Email issue. Can reply but not email direct

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martyyn

1971 posts

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#143202 6-Apr-2014 14:17

Hi,

A friend and I both have email with our website hosts (I'm with JoneSolutions he's with HostingMatters I think). We noticed earlier this week that my email to him wasn't getting through. He sent one to me, I replied and he received it but when I try directly from mine it neither ends up in my sent items nor received by him. If I send it from my Gmail account it works fine.

Are we right to assume this is a reception issue? There is nothing in his junk folder, nothing in his webmail and we've checked for blocked addresses and even put my address into his 'whitelist' on his cpanel, but still nothing.

Is there anything else we can check for before contacting our respective hosts ? Or are we right to assume that my hosts may have been added to a blacklist at some point ?

We both use IMAP, both use SSL and both use Windows Live. We've also tried recreating the accounts using the respective cpanel auto configure options but there is no change.

Cheers

kiwirock

685 posts

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#1019496 6-Apr-2014 14:36

If he receives a reply, then I dobt it's a receive issue. Has he checked any anti-spam folders for your email?

You mention it doesn't show up as a saved sent email. Do other emails you send show up as saved/sent mail?

Does he have both his email and reply-to email address set correctly the same?

Some mail clients have a reply-to address set on them as well. If this differs from the email address field it could explain why replies work but not direct.

Are you able to send anyone else email direct?

You've got any authorisation required to send email from that account setup correctly? I don't use IMAP but I have a funny feeling it still uses SMTP to deliver. Make sure any anthentication for SMTP is enabled if this is required.

It could be blacklisted, but normally it would reject the domain or IP of the server and your reply wouldn't get through either.

martyyn

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#1019501 6-Apr-2014 14:56

Thanks for the reply and questions....

kiwirock: If he receives a reply, then I dobt it's a receive issue. Has he checked any anti-spam folders for your email?

Yes, nothing at all in his JUNK folder.

kiwirock: You mention it doesn't show up as a saved sent email. Do other emails you send show up as saved/sent mail?

Interestingly no, I hadn't noticed this before but the only emails I have in my SENT folder are replies to already received emails. Nothing I've sent as an 'original' email is in there and interestingly not all my replied to emails are in there either, none of the replies I sent this afternoon which he received for a start.

I just tried sending one to my Gmail account and it arrives, but goes to my JUNK folder. It's not however in my SENT folder. I'll double check my cpanel settings.

kiwirock: Does he have both his email and reply-to email address set correctly the same?

Some mail clients have a reply-to address set on them as well. If this differs from the email address field it could explain why replies work but not direct.

Yes, Email address and reply-to address are both the same.

kiwirock: Are you able to send anyone else email direct?

Yep, no problem with anyone else that I'm aware of.

kiwirock: You've got any authorisation required to send email from that account setup correctly? I don't use IMAP but I have a funny feeling it still uses SMTP to deliver. Make sure any anthentication for SMTP is enabled if this is required.

Yes, or I assume so as we both set up the accounts using the script supplied by our providers. The settings all look ok and as I said no-one else has complained. My friend tells me he was having similar issues with someone elses email this week too. The exact details and what was going on are a little sketchy.

kiwirock: It could be blacklisted, but normally it would reject the domain or IP of the server and your reply wouldn't get through either.

I did wonder about that.

martyyn

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#1019509 6-Apr-2014 15:29

I change my email to send as plain text and one arrived, along with one I'd sent earlier this afternoon. But nothing since.

I'm reading about IMAP and issues with security and so I've turned on the logging and see lots of this error

UnsealMessage failed with 0x80090318

I'm looking to see what that means now.

Cheers

martyyn

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#1019510 6-Apr-2014 15:33

And now every email is arriving. I'll try to retrace my steps to see what's made the difference !

timmmay

20587 posts

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#1019596 6-Apr-2014 20:13

Sounded like a problem with your email server being blacklisted. Most hosting companies suck at email. I used to use AuthSMTP.com for email delivery, they worked great, but I've since moved to FastMail.fm as my email host. Miles ahead of HostGator.

mattwnz

20164 posts

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#1019618 6-Apr-2014 20:59

timmmay: Sounded like a problem with your email server being blacklisted. Most hosting companies suck at email. I used to use AuthSMTP.com for email delivery, they worked great, but I've since moved to FastMail.fm as my email host. Miles ahead of HostGator.

Certainly many of the cheap and bottom of the market hosts do, although ISPs seem to be worse, possibly due to the high volume of customers using those servers. Bu higher quality hosts that don't have thousands of accounts on a server should be better. The OP needs to check if the mail server is blacklisted, which they can easily do on mxtoolbox.com

martyyn

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#1020384 8-Apr-2014 09:08

Thanks for mxtoolbox.com mattwnz but that shows no trouble with either of the hosts at all.

Everything has been working fine for the last couple of days, so we'll keep an eye on it.