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Spong

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#310791 22-Nov-2023 14:16
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I have several clients with domains and email hosted at Freeparking. In the last few weeks, some of my clients have had problems with certain emails they've sent bouncing back with Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender. The permanent error has been "message has lines too long for transport". This has never been an issue in the past, so it appears FP are now enforcing a 90char line length limit. All my affected clients are using Outlook (2010 up to 365) with email line length set to the default of auto-word-wrap at 76 characters. Unfortunately the problem occurs if my clients have copied and pasted text from somewhere else, where the lines are longer. One also had a long signature with a small font, hence too many characters. This last issue was easy to fix. 

 

Freeparking have been exceedingly unhelpful, and just say it's an Outlook problem, but in fact it's a show-stopper for some clients. Does anyone know what our best option is? Why are Freeparking now enforcing this, but never did before?  Their hold time for support has recently increased  from less than a minute to up to 1.5hrs. Any suggestions for a good reliable mail hosting company we can shift them to, that doesn't enforce this? 





Tivo upgrades to operate with the new OzTivo EPG, support and service. Over 400 performed here so far. See: www.hillcrest.net.nz


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SirHumphreyAppleby
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  #3162436 22-Nov-2023 15:03
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Possibly a bit of blame at both ends, but difficult to be certain without seeing the message source.

 

RFC821 has always allowed 998 characters on text lines and encourages implementations not to impose line length limits where possible.

 

For outbound SMTP, I suggest SMTP2Go.

 

 

 

Edited for clarity.




Lias
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  #3162641 23-Nov-2023 07:36
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Spong:

 

Any suggestions for a good reliable mail hosting company we can shift them to

 

 

Exchange Online





I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.


SirHumphreyAppleby
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  #3162777 23-Nov-2023 12:17
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Lias:

 

Exchange Online

 

 

I get users asking me all the time about Exchange Online sending issues. I would suggest it's not the best option for clients who need their existing software to continue working, especially if they are managing the e-mail themselves. Getting users to turn off security defaults and enable SMTP Auth, just so they can use their existing secure and standards compliant software, might create an even bigger support issue.

 

I had one client move from Freeparking to https://nzdomainregistration.nz. I mostly handle the outbound mail side of things (via SMTP2Go), but the hosting service seems reliable. Lacks support for VERP, if that's something your clients need.




Lias
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  #3162780 23-Nov-2023 12:24
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SirHumphreyAppleby:

 

I get users asking me all the time about Exchange Online sending issues. I would suggest it's not the best option for clients who need their existing software to continue working, especially if they are managing the e-mail themselves. Getting users to turn off security defaults and enable SMTP Auth, just so they can use their existing secure and standards compliant software, might create an even bigger support issue.

 

 

My personal opinion is that people not using Outlook, should change to using Outlook.. but at any rate, the OP said the client is using Outlook, which for obvious reasons works well with Exchange Online.





I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.


SirHumphreyAppleby
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  #3162792 23-Nov-2023 12:42
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Lias:

 

My personal opinion is that people not using Outlook, should change to using Outlook.. but at any rate, the OP said the client is using Outlook, which for obvious reasons works well with Exchange Online.

 

 

I used Outlook for many years. It once was a good product.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/13lo7u6/list_of_new_features_and_missing_features_in_the/


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  #3162795 23-Nov-2023 12:59
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I forgot they renamed the free replacement for Outlook Express / Mail to be Outlook as well, which is just stupid and confusing. 

 

For clarity I'm talking about the paid edition.





I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.


 
 
 

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SirHumphreyAppleby
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  #3162808 23-Nov-2023 13:38
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Lias:

 

For clarity I'm talking about the paid edition.

 

 

Message as of late seems to focus on the 'new' Outlook being a replacement for the free mail programmes included with Windows, however, all indications are that the paid versions will be going down the same route.

 

It's anyone's guess how many of the features actually come across before then, but I doubt it will have anything like the feature set that 'classic' Outlook has now.


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  #3162812 23-Nov-2023 14:14
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SirHumphreyAppleby:

 

I get users asking me all the time about Exchange Online sending issues. I would suggest it's not the best option for clients who need their existing software to continue working, especially if they are managing the e-mail themselves. Getting users to turn off security defaults and enable SMTP Auth, just so they can use their existing secure and standards compliant software, might create an even bigger support issue.

 

I had one client move from Freeparking to https://nzdomainregistration.nz. I mostly handle the outbound mail side of things (via SMTP2Go), but the hosting service seems reliable. Lacks support for VERP, if that's something your clients need.

 

 

Do not turn off security defaults unless you are turning on conditional access policies. 

 

If you want to be able to send from non MS Apps etc, provision something like SMTP2GO, which will give you SPF and similar records and ensure deliverability. 

 

 


networkn
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  #3162813 23-Nov-2023 14:15
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SirHumphreyAppleby:

 

I used Outlook for many years. It once was a good product.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/13lo7u6/list_of_new_features_and_missing_features_in_the/

 

 

I'd say the opposite is true. Outlook is now a product worth using compared to the awful product it was in the past. 

 

 


OldKiwi
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  #3183478 18-Jan-2024 11:11
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Hi Spong,

 

Yep, exact same issue with Freeparking & trying to get their non-tech help desk users to understand this is caused by a recent change in configuration on their mail servers as until late 2022 (September 2022 is when I was first alerted to this issue by one of my customers), Freeparking would accept the malformed emails from Outlook prior to this date & deliver them successfully, their techs simply reply with this is an outlook issue & that's it - twats!

 

Have you managed to find an NZ based company which does accept & deliver these malformed emails ?? (to be clear, the known outlook issue is with writing the header record related to multiple replies in a thread, outlook allows this header record to exceed the RFC mandated length but has done so for more than 7 years & this delivery failure via Freeparking has only started in the last 6 months).

 

I have 6 or so companies that I want to move from Freeparking as since Dreamscape purchased them, they have 100% gone to the dogs in terms of services & support (don't get me started on the issues with simple stuff like transferring a domain to them, had to involve the DNS Registrar to get Freeparking to complete this & took almost 4 weeks for the transfer to finally complete, glad no-one was in a hurry for that domain to be functional !)

 

I am currently waiting on a response from https://nzdomainregistration.nz/ to clarify if they reject emails with this issue but thought it might save me some time if you have already found an NZ based supplier which does still work with these malformed emails.

 

Any info appreciated,

 

Thanks,

 

Phil


Spong

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  #3183621 18-Jan-2024 18:24
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Hi @oldkiwi 

 

I couldn't agree more that Freeparking have devolved into a company I could never recommend now. I've been using them for myself and clients since 2003 when things were pretty good. Amongst other things including this issue, their email plans are not fit for purpose in 2024, with nowhere near enough storage to enable IMAP unless you buy far more mailboxes than you'll ever use. I had a couple of clients setup with 100 mailboxes and unlimited storage, some using IMAP, then without any warning of any kind, they moved the goalposts to 100GB total storage for 100 mailboxes with no options to buy more, and even their support staff couldn't explain why these mail accounts had been frozen until a lot of digging figured what had happened. Despite all efforts to have this resolved, they simply refused to continue to supply the service we'd purchased for them, and had been using for several years. 

 

My clients who couldn't work around the Freeparking "too many characters in a  line" Outlook issue have moved to MS 365 hosted accounts. All good now. 





Tivo upgrades to operate with the new OzTivo EPG, support and service. Over 400 performed here so far. See: www.hillcrest.net.nz


 
 
 

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OldKiwi
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  #3183830 19-Jan-2024 09:55
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Thanks @spong, appreciate the update & prompt reply, Thanks heaps.


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