My Outgoing Emails (from My Domain) Get Blocked

[undersan]

I've used a me-AT-my-domain email address for years (with my domain hosted by a TCH Starter plan). At one point, my mom's work ISP was blocking my emails, which was annoying. Now, it's happening again with a different ISP:

 

Today, I tried to send an email to my parents at their home address (@verizon.net) and got the following:

 

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

 

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its

recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

 

[my parents]@verizon.net

SMTP error from remote mail server after MAIL FROM:<[me-AT-my-domain]> SIZE=3714:

host relay.verizon.net [206.46.232.11]: 550 Email from your Email Service Provider is currently blocked by Verizon Online's anti-spam system. The email "sender" or Email Service Provider may visit http://www.verizon.net/whitelist and request removal of the block.

 

I'm looking for some advice. Should I try to resolve this issue with Verizon? I'm sure this kind of thing will just keep happening. Maybe I should swallow my pride, give up my cool me-AT-my-domain address, and start using Yahoo/Gmail like everyone else.

[TCH-Andy]

I'd open a ticket at the help desk (abuse department) and let us have a look at it.

[heyguy]

Since your post title mentioned Gmail, I thought I'd plug Google Apps for Your Domain. I started using this for one of my domains about a month ago and it's great - it's got all the functionality of Gmail but it uses your domain instead of gmail.com. Just change the MX records for your domain and voila. Your website still sits here on the TCH servers, but the mail goes through Google. Google's spam filtering is waaay better than SpamAssassin could ever hope for, the webmail client is fantastic, you can still do POP and IMAP if you want, and so far nothing I've sent has been blocked by anybody. Also, should your TCH server ever go down, your mail still works. (Assuming DNS is still up, of course.) Something worth checking out anyway.

[jacobh]

Since your post title mentioned Gmail, I thought I'd plug Google Apps for Your Domain. I started using this for one of my domains about a month ago and it's great - it's got all the functionality of Gmail but it uses your domain instead of gmail.com. Just change the MX records for your domain and voila. Your website still sits here on the TCH servers, but the mail goes through Google. Google's spam filtering is waaay better than SpamAssassin could ever hope for, the webmail client is fantastic, you can still do POP and IMAP if you want, and so far nothing I've sent has been blocked by anybody. Also, should your TCH server ever go down, your mail still works. (Assuming DNS is still up, of course.) Something worth checking out anyway.

 

Wow, thanks for the heads up on that! That sounds like something I might want to look into my self, even though my only problem is keeping spam low. Spam Assassin actually seems to be doing a relatively decent job for me though! Especially since I implemented a spam learning script for it, which runs on a cron job.

[Deverill]

I have been using the Gmail hosted email for about a month now and my folks love it. They even have a portal where you can add RSS feeds for news and weather and stuff just like on regular Google personalized home pages! Google is certainly much nicer for my non-technical folks than squirrel or horde on the interface side.

 

You do lose out on SpamAssassin, but you get Google's spam filters. They are pretty good but miss a lot of certain types of mail. Lately I've been seeing a lot of "Mail Delivery Error" types of spam that try to look like a failed delivery of email from you to someone else - then when you open it you see a graphic trying to get you to buy stocks... who would buy a stock suggested in that manner is beyond me!

 

Anyway, the guys here were great - I submitted a helpdesk ticket with the info Google gave me and poof, there it was working within about 10 minutes. (It was a low priority ticket )

 

If you have any questions about it or anything I can help with feel free to PM me.

[jacobh]

I have been using the Gmail hosted email for about a month now and my folks love it. They even have a portal where you can add RSS feeds for news and weather and stuff just like on regular Google personalized home pages! Google is certainly much nicer for my non-technical folks than squirrel or horde on the interface side.

 

You do lose out on SpamAssassin, but you get Google's spam filters. They are pretty good but miss a lot of certain types of mail. Lately I've been seeing a lot of "Mail Delivery Error" types of spam that try to look like a failed delivery of email from you to someone else - then when you open it you see a graphic trying to get you to buy stocks... who would buy a stock suggested in that manner is beyond me!

 

Anyway, the guys here were great - I submitted a helpdesk ticket with the info Google gave me and poof, there it was working within about 10 minutes. (It was a low priority ticket )

 

If you have any questions about it or anything I can help with feel free to PM me.

 

Hmm... I'm wondering what the benefits of that would be, as opposed to just having my mail forwarded to a google address?

 

Also, if you change your mx entry to google, can you have some of your addresses google hosted, and others forwarded?

 

Thanks!

[TCH-Bruce]

If you change your MX record where ever you have the MX record pointing to will handle all mail requests.

[heyguy]

Hmm... I'm wondering what the benefits of that would be, as opposed to just having my mail forwarded to a google address?

 

Also, if you change your mx entry to google, can you have some of your addresses google hosted, and others forwarded?

 

Thanks!

The original issue in this post was outgoing mail sent from TCH servers being blocked as spam (because the server is marked somewhere as being a spammy server). If you host the mail for your domain on Google's servers, the mail will go to and from there and never touches your TCH server. You still get POP, IMAP, and Webmail (using the Gmail-like interface which imho beats SquirrelMail and Horde hands down - plus you get that nice 2GB mailbox). On top of that you also get the calendar and start page stuff with it.

 

Forwarding all of your TCH mail to your Gmail address puts all your mail in one mailbox, and when you send mail from your Gmail account it is using your Gmail address. Hosted mail uses your domain name, and you can create different ones for your users just like you can now.

 

To answer your second question, no. If you change your mx records to point to Google's servers, that's where your mail goes. But, you can still forward the email from there to whatever other email account you want.

[jacobh]

The original issue in this post was outgoing mail sent from TCH servers being blocked as spam (because the server is marked somewhere as being a spammy server). If you host the mail for your domain on Google's servers, the mail will go to and from there and never touches your TCH server. You still get POP, IMAP, and Webmail (using the Gmail-like interface which imho beats SquirrelMail and Horde hands down - plus you get that nice 2GB mailbox). On top of that you also get the calendar and start page stuff with it.

 

Forwarding all of your TCH mail to your Gmail address puts all your mail in one mailbox, and when you send mail from your Gmail account it is using your Gmail address. Hosted mail uses your domain name, and you can create different ones for your users just like you can now.

 

To answer your second question, no. If you change your mx records to point to Google's servers, that's where your mail goes. But, you can still forward the email from there to whatever other email account you want.

 

Actually I just looked into my Gmail account, and they have the option of setting up other from addresses. So you can send email from your gmail account, but make it look like it is from your own domain name. This way you can have mail forwarded from your domain name to your gmail account, and reply to mail and still have it look like it came from your domain. I think this would work best for me, because it allows me to have SpamAssassin filtering, plus Gmail spam filtering, plus I can still create mail auto-forwarding for accounts on my domain.

 

I started setting up Google in the MX transfer way, but it seems google doesn't have a way of creating auto-forwards. At least I couldn't find it. So i decided to just go with just auto-forwarding one of my accounts to my gmail.

 

Thanks!

[TCH-Bruce]

I do not believe that email being forwarded from your domain is even checked with Spam Assassin before forwarding.

[abinidi]

A couple of thoughts.

 

First, I actually employ both options, albeit on different domains.

 

For my main domain, I am using cPanel forwarders to forward aliases to my mail gmail.com domain. For a family domain, I am hosting my email with google apps, and have my MX records set to google.

 

I don\'t use Horde or Squirrel Mail at all.

 

I actually like both options for different reasons.

 

Let me break them down.

 

Option 1: Create cPanel forwarders and use a gmail.com e-mail address.

 

I\'m the only person who would use an address on my main domain, as it is named after me. So forwarding to a standard Gmail account is an easy option. When I want throwaway accounts, I either create them as forwarders (aliases) in cPanel, or I use an on-the-fly forwarder from a free service like spamgourmet.com.

 

I have set up my Gmail account to allow me to \"send from\" other addresses. The mail headers make it obvious that the message was sent from my Gmail account. In fact, I\'ve had some people report that they actually see my Gmail address and not my personal domain address when they receive my messages. Apparently this is a \'security feature\' put into place to prevent people from faking the sender information.

 

This works great, and I get all the latest Gmail features (including storage space) as it becomes available to the regular Google customer base.

 

Option 2: Host mail with Google Apps, and modify MX records with TCH.

 

This is a great option for my family domain where I have given accounts to members of my family. Google has some great features, including adding all my site members to each others address books automatically. When I want forwards or group recepients, I use the Manage Domain control to add email lists. Lists can contain one or more people. So I can have the faux-account \'webmaster\' and \'admin\' point to my main account. Then I can create an \'all\' faux-account to e-mail all people with accounts on my domain.

 

This option works really well. Because Google hosts and my MX records just point, all my recipients always see my domain e-mail address; there is no Gmail address associated with the account. Also, Google never deletes these accounts due to inactivity.

 

The drawbacks of this option include:

 

(a): Gmail does not necessarily equal Google Hosted E-mail. For example, Gmail is constantly increasing storage space for users. Right now that is approaching 3 GB of storage. Google hosted e-mail is stuck at 2. Gmail includes a picture feature for displaying a user-selected picture for contacts. Google for your domain doesn\'t include this feature. You can\'t guarantee that all Gmail features will be released simultaneously to Google Apps. They might, but there isn\'t a guarantee.

 

( Occasionally TCH (3 times in the last 12 months, I think) resets the MX records, and suddenly my mail doesn\'t show up in Google Apps. In order to compensate for this, I\'ve set up some redundancy. I added forwarders in my cPanel so that if the MX records get switched back to TCH, the cPanel forwarders take over and my messages don\'t get lost; they get forwarded to my external gmail.com account.

 

I really like both solutions. Each has its drawback, so figure out what is most important to you, and then pick the solution that works best for you. Hope this review helps.

 

-Paul

Edited January 24, 2007 by abinidi

[heyguy]

I do not believe that email being forwarded from your domain is even checked with Spam Assassin before forwarding.

That is correct, Spam Assassin does not filter forwarded mail.

 

To address some of Paul's points.

 

I generally agree with the options laid out - forwarding your domain is fine if it's just you, and hosted is good if you have multiple people - but I would have to contest your section regarding drawbacks to Google hosted. A 2GB mailbox may not be the 3GB mailbox Gmail provides, but it is likely bigger than your entire TCH account quota, so that should be a plus. You may not be able to have pictures of your contacts, but in my many years of using email I've never once needed to see a picture of the person I'm sending mail to - usually a name works fine. That seems more like fluffy blingy stuff, and not having it in an email application shouldn't really be a drawback. And whether you get all of the Gmail features or not, as one who uses it I think you'd agree that Google hosted is better than regular hosted. It's not just about the mail and high availability/reliability (you ever lose an email?) - the calendar is the best web based calendar you'll find, and the customizable start page is great too.

 

As for the dns issue, if you want highly available dns you should look into dnsmadeeasy.com. Maybe not necessary for personal sites, but if you run business sites and start sweating every time your email goes down (which brings me to another q - why is your dns getting reset?), it's worth looking at. I know a certain web hosting company that relies on them as well.

[abinidi]

A 2GB mailbox may not be the 3GB mailbox Gmail provides, but it is likely bigger than your entire TCH account quota, so that should be a plus. You may not be able to have pictures of your contacts, but in my many years of using email I've never once needed to see a picture of the person I'm sending mail to - usually a name works fine. That seems more like fluffy blingy stuff, and not having it in an email application shouldn't really be a drawback. And whether you get all of the Gmail features or not, as one who uses it I think you'd agree that Google hosted is better than regular hosted. It's not just about the mail and high availability/reliability (you ever lose an email?) - the calendar is the best web based calendar you'll find, and the customizable start page is great too.

 

Absolutley. I agree. My point wasn't as much one of "you're really missing out if you don't have pictures" as it was one of "be aware that Gmail doesn't necessarily equal Google Hosted." They are separate applications that share most common functionality, however, don't go in to the Google Hosted thinking you're just getting a rebranded Gmail account. You aren't. And my example of features was just to show that even currently there are features in one application that aren't in the other. But going forward, new features might be added to one application and not the other. They are separate apps. They just share a lot of common functionality. If you are interested in all of Gmail's bells and whistles, you should at least be aware of this point before you switch to Google Hosted. I'm not saying it is a reason not to switch, but I clarify it because I think it is important that you understand what you are getting from Google Hosted.

 

As for the dns issue, [...] (which brings me to another q - why is your dns getting reset?) [...]

 

I'd love to know the answer to this question myself. It seems to happen after my server goes down, but the mx records arent' getting restored to what they were before the server went down. Every time it has happened, I've reopened the same ticket so the help desk can see it is a recurring problem. I don't know what more to do than that.

[jacobh]

Thanks for the review abinidi, my fellow nephite. So one question I have:

When google is set up with your mx records, is there a way to auto-forward certain email addresses at your domain to another domain?

Edited January 26, 2007 by jacobh

[abinidi]

Well, kind of.

 

You can set up an actual e-mail account, and set that account to forward all incoming mail to an external address. The account stays on Google servers, but the mail in the account can pile up. You can set the Google account to delete all messages after they have been fowarded, so maybe that will work for you. Google never deletes accounts on your domain for inactivity, so you don't have to worry about logging in every couple of months or anything.

 

The problem, though, is that Google hosted only lets you have 25 accounts total, so that becomes your upper limit for number of external forwarders.

 

I do this with mail for one of my family members. They get mail on our family domain. It drops into their Google Hosted e-mail account, and then is fowarded to this user's work account.

 

Hope this helps.

[Deverill]

Just wanted to drop in a note on this. I lost my DNS setting once because of a server crash and coincidental timing of my change being between backup and restore times. Other than that it's been fine here at TCH.

 

Also, today we couldn't get into the hosted gmail accounts for nearly an hour. Suddenly it cleared up and had nothing to do with TCH... I couldn't even log in on Google's end. I don't know if I lost any emails but this is the problem with beta stuff. Don't even TRY to complain to Google about it. *IF* you can find their flavor of the helpdesk, AND reply to the auto-form mail with "further info", it usually takes 2-4 days for them to reply with a form letter based on the first 3 words of your complaint. If you think TCH not having a phone number was scary try depending on Google support!