTP Mailserver (eg. for Telecom Xtra, it will be smtp.xtra.co.nz). Please contact your ISP if you don´t know what your ISPs outgoing mailserver (SMTP)settings are.
(2) That your email client is configured to work with your firewall or internet security software on your computer. Try temporarily disabling it to make sure.
(3) If you computer is connected to an office network, check with your network administrator that your email, or the port your email uses, isn't being blocked by the networks security settings.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR TELECOM XTRA ISP USERS: In order to send email from a domain based email address if your ISP is Telecom Xtra, you must now follow the instructions at http://tinyurl.com/yahooxtrasmtp
If you have any problems sending email via Telecom Xtras SMTP server please contact Telecom Xtra at 0800 110 050, and they will be able to help you set up the above settings for your domain based email address.
OUR SMTP SERVERS:
For most of our hosting plans, you can also now use our SMTP server for sending out emails, and the SMTP server details are below. Please however use your own ISPs SMTP server if you can. We don't provide any technical support for clients using our SMTP server, as some ISP's will block access to third party SMTP servers, from sending through their network. These ISP's require their users to use their SMTP server, so you should use your ISP's SMTP server if you can. ISP blocking ports, is an antispam precaution, as spam is now such a huge problem on the internet. Therefore to send email via your domain name email account, set the outgoing mail server (SMTP) in your email client (eg. Outlook Express), to that of your ISPs outgoing SMTP mailserver (eg. for Telecom Xtra, it will be smtp.xtra.co.nz). Retain the POP information for the specific email address that you have relating to your domain to receive mail as usual. Please contact your ISP if you don´t know what your ISPs mailserver settings are.
If you want to try using our SMTP servers, the settings are below, and are dependant on what hosting control panel you are using:
For CPanel Control Panel Users:
If you are a CPanel user, it maybe possible to send your email through our server network, by setting your Outgoing Mailserver (SMTP) to your domain names SMTP setting eg. mail.yourdomain.co.nz. This then bypasses your ISPs outgoing mailserver. However using CPanels SMTP server can create problems, if you ISP blocks access to third party SMTP servers for antispam reasons. Because of this we don't provide any support for the CPanel SMTP server and you use it at your own risk. We recommend that you use your ISPs SMTP settings for sending all your email. If you are using the CPanel servers Outgoing Mailserver(SMTP), and are having trouble please check the following.
*Make sure that in "Advanced Settings" in your email client setup, that you have ticked "Authenticated" while sending email.
* Make sure the 'Outgoing Mailserver Port' (SMTP) is set to either port 26 or port 8025
*If you are still having issues sending mail but are receiving it okay, it will very likely be because your ISP is blocking port 25 on outbound email, so you will need to use your ISPs SMTP server. Many ISP´s now block the outbound port 25, which is used for SMTP. This prevents the email server from sending email unless your client email program is configured to use your ISP´s SMTP server rather then directly from our mail server. Please try using either ports 26 or port 8025 which our providers have opened for SMTP to see if that makes a difference.
For Corporate and Business Class Hosting Plan Users:
In order to use our SMTP server, first you must enable SMTP for sending email, in the 'email settings' of the email address. You do this in your hosting control pane under 'EMAIL'.
The outgoing SMTP server is smtp.webhost.co.nz
* We recommend that you connect using SSL on port 465.
* SMTP authentication for 'Outgoing Mail' is required to send the email. Only enable this for 'outgoing mail', and do not enable it for 'incoming mail'.
* Make sure that you have got SMTP enabled inside your hosting control panel, for the email account that is sending the email, or it won't work.
HELP, I am having trouble RECEIVING my email?
If you find that you are having trouble receiving your email, please follow the steps below before you email us, as it can save a lot of time:
If you are having trouble receiving your email, but can send it okay via your email client software(eg. Outlook Express), the issue could either be with your ISP (Internet Service Provider), the hosting server, the network your computer is connected to, or your firewall / internet security software on your computer.
To make sure that the issue isn't at your end, or is a not a problem with your ISP please check the following:
- That you are using the correct email username and password, and incoming mail server. You can change your find your username (is usually the same as your email address) inside your hosting control panel, and you can also reset your password inside the control panel. You can login at http://www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/login-cp.php
- That your email client is configured to work with your firewall or internet security software on your computer. Try temporarily disabling it to make sure.
- Contact your ISP to make sure that they are not having issues with their network. It is possible that your ISP is having issues contacting web servers in somelocations.
- If you computer is connected to an office network, check with your network administrator that your email, or the port your email uses, isn't being blocked by the networks security settings.
- Try logging into your email account using 'Webmail', to see if you can access your email that way. You can log into your webmail at http://www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/login-webmail.php . A link for accessing webmail, can also be found on our Hosting Websites homepage, or in the email we originally sent you contains your hosting accounts settings.
- Check that your Incoming Mailserver (POP), is set to the correct setting. Please refer to your account settings email that we sent you for what your incoming mailserver should be. You can also find your incoming mailserver setting by going to http://knowledgebase.loungenetwork.co.nz/index.php?op=view&t=90 . Some Antivirus software can automatically change these settings, which can cause issues for incoming email. If you have recently installed new or updated your Antivirus, Firewall or Internet Security Software, and are now experiencing issues with you email, it is very likely that it is your software that is causing the issue.
- Check to see if your websites domain name loads when you type it into your web browser.
If that doesn't solve things, please follow the checklist below:
(1) Check that your hosting account hasn‘t gone over its disk space limits. Check the disk space usage inside your Control Panel. (Applies to cPanel users only)
(2) Check that your hosting account hasn‘t gone over its data transfer limits. Check the data transfer usage inside your Control Panel. (Applies to cPanel users only)
(3) Check that your hosting account hasn‘t been suspended for a breach of our Terms of Service, or due to non payment.
(4) Try to access other sites on the internet (both international and New Zealand websites). Most times it will just be your ISP that is having issues. Also check that your firewall and antivirus software isn‘t blocking your internet access, especially if you are connected to an office network.
(5) If you have recently joined us, also make sure that your DNS info for your domain name has propagated over to our servers. This process of propagation can take up to 3 days.
(6) Check the domain‘s nameservers, and make sure that they are configured correctly. You can check this by clicking here. Also check on this page, that your domain name hasn‘t yet EXPIRED, and requires renewing, as an expired domain name will also prevent your website loading. If your domain is registered through us, you can renew it via our Domain Manager at www.domains.loungenetwork.co.nz.
(7) Access our Server Status Page and see if there‘s an issue with your server. Your servers name is shown in your welcome - account details email as follows :
(8) You can also check the status of your site by using the "Spot Check" service at http://alertra.com. Enter your domain same into the box and click the "check" button. This will then check the accessibility of your domain from 4 different geographical locations. This will show if there‘s an issue with your ISP. We also do recommend testing your website by connecting to another ISP, preferably on a different computer and network.
(9) If you see that the server you are on is non-reachable, according to the above steps, please access our Server Status Page for information about the issue and what is being done to rectify the situation. This page will keep you fully up to date should an issue occur.
(10) Log into your control panel and try changing your email mailboxes password to a new one.
(11) Try logging into your email account using Webmail. Webmail can be accessed at the following link http://www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/login-webmail.php
You should only email us if no announcement has been made on our Server Status Page.
If you need to email us to investigate the issue, please make sure that your email contains as much detail as possible. It should include the name of the software you are using including type of computer and operating system. The exact error messages you are receiving, as well as your email accounts username and password, and the SMTP and POP settings you are using. This is so we can personally test your email account. In most cases contacting your ISP first, will locate the problem if there are any issues with your ISP's route to your server.
Most importantly, if there is an issue with the server, do not panic. Please keep calm while the Server Technicians rectify the situation on your server. Cool heads are needed should any issues occur with the servers, so the Server Technicians can rectify the issue as quickly as possible.
HELP, My email password has stopped working?
First thing you should do is check our Lounge Network Status Page
to see if there are any server related issues that maybe causing the problem.
On rare occasions, the server techs may enforce a password change on your email account, if they detect that your email account has been compromised or hacked. This may cause a spammer to send out spam through your compromised email account, which potentially may cause high loads on the server, and may also cause our servers to become blacklisted. Thus the server techs have to be continually proactive in looking for compromises on the network.
An email account compromise may occur for a number of reasons. Some of these reasons are below but there are also potentially others too.
-You have used a public wifi network or internet cafe and the password has been compromised from that.
-You have malware or a virus on your computer
-Your website may have access to your email account, and the website may have been hacked or compromised.
-Your password was too easy for a hacker to crack. We suggest using mixed case characters, numbers and symbols in a password, and that it is at least 8 charcters long.
If your email account has been compromised, you can easily update your password to a new one, from inside your hosting control panel, under the email settings. We may also personally contact you if the techs have detected a compromise with your email account, and they have enforced a password change on an email account.
If your email account does get compromised, please make sure you do the following.
- Change the affected passwords.
- Check your PC for a viruses/trojans/malware.
- Update your website software (your CMS content management system) to the latest versions, install all security updates for OS and site software.
- Always use strong passwords. We suggest using mixed case characters, numbers and symbols in a password, and that it is at least 8 charcters long.
- Setup a firewall and antivirus software, and make sure it is all up to date.
- Do not use insecure public internet connections to log into site/mail/cPanel.
All these measures are needed to minimize the possibility of passwords being stolen, and other possible security problems.
Has my email address/domain name been blacklisted?
Your domain name or email address may become blacklisted on the internet, if you have been sending unsolicated emails/spam, or if someone else on the server has been sending out unsolicated emails. You can test to see if you have been blacklisted by any blacklist databases, by entering your domain name into the following website
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/
You can get the blacklist removed, by visiting any of the blacklist databases websites, requesting it to be removed.
I receive an error mentioning SSL or SPA, when I download email in Outlook.
This type of error indicates that your settings in your email software are not correct, and you are trying to connect using a Secured SSL connection, when you should be downloading via a normal connection.
To solve this, you need to go into your email account settings, and click on the advanced tab. Make sure that for the 'incoming (pop3) connection', where it says 'This server required an SSL-secured connection(SSL)' , that it is unticked, as shown in the image below.
You can get to this box in most versions of outlook by going to Tools > EMail Accounts... . Then select the email account, click the 'more settings...' button, then click on the 'Advanced Tab'. You may need to refer to your email documentation for more information if you can't find this area in your email software.
Another reason you could be getting an error is if your have SPA Secure Password Authentication enabled. Please make sure that SPA is unticked, as shown in the image below.
Other reasons for similar errors, include your internet security software (such as firewall or anti virus software) that is taking over control of those settings. PLease try temporarily disabling them to test your account. Please refer to your internet security vendor or system administrator, if these steps above don't solve the error. If you are still having trouble, we recommend deleting the account in Outlook and resetting it up again. Also try setting up your email account on another computer, on another network, as it could be a problem with other software settings on your computer, that possibly need a computer technician to fix.
I’m not receiving the email that people have sent me. Why?
The first thing to do is check with the sender, that they actually sent you the email.
If they have sent it, here is a list of reasons that could prevent the email getting through to you. If any of them describes your situation, you’ll find instructions on how to resolve the issue just below.
(1) Incorrectly typed email address
Is the sender using your correct email address? Just one mistyped letter will cause an email to go to the wrong address or make it undeliverable. Ask them to double-check that they entered your address correctly.
(2) The Sender’s email is not functioning properly
Can this sender successfully send messages to other people? The problem could be on their end, with sending. Ask them to check. Often the sender will have a problem with their provider, and their provider may have got their mail servers blacklisted
(3) Message going into your Spam folder
Over 90% of the email our servers receive are spam. Therefore there are spam protection systems in place to stop most of that spam getting to you. As a result it can sometime cause false positives, especially if the email senders email servers have been sending out spam, and have been reported to the spam databases.
Therfore you should check your junkmail folder on both your email client software, as well as through our webmail system, to make sure the email didn't arrive there. You should also check your spam settings inside your hosting control panel, where you are able to control many aspects of your email and spam settings.
(4) You’re forwarding your mail to another email address
If you're forwarding your mail, it's going to another email address, make sure that that address and mailbox is still working and active, and the amilbox isn't full.
(5) There’s a delay in delivery
Messages are usually delivered within a few minutes. However sometimes they are delayed while in transit. This is usually due to problems on the sender's mail server, heavy Internet traffic, or routing problems. Unfortunately, aside from waiting, there's no way to know whether a message has been delayed or whether it has been rendered undeliverable. If a sender can re-send it, have them do that.
My email mailbox is full, how do I empty it?
If you are not regularly downloading your email off the server, eventually your email mailbox will likely fill up. This is more likely the case if you use IMAP instead of POP, and don't actually download your email off the server, to store locally on your computer. If your mailbox does become full, you will not have any more room to receive emails, and new emails may bounce back to the sender. If you are using CPanel, to solve this you can either increase your diskspace by logging into your CPanel, and changing the quota on an email account. Or you can download your emails to store locally and delete them off the server, using a POP connection via your email software. If you have toitally run out of diskspace, you also have the option of contacting us to upgrade your web hosting plan with more diskspace.
If you are using CPanel, CPanel now has a tool to help you easily delete email in bulk from inside the email section of CPanel.
If you only use webmail, you can log into webmail, and delete them manually. Please note that when you do this, they will only be moved into the trash folder, so they will still be using the same amount of diskspace. So if you are deleting email this way you will also need to go into the trash folder and purge it.
If you would like to disable the trash folder, so that emails are deleted straight away, you can do this by following the following instructions. These depend on what Webmail program you are using.
============
ROUNDCUBE
============
1. Log into Webmail
2. Go to Settings.
3. Click Folders.
4. Enable/Disable each folder by clicking the check box next to each one.
============
SQUIRREL MAIL
============
1. Log into Webmail
2. Click "Options".
3. Click "Folder Preferences".
4. Set "Trash Folder" to "Do not use Trash".
5. Click "Submit".
If you are on our Corporate or Business Web Plan, to free up diskspace, you will either need to download the emails, or purchase more email storage space from us.
Troubleshooting error messages produced by Microsoft Outlook...
You are able to troubleshoot error messages that you receive when try to send and receive e-mail in Outlook and in Outlook Express, by clicking on this link, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813514
Where can I find answers about spam emails?
You can find them by clicking here...
Why are emails that are sent to me, being bounced back to the sender?
This will either occur if you have exceeded your allocated diskspace for your email account, or your total diskspace allocated for your entire hosting account. In those cases the sender of the email will usually get an email to say your diskspace quota has been exceeded.
Emails sent to you can also bounce back to the sender, if your bandwidth has been exceeded, or if you havent setup the specific email address in cpanel.
If your email account has exceeded its quota, you will need to clear the mailbox, or increase it's diskspace quota. You however can't use more diskspace than the total diskspace allocated to your hosting account. You can see your total diskspace usage on the main Cpanel page.
If you believe you have already downloaded your email using your email software(eg Outlook), but your email mailbox is still full and is not clearing, you will likely have a setting in your email software mis-configured. You need to make sure that you have got the setting 'Leave a copy of messages on the server' unticked. You can usually find this setting in the 'advanced' section within your email accounts settings, which is inside the account settings of your email software. This video tutorial shows you how to do this using Outlook express http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u3ylVc27ek&feature=related
After you have done this, you can check to make sure you have cleared your mailbox by logging into 'webmail' within CPanel, and seeing if there is any email still in the account. You can also manually delete you email in webmail, but make sure you clear the trash folder in order to permanently delete it. You can also totally purge your mailbox by first deleting the mailbox within CPanels email section, and then resetting it up again.
If you have exceeded your total hosting accounts diskspace allowance, you will either need to free up some diskspace in your hosting account, or upgrade to the next hosting plan up. You should always keep an eye on your diskspace usage incase you need to purchase more diskspace.
Why are emails that are sent to me, being returned back to sender as SPAM?
Over 90% of emails that are sent around the internet are now spam, which is a major problem for all hosting providers. Therefore the upstream providers we use, run antispam software that use some of the top antispam databases from around the world. This is called an RBL, which stands for Realtime Black List. Most top hosting providers will now use these sorts of RBL antispam systems, which use these same RBL databases. They use IP matching to check what IPs have been sending out spam around the world. This means that anyone who sends you an email, their mailservers IP address that sends the email is checked against this database, to make sure the origin hasn't been used for spamming recently. Using these systems has cut down the number of spam emails being received by the servers considerably.
Someone sending me an email has been blocked? Why?
If a particular email is being blocked by an RBL, it would mean that the provider (usually the ISP) the sender is using, will be blacklisted in one or more RBL databases, very likely because their provider has been reported for sending spam. This is usually due to one of their other customers spamming and abusing the ISPs mailserver, or their customers have Malware on their computer that has hijacked it, and is sending out spam or phishing emails. It could also mean a problem with the senders own computer, and they may have malware installed that is sending out spam emails. The ISP is responsible for managing their own IP addresses, and making sure that they get any blacklists removed, and to make sure none of their customers are sending out spam, or have malware that is sending out spam.
PLEASE NOTE: This is an ISP problem with the person who is sending you the email, as the ISP or email provider of the sender are the ones who have got themselves blacklisted, and need to get the blacklisting removed. It is not a problem at our end. If someone is having trouble sending email to you due to their IP address being blacklisted, that also means they will be having trouble sending to most other people too, as almost all email providers now use some form of RBL. In some cases they may not get a bounced back email, sometimes the email may just automatically go into the recipients spam folder, and they never know about it.
What can I do?
If you have a contact who has been sent an email from our servers, that says their email has been blocked, you will need to ask them to contact their email or ISP provider to get the issue sorted out and the RBL listing removed. You can also refer them to this page for more information. Often the email bounce message the sender receives back, will contain instructions for how to get themselves removed from the blacklist, although not if it is listed on multiple RBLs. Often the sender can follow the instructions in the email and get the blacklist removed, however if the IP continues to send out spam after being removed from the RBL, then it will get blacklisted in the RBL again.Therefore the sender of the email should really contcat their ISP to get the problem fixed, as it is a problem with their email provider.
If the IP is listed on more than one RBL, then it may not contain any further information, apart from saying it is listed on an RBL. However your contact can check to see if the IP has been blacklisted, and which RBLs it is listed on, by entering the IP into the 'Blacklists' section of this website mxtoolbox.com .
The sender of the email can find their IP, by going into the header information of the email they sent, and finding the IP it was sent from, which should look something like this.
Received: from mailserverexample.net.nz (mailserverexample.net.nz [210.70.70.xxx])
If you are not sure how to find the header information, the video below shows you how to do it in outlook 2010.
Other email programs are similar. Please contact your email provider if you are not sure how to find this information. Alternatively you can ask them for the IP of their mailserver to test it.
CPanel users can also find the IP for the sender, by using the 'Trace Email' tool inside CPanel, which shows all emails that have been blocked and the IP of the sender..
Usually the blacklist will be removed automatically after a period of time after the spamming problems have been resolved. If the person who has sent you the email are having trouble communicating this problem with the ISP helpdesk staff (who often only have basic knowledge), please ask them to escalate you to the ISPs technicians, and refer them to this webpage.
ISPs will usually eventually solve the problem anyway after a few days, after they have received numerous complaints from other customers with the same problem. However some can be very slow at detecting the problem, and it may not get resolved until they have received many customer complaints about the problem. ISPs however should be monitoring the RBLs to make sure their IPs aren't getting blacklisted, as well as monitoring their systems so they aren't being abused by spammers and malware. Some ISPs are better than others at doing this we have found.
An email provider can also solve the problem instantly for a customer, if they assign a new IP address to send emails from. Alternatively the sender can use a third party SMTP server to send their email through, or use another email account altogether while their email provider fixes the problem.
Some ISPs are constantly getting blacklisted, and they may even recommend to their customer not using their free ISP email services for business use. We would suggest this too, free ISP email addresses are not suitable for business use.
CPanel users can also manage the amount of spam filtering they want, by logging into CPanel and going to the Spam Assassin section. However this won't affect RBL black listings above, as the RBL is an independent filtering system, that is not connected to the servers own built in anti spam systems. More information can be found at http://knowledgebase.loungenetwork.co.nz/index.php?op=view&t=345
CPanel users can also check which email's have been bounced back to the sender, and the reason for the bounce back, by using the 'Trace Email' tool inside CPanel.
For clients on our Corporate and Business hosting plans, you can configure your spam settings using the instructions at http://knowledgebase.loungenetwork.co.nz/index.php?op=view&t=240
So in conclusion, if you have someone sending you an email, and they receive a bounce back to say that their email has been blocked, you will need to ask them to contact their email or ISP provider to get the issue sorted out. It is a problem with the senders email provider, and only their email provider can solve it, as they are the owner of the blacklisted IP. It is not a problem at our end or a problme with your email address.
Being blacklisted in an RBL also means that the sender will be having trouble sending email to most other people too, as most top providers now use the same RBL lists, so it is in their best interests to get their email provider to fix the problem
Why are my emails, not being received by the person I am sending them to?
There could be many reasons why your emails aren´t getting received by the person that you are sending them to. Most of the reasons are beyond our control.
A common reason, is due to internet security software blocking the email. This means that software on the computer of the person you are sending the email to, or their ISP mailserver, has categorized your email as spam, and you email has been delivered to the users spam folder. Please ask the person that you sent the email to, to see if the email has been delivered to their spam folder.
Please also check that the email that you have sent, hasn´t been caught in your own internet security software.
Another reason, is the ISP of the person you are trying to send the email to, has blacklisted the IP range of the sending mailserver. This can happen if someone else using an IP number within the range, has been reported and blacklisted for spamming. This then can effect any other users that send emails within that blacklisted IP range. The only way to fix this is for you to contact the person or ISP blocking you, and ask them to add you to their whitelist.
Another reason is that your email to the recipient may have been delayed or queued. This occurs when there are high loads on the sending or receiving mailservers of the ISP. Also it can occur when there are spam or DOS attacks on the mailservers.
To prevent these issues, please make sure that you have got your outgoing mailserver in your email client, set to that of your ISPs outgoing SMTP mailserver. (eg. for Telecoms Xtra, it will be smtp.xtra.co.nz) Please contact your ISP if you don´t know what your ISPs mailserver settings are. If you are still having issues with sending using your ISPs outgoing mailserver (SMTP server), please contact your ISP.
Note if you are using our SMTP Server:
We provide our own SMTP server as a courtesy, as another way for our clients to send emails. However it is provided as is. With all SMTP servers, they can be open to abuse, as clients have full unfettered access to the server to send any email. So potentially clients could send spam if they choose to. One way we prevent this, is to limit the number of emails clients can send per hour. We do also have techs monitoring the servers for suspicious activity. But no matter how closely they are monitored, some client may still send out emails, (either legitimate emails or spam)that receive spam complaints from the email recipients.
With sending email, you can use any outgoing mailserver to send that email. So if you are using our SMTP email as the primary SMTP server, we suggest also having a backup server in place. You can either use your ISPs SMTP server, or use Gmails free SMTP server. There are also a number of other free SMTP servers you can use as backups. At any point in time most email providers will find that they are blacklisted with one or more blacklists, as providers don’t have any control over what emails their clients send, which may result in an IP getting blacklisted. So using two SMTP providers at the same time will mean that there is always a backup server to send though, as it is unlikely that two different SMTP providers will be both blacklisted at anyone time.
Please note that if you use Webmail, or send out email though a mailing list on the server, or through a script on your website from the server, you may also experience the same types of problems with your email being bounced back to the sender due to the server IP being blacklisted. We have found that bounced emails are more of a problem with some of the free email providers, as their mail systems are often abused, and they tend to have their own inhouse antispam systems in place, and they can have some very strict filtering software. Please note that in the case of these types of email providers, which tend not to use the main real-time blacklists (which have blacklist removal methods), there is very little we can do to do to get a blacklisting removed from their inhouse system. The email providers who are doing the blocking will need to fix any black listings from their end, and usually any blacklistings they put in place will be removed after a period of time anyway.
Why do mailservers get blacklisted?
Mailserver IPs may get listed for a range of different reasons, and there is no precise discretion on how the mail IP gets blacklisted.
If you are sending any mailing, then you must comply with the following requirements.
-Don’t use false or misleading header information
-Don’t use deceptive subject lines
-Tell recipients where you’re located
-Tell recipients how to opt-out of receiving future email from you
-Honor opt-out requests promptly
-Monitor what others are doing on your behalf
If your email contains only transaction emails or relationship content, then you are exempt from these rules; however, you must still not include false or misleading routing information.
Avoid Spam Trigger Words and Phishing Phrases. Unfortunately, there is no complete list of spam trigger words. Further, it is not always the case that your email will end up in the spam filter simply by using a so-called trigger word.The key thing to remember is that a spam filter is trying to remove commercial advertisements and promotions. So generally, words that are common in such emails should be avoided or used sparingly.
Some systems will also blacklist IPs and mailservers, simply by users tagging legitimate email as spam, or dragging emails into their junkmail / spam folder, when they should be deleting them.
Some IPs may also get blacklisted if a mail server detects a large volume of emails originating from the server, that is out of character. Usually when this happens, the IP will get blacklisted in the RBL (Realtime Blacklists), and it will usually be blacklisted in multiple blacklists.
With the sending of Mass Emails, we do recommend using a third party service like www.mailchimp.com or www.mandrill.com, which have specialised servers and systems for sending out mass emails. Although they will also have the same problem with their IPs being blacklisted from time to time, they have a wide range of other mail servers that can try resending via alternative IPs in case they encounter a problem. They however do have problems with free providers like Hotmail or Live mail from time to time, as you can see at this link http://kb.mailchimp.com/delivery/spam-filters/i-know-this-email-address-is-valid-but-it-hard-bounced . So no system can totally solve this problem.