Emails being blocked

[mattyg]

Hi Guys,

We've not been getting emails on 1 domain. I contacted Krystal support who said they are getting blocked because of invalid credentials on another domains email.
So I found the offending PC that has the wrong login details. Fixed that but still not getting emails. This morning I'm getting calls saying emails arent coming through or are being bounced back from senders trying to send in Invoices today on a 3rd Domain.

Krystal support said I can temp whitelist IP's and sent me a link that just opens up Cpanel..

I've no idea what to do from there.

Can anyone explain how
[email protected] can effect [email protected] and [email protected]'s emails although they are on the same Krystal account..

There support has always been top notch for a IT illiterate like me. But these responses seem lacking.... Or i need my hand holding too much

 

[On Holiday]

If you've got the wrong credentials then your email client will be submitting that wrong password every time it tries to sync, i.e. every minute, every 5 minutes.

Most hosting providers have bruteforce protection for IMAP/POP logins i.e. 10 failed login attempts within 60 minutes = IP blocked for 1 hour.. If it happens again after being unblocked leads to permanent IP ban.

With that said, you having the wrong credentials at any point should not be causing any sort of bouncebacks whatsoever, the two issues sound unrelated - push back on Krystal to let them know you have bouncebacks.

 

[mattyg]

This PC has had the wrong credentials for 12 months or more. The user ignored the warnings.

With regards to IP address. Would that just be from the offending PC.. As I'm not getting emails on phone. Neither is my manager at a different location with a different device on a different network

 

[Deleted member 77746]

so change it to the correct email password and then whitelist the ip.

If there’s no more failed logins it won’t black list the ip again.

It really is that simple.

 

[visibleman]

This morning I'm getting calls saying emails arent coming through...

Are your email clients syncing correctly with the mailboxes? i.e. - if you send an email from an external account (a Gmail account etc), does the mailbox receive it and does the client download/sync the inbox.
You can use cPanel's Webmail (https://www.domainname.com:2096) to check if mail is being received prior to an email client downloading/syncing the inbox.

or are being bounced back from senders trying to send in Invoices today on a 3rd Domain.

The bounce-backs would have generated and sent the sender a reply that stated the error. If you're able to, see if one of your senders is able to forward it to you, alternatively see if you can trigger one from a third-party mailbox, as it will give you a good indication to what the issue is (it could be anything at this point).
Once you know the error, then it makes it a tad easier to diagnose.

Worth checking to see if your servers IP address, or the IP attached to your mail server, is on a spam/blacklist - https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx.
If it's a 'shared' host environment (or the IP was previously attached to a spammer), then it probably is blacklisted somewhere and that can lead to a wide range of issues with sending and receiving mail. If that's the case then get onto Krystal to sort which is usually a new IP or submitting forms to the spam list that has blacklisted the IP to remove it (usually a headache and can take a while).

Krystal support said I can temp whitelist IP's and sent me a link that just opens up Cpanel...

Which whitelist did Krystal ask you to use? As there are multiple with cPanel/WHM.

Can anyone explain how
[email protected] can effect [email protected] and [email protected]'s emails although they are on the same Krystal account..

Because typically within a hosting environment (shared, VPS, dedicated etc*), it's a single mail server (Exim, Postfix, Dovecot etc) instance (on a given 'hosting' server) that underpins it all regardless of the number of mailboxes or differing domains attached to it.
* 'Cloud' type host environments usually differ with having dedicate mail servers (separate to the 'hosting' side) that customers use.

Personally, if it's for business then i would strongly recommend moving to Google or Microsoft.
Dealing with mail is a serious pain at the best of times (i spent many years looking after on-premise mailboxes) and the majority of hosting companies see it as an add-on feature rather than as a service and treat it as such, ie - "oh it's not working...¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

 

[mattyg]

Are your email clients syncing correctly with the mailboxes? i.e. - if you send an email from an external account (a Gmail account etc), does the mailbox receive it and does the client download/sync the inbox.
You can use cPanel's Webmail (https://www.domainname.com:2096) to check if mail is being received prior to an email client downloading/syncing the inbox.


The bounce-backs would have generated and sent the sender a reply that stated the error. If you're able to, see if one of your senders is able to forward it to you, alternatively see if you can trigger one from a third-party mailbox, as it will give you a good indication to what the issue is (it could be anything at this point).
Once you know the error, then it makes it a tad easier to diagnose.

Worth checking to see if your servers IP address, or the IP attached to your mail server, is on a spam/blacklist - https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx.
If it's a 'shared' host environment (or the IP was previously attached to a spammer), then it probably is blacklisted somewhere and that can lead to a wide range of issues with sending and receiving mail. If that's the case then get onto Krystal to sort which is usually a new IP or submitting forms to the spam list that has blacklisted the IP to remove it (usually a headache and can take a while).


Which whitelist did Krystal ask you to use? As there are multiple with cPanel/WHM.


Because typically within a hosting environment (shared, VPS, dedicated etc*), it's a single mail server (Exim, Postfix, Dovecot etc) instance (on a given 'hosting' server) that underpins it all regardless of the number of mailboxes or differing domains attached to it.
* 'Cloud' type host environments usually differ with having dedicate mail servers (separate to the 'hosting' side) that customers use.

Personally, if it's for business then i would strongly recommend moving to Google or Microsoft.
Dealing with mail is a serious pain at the best of times (i spent many years looking after on-premise mailboxes) and the majority of hosting companies see it as an add-on feature rather than as a service and treat it as such, ie - "oh it's not working...¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

Cheers guys.

Some emails were getting to webmail but not getting picked up by outlook. Some are just missing.
One driver sent it twice. Once from Hotmail (Bounced) one from Gmail that got through
out of 50 emails with Invoices today weve received about 15. However I'm getting some emails

Whitelist: Krystal just said I can temp whitelist IP's and had a link to my Cpanel......

Which IP am i trying to whitelist.. The PC's or the Servers? Sorry noob questions..

 

[mattyg]

I've no issue moving email hosting as long as its smooth and i dont lose any emails.

is there an easy way to sort this.. not bothered about paying for a solution. Especially if its better than a "free" option

Ta

 

[visibleman]

Some emails were getting to webmail but not getting picked up by outlook. Some are just missing.

When you say 'some are just missing', is that between Outlook and webmail? If so which 'app'? Or are the missing emails the ones that have bounced? Or, are they previous downloaded/sync'd emails in Outlook that have now vanished?

Are you using POP(3) or IMAP? And is Outlook set to remove mail once downloaded/sync'd?

One driver sent it twice. Once from Hotmail (Bounced) one from Gmail that got through
out of 50 emails with Invoices today weve received about 15. However I'm getting some emails

Is it just Hotmail (Outlook/Microsoft) you're having issues with or with other email providers?
And are you able to get a copy of the bounced email? As mentioned, the bounce-back should state why the email was bounced and an error code; you can then Google it all or someone here might be able to help.

Also, it's worth checking your host/mail server IP address against spam lists (MXToolbox is handy here) just in case it has been blacklisted, as that may explain your issues.

Whitelist: Krystal just said I can temp whitelist IP's and had a link to my Cpanel......

Which IP am i trying to whitelist.. The PC's or the Servers? Sorry noob questions..

There's multiple whitelists within cPanel/WHM (ones for cPanel access, Apache, Exim etc) so it's hard to say which one they're asking you to use, although it doesn't sound like they gave you much information to go on other than, "here, have this link".
Might be worth asking them which whitelist they're referencing and see if they'll explain it a bit better.

Alternatively, if it isn't just a link to cPanel (ie - cpanel.domain.com or domain.com:2083 or 2087) but rather to a specific section of cPanel then can you post the full link and remove any identifying information (domain etc)? As we may be able to decipher it

I've no issue moving email hosting as long as its smooth and i dont lose any emails.

is there an easy way to sort this.. not bothered about paying for a solution. Especially if its better than a "free" option

Personal preference is Microsoft 365 and if you're a small/medium business then one of their Business licences (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/business) will probably suffice.
There's a bit of a learning curve with MS365 but for mail, the basics are fairly straight forward to setup. Although they do do 30/60-day trials of various licences, so you can always do that and play around and see if you're comfortable with it.

As for moving, there are apps and proper methods. But, if you've only got a few mailboxes and they aren't huge (in size), then once you've setup your business email provider (Google, MS365 etc) and switched your domain name(s) MX (email) record across (so new mail is filtering into your business email provider), you could then export your mail (from Outlook or wherever) and re-import to your new mailboxes (one-by-one) via an email client (either the same one or another).
Obviously only delete your old mailboxes once you've verified everything on your new email provider.

But there are plenty of MSP's and IT support companies around to help if you aren't confident.

Edit - Seems there some sending issues with Outlook.com (Hotmail) that you may be caught up in - https://portal.office.com/servicestatus

 

[mattyg]

Snip

Thanks. I think we are getting somewhere... They were still getting spurious login attempts and I found an old phone we put on charge for our niece that looks like it was trying to connect.... Thats been wiped now..

I'll look into a dedicated email host. But I've a lot of emails.. Looking at MS exchange it looks like one email per "user"
I've 3 emails per hostpitality business and 7 for my courier company... That could get expensive.

 

[Sinbad2000]

What do the bounce messages say?

 

[visibleman]

Thanks. I think we are getting somewhere... They were still getting spurious login attempts and I found an old phone we put on charge for our niece that looks like it was trying to connect.... Thats been wiped now..

Hopefully that fixes it

I'll look into a dedicated email host. But I've a lot of emails.. Looking at MS exchange it looks like one email per "user"
I've 3 emails per hostpitality business and 7 for my courier company... That could get expensive.

Typically you would licence an actual physical user/seat and then use a mixture of groups (like 'Distribution Groups') and 'Shared Mailboxes', both types don't need to be licence other than having a licenced user attached, to fill in the other email accounts, eg - one employee matty@ (say 1 x Business Basic, or Standard if you want the desktop Office apps, licence), then you have sales@ which is a shared mailbox (no licence) where matty@ can send/receive mail from and then, contact@ as a distribution group (no licence) that filters all mail from contact@ to matty@ (matty@ can only receive mail from this address).
So licensing, and therefore cost, can really depending on the setup you deploy.

And whilst you can add multiple domain names (ie - hospitality-biz.com and courier-biz.com) to a single MS365 'master' account (what Microsoft calls a tenant or organisation) and in theory have multiple businesses/companies under the same tenant/roof, i would strongly advise against this as it can lead to some headaches, particularly with data separation.
From a pure email point-of-view and unless you really need to share data between businesses, and even then there ways to deal with that (to some extent), you're better off having a separate tenant for each company/business.

As mentioned, both Google and MS365 offer trials and, certainly is the case with MS365, you initially get assigned a Microsoft domain name (companyname.onmicrosoft.com) for your tenant that you can test a setup on without having to transfer across business domain names etc.

 

[On Holiday]

Thanks. I think we are getting somewhere... They were still getting spurious login attempts and I found an old phone we put on charge for our niece that looks like it was trying to connect.... Thats been wiped now..

I'll look into a dedicated email host. But I've a lot of emails.. Looking at MS exchange it looks like one email per "user"
I've 3 emails per hostpitality business and 7 for my courier company... That could get expensive.

Zoho Mail is seriously good value for money, worth considering if you're looking at new mail solutions

 

[mattyg]

FFS.

Server settings when set up were mail.pizzaplace.co.uk
Even though Cpanel still says that. It looks like its reverted back to servername.Krystal.co.uk


So changed back to servername.krystal and boom emails back on.... WTF would change that

 

[On Holiday]

FFS.

Server settings when set up were mail.pizzaplace.co.uk
Even though Cpanel still says that. It looks like its reverted back to servername.Krystal.co.uk


So changed back to servername.krystal and boom emails back on.... WTF would change that

Usually, on cPanel hosting, the two should resolve to the same IP address. Only reasonable explanation is that "mail.pizzaplace.co.uk" is actually (incorrectly) pointing to their web load-balancer IP address along with all the other A records.

Would need to know the real domain + servername that you're on to be able to work it out, perhaps a migration went wrong and replaced A records that shouldn't have been changed, or set to the wrong ones etc.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

and boom emails back on

So it was nowt to do with the server been bombarded with password requests then.

At least it's working now.