Users not receiving confirmation emails. Used to work just fine.

[Hensmon]

I've had three separate users now tell me they are not receiving confirmation emails when registering. This has never been a problem in the 3+ years, I have run the forum, so something has changed (I've done nothing). My transport method is the PHP built in system.

Could it be cloudflare related? I recently used this service to help solve site crash issues do to memory. Could some rule or set-up there being doing this?

Could it be related to the persistent 500 error issues I have been having? My memory/cpu is too low and traffic (bots) has been overloading my site. Does this have a downstream effect on email messaging too? All issues of sign up so far have been from Gmail accounts, but that might be a coincidence..

For now I have turned off the email confirmation step, but realize this is not a long term solution. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Digital Doctor]

shared hosting ?

 

[briansol]

do you have dkim set up ?

 

[Alpha1]

What are the email domains of these users?

Do you have bounce processing setup correctly?

What are the bounce message notifications for these email addresses ? You can find it in your bounced email log.

If you get to many bounces and do not process these correctly then your sender reputation gets destroyed and email will stop arriving.

 

[eva2000]

I've had three separate users now tell me they are not receiving confirmation emails when registering. This has never been a problem in the 3+ years, I have run the forum, so something has changed (I've done nothing). My transport method is the PHP built in system.

Could it be cloudflare related? I recently used this service to help solve site crash issues do to memory. Could some rule or set-up there being doing this?

Could it be related to the persistent 500 error issues I have been having? My memory/cpu is too low and traffic (bots) has been overloading my site. Does this have a downstream effect on email messaging too? All issues of sign up so far have been from Gmail accounts, but that might be a coincidence..

For now I have turned off the email confirmation step, but realize this is not a long term solution. Any help would be appreciated.

Average email list decays by 25% per year. Meaning up to 1/4 of your email each year could end up with bouncing emails due to invalid email accounts, inactive accounts that get deleted or even accounts that run out of free disk space.

Over 3yrs, without cleaning your email list, you have up to 58% bad emails! Turning off email verification will make it worse too. I did run through a bunch of email verification providers I use at https://github.com/centminmod/validate-emails and pricing comparison.

Gmail accounts can be deleted for inactivity and bounce if disk space quotas are hit. Check Xenforo admin bounce email log for clues and ensure you setup bounce and unsubscribe emails properly in Xenforo email settings. Try manually logging into your bounce and unsubscribe email accounts to check for issues and if you are receiving emails.

Ensure you have valid SPF, DKIM, DMARC and reverse PTR dns records for your sending email domain and server. Check by sending forum email to https://www.mail-tester.com/

You mentioned Cloudflare move recently, make sure you aren't orange cloud proxying sending mail server hostname i.e mail.hostname.com etc as you will mask your reverse PTR record IP address and only show Cloudflare's IP address and not your sending mail server's IP address.

 

[eva2000]

If you get to many bounces and do not process these correctly then your sender reputation gets destroyed and email will stop arriving

Yup Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are alot stricter now https://dmarcreport.com/blog/microsoft-outlook-steps-up-email-security-with-new-policies/