XF 2.2 Cloud email bounces from Hotmail

MapleOne

Well-known member
Anyone else having issues on cloud with hotmail/live/outlook bouncing email notifications.

Checking my logs and the soft bounces seem to come from hotmail addresses.

Also a few members registering with hotmail addresses have contacted me about not getting registration verification emails.

I hate hotmail, they give me problems at work too, whenever someone does not get an email its always a bloody hotmail address.
 
actually... if you are using SMTP there should be no restriction unless it's a choice by XF to restrict it. Amazon SES sending via SMTP should work fine. I seriously doubt that XF is blocking those ports.
If that is an option, would it not be a part of failover option by XF Cloud service?
 
If that is an option, would it not be a part of failover option by XF Cloud service?
I'm pretty sure it's the standard "option" that even the self-hosted script option offers.
How would it be a "failover" since you have to specifically define the SMTP credentials and connections? It would be spinning your wheels if you used the default XF server data, as you would be served the same by using PHP delivery - and I'm fairly sure that XF doesn't set up backup SMTP accounts with 3rd party services for every client that uses their service. Some stuff actually falls on the head of the owner of the site.
 
I'm pretty sure it's the standard "option" that even the self-hosted script option offers.
How would it be a "failover" since you have to specifically define the SMTP credentials and connections? It would be spinning your wheels if you used the default XF server data, as you would be served the same by using PHP delivery.


thanks for the suggestion, if no other option, i will try that, but additional cost isn't ideal SES only covers 64000 emails for free and having multiple providers is exactly what i was trying to avoid by moving to XF Cloud.
 
thanks for the suggestion, if no other option, i will try that, but additional cost isn't ideal SES only covers 64000 emails for free and having multiple providers is exactly what i was trying to avoid by moving to XF Cloud.
Uhhh... having Amazon SES isn't "multiple providers"... and if you are sending 64K emails a month then that's getting into "commercial" grade level... I have serious questions if XF's cloud hosting service is even targeted for 60K-100K a month email sends unless you are on the top tiers.
 
Hopefully Xenforo will keep us updated when this is fixed
I'm not a cloud user but this isn't a problem unique to Xenforo or their cloud service and I'm not entirely sure they can really solve it. I've been battling Microsoft for YEARS on getting mail through their gauntlet. I've jumped through every hoop they have ever put out and still, there are issues getting mail to those users with any MS-controlled address. (It doesn't matter if it's XF or not, anything that sends mail...) Even if the XF team manage to solve it temporarily, I'm confident that the issue would repeat itself. Amazon SES has been the only thing that has really worked (so far).
 
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^ That

We have already been through the process of having the block lifted but once again MS systems have decided our email server is spammy so they have blocked it again.

All we can do is keep requesting that the server IP is removed from the block list.
 
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I ended up having to use SES for all the major sites I host, and then for the smaller ones setting up smart routing within EXIM to route certain addresses via Sendgrid:

Code:
send_via_sendgrid:
  driver = manualroute
  domains = ! +local_domains : hotmail.com : outlook.com : live.com : yahoo.com
  transport = sendgrid_smtp
  route_list = "* smtp.sendgrid.net::587 byname"
  host_find_failed = defer
  no_more
 
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I'm not a cloud user but this isn't a problem unique to Xenforo or their cloud service and I'm not entirely sure they can really solve it.
That's right, any system sending bulk or transactional emails using shared hosting will come up against this. I have been through a lot of SMTP providers. Mandrill was great (not free but reasonably priced) until they became tied into mailchimp. I found that although Amazon was great for value, with them I still got a few blocks from btinternet from time to time. The best so far for me has been Postmark - not free but reasonable at about $10 for 10k emails per month.
 
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I must be one of the lucky ones as I ran VB/PHPBB/XF on multiple dedicated servers and VPS's over the past 15 years and not once encountered this issue until XF Cloud.
 
Yep... you were one of the lucky ones... the only REPEATED one I've ever had issues with (not just for my hosting but others I have helped with) has been Microsoft. Their filtering is rather aggressive....
Hell, I couldn't even get mail to go through to Hotmail/Live/Outlook recipients reliably from a ZoHo mail server using a domain that had been in existence for almost 5 years recently... it's why I broke down and did Amazon SES.
 
I have been running different websites with my own mail servers, and have not had this problem either.
Sometimes, when the server was new and some things like SPF/DMARC were not in place I had problems with my servers being blocked by MS. Usually after applying all recommendations, they unblocked the IP.
It's easy to blame someone else, but if they mark your server as spammy, well maybe it is spammy?
If people mark your mails as spam, something is not good.
 
I must be one of the lucky ones as I ran VB/PHPBB/XF on multiple dedicated servers and VPS's over the past 15 years and not once encountered this issue until XF Cloud.
To be fair, if we're pulling up ancient history here, sending mail wasn't really a problem in the early days. I'd wager that we started throwing more time and resources at email handling beginning about 10-12 years ago. Prior to that, you could just slap together a mail server and off you went. I don't even think we started adding SPF records in DNS until about 2009'ish?

If people mark your mails as spam, something is not good.
This is tough nut to crack, people some times just arbitrarily mark automated emails as spam. If we get the notice, we'll follow-up with that user and ask them why that occurred and point them to a personal information & email handling policy. (Yahoo! mail service probably has the fastest feedback loop when someone marks a message as spam... we get an email pretty quickly)
 
That's right, any system sending bulk or transactional emails using shared hosting will come up against this. I have been through a lot of SMTP providers. Mandrill was great (not free but reasonably priced) until they became tied into mailchimp. I found that although Amazon was great for value, with them I still got a few blocks from btinternet from time to time. The best so far for me has been Postmark - not free but reasonable at about $10 for 10k emails per month.

all services listed above require physical address to be in the footer of each email, any alternatives out there which don't require all that info?
 
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