Any I.T experts? Cloud-based server/emails not reaching

Any I.T experts? Cloud-based server/emails not reaching

Author
Discussion

LeoZwalf

2,802 posts

229 months

Wednesday 27th August 2014
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Surely you need to call the company who's hosting your cloud wotsit?

WinstonWolf

72,857 posts

238 months

Wednesday 27th August 2014
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Run the IP address of your server against this, I wouldn't be surprised if it's landed up on a blacklist somehow.

http://multirbl.valli.org/

IanCress

4,409 posts

165 months

Wednesday 27th August 2014
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Te blacklist suggestion is quite likely. We use Google's 'Postini' service for filtering our mail, and occasionally the IP addresses of the Postini servers get blacklisted, meaning thorugh no fault of our own our mail gets 'black-holed', meaning you don't even get a bounceback reply when a mail fails to reach the recipient.

rpguk

4,458 posts

283 months

Wednesday 27th August 2014
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Black list sounds most likely. A lot of providers will try and fob you off as it can be a pain to get off the blacklists. Especially as the paths to avoid said blacklists often end up with support calls too.

WinstonWolf

72,857 posts

238 months

Wednesday 27th August 2014
quotequote all
hora said:
WinstonWolf said:
Run the IP address of your server against this, I wouldn't be surprised if it's landed up on a blacklist somehow.

http://multirbl.valli.org/
A few hits on there- how do we resolve? Do we contact our Cloud provider with the links to disenable/contact those that blacklisted?

(Disclaimer I'm not a IT bod/good with the terminology)

Thanks so far smile
Depends on who the hits are with. There's a couple I wouldn't be concerned with but it's a starting point and there's a strong chance that's the problem.

I'd pass it over to your host at this point. If they aren't overly helpful/reactive you've got that info as a lever. Resolving this should generally be within their remit smile

rpguk

4,458 posts

283 months

Wednesday 27th August 2014
quotequote all
Yes, it'll be for them to sort.

When our mailserver gets blacklisted I usually just give it a new IP address but we are fortunate in that we have a few IP address available to switch about and it's a rare occurrence due to fairly strict policies on mail sending.

The thing is they really need to ensure that whatever has flagged the server up is sorted and that is probably going to be down to another customer. If it's a first time offence the blacklisting usually drops off after 24 hours or so but if it happens again the punishment is usually stronger.

If this is what they do as a company then it's bread and butter stuff though so really I'd be concerned if you have to pressure them or do their job for them.

bitchstewie

50,811 posts

209 months

Wednesday 27th August 2014
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First question is are you getting an "Undeliverable" report, generally mail shouldn't just disappear.

The place to start would be the logs of your mail server, which is a question for whoever is running it at an administrative level.

bitchstewie

50,811 posts

209 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
hora said:
I don't get an undeliverable report.

Our IT contractor said: You don’t have a local ip associated with your email its cloud based.

If true? Could our cloud providers I.P address be the one being blocked?
That doesn't really mean anything though.

If you aren't getting an undeliverable nobody will be able to do anything other than guess - you need whoever has access to your server logs to look at them and see what is happening.

WinstonWolf

72,857 posts

238 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
hora said:
I don't get an undeliverable report.

Our IT contractor said: You don’t have a local ip associated with your email its cloud based.

If true? Could our cloud providers I.P address be the one being blocked?
Just because it's cloud based doesn't mean you have an IP, your host will either have an or a block of IP addresses. These *may* be on an IP blacklist.

bitchstewie

50,811 posts

209 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
quotequote all
WinstonWolf said:
Just because it's cloud based doesn't mean you have an IP, your host will either have an or a block of IP addresses. These *may* be on an IP blacklist.
It's very likely, but I'd still expect a NDR to be generated if it was being rejected at the MTA level vs. accepted but then quarantined or something at the recipients side.

Randomthoughts

917 posts

132 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
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I'd move if they're that incompetent that they can't get your mail delivered, or be arsed to investigate.

buggalugs

9,243 posts

236 months

Thursday 28th August 2014
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It can be a pain to resolve these problems which are hard to pin down exactly and involve a third parties systems. But ultimately that's what you pay people for. I know I've ended up on the phone to random companies I don't even support trying to resolve spam issues for clients before. It's just one of the many costs of Spam to business.

andy-xr

13,204 posts

203 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
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Move your email, just your email for now to a Hosted Exchange provider who actually runs something that can tell you where your email went and the reason it did or didnt get delivered. I'm a fan of Simply Mail Solutions but there are others. It sounds like you need to go fairly bespoke as opposed to a massive org who dont track anything. I think moving the email will fix the problem anyway

Other things you can do that might help - SPF record and implement DMARC but if it's other people on the same shared server you're fxcked til the host sorts it out

marshalla

15,902 posts

200 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
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hora said:


The emails I'm getting are getting less and less and alot of people are saying 'tried emailing you and it bounced'. Its screwing the business. A good tiny business. I'd be better off sadly starting to look for a new job at this rate.
Can you get accurate copies of the bounce messages ? - they may give you a better clue.

I'm wondering if it's something really stupid like a mail server that won't let you send when your inbound mailbox is full.

Bikerjon

2,202 posts

160 months

Monday 22nd September 2014
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It might well be something small but at the end of the day if your provider wont/can't help then what option do you have other than to move it to something that works? Google Apps, Office365 or hosted exchange are usually great options for a small business.

andy-xr

13,204 posts

203 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
quotequote all
Kind of true

But that's a separate problem, you still have the issue of mail not reaching/not receiving and the answer will most likely be your mail server is on a shared server who's IP is blacklisted. Til that's straightened out with a yes/no I wouldnt spend time elsewhere.

sparkyhx

4,143 posts

203 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
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another vote for blacklisted server

Carrot

7,294 posts

201 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
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This is why I am generally against cloud services. If we have a problem with our mail servers / smtp gateway, we can interrogate and fix almost instantly or at least find out what the problem is...

TonyRPH

12,963 posts

167 months

Wednesday 24th September 2014
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OP you have a PM.

Justin Cyder

12,624 posts

148 months

Wednesday 24th September 2014
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We suffered this exact problem & wrote about it here too. Turned out to be an IP blacklist by Go Daddy who host our email & it was explained to me that rather than pay fro armies of techs dealing with spam, they automate the blacklisting via algorithm & that's how it becomes very easy to fall foul of it.