Hotmail blackholing messages

[dan5555]

Greetings. Has anyone else had problems with Hotmail blackholing emails from FutureQuest hosted domains?

When I send an email to a Hotmail address using the mail.myfuturequestdomain.com smtp settings, the email never reaches the Hotmail recipient -- showing up in neither the recipient's main box nor the recipient's spam box. I also don't receive a bounce back message. Futurequest checked the logs and says that Hotmail accepted the email. But it never reaches the recipient.

However, when I send email to the same Hotmail recipient but use the smtp settings of my ISP rather than FutureQuest, the email *does* go through. The email also goes through when I use the Futurequest web-based email program.

My domains are not listed on any blacklists ( http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx ).

So as best as I can determine, there's something about the mail.myfuturequestdomain.com smtp setting that's triggering black hole behavior at Hotmail.

I know something similar was a problem in the past ( http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=22738 ), but I can't find any definitive answers or solutions.

Has anyone else seen this problem or have any thoughts/solutions? I'm planning to contact Hotmail about it, but I'm on a Macintosh and the Microsoft Live Help Desk won't work for me.

Many thanks!

[happety]

Actually, I have had the same problem recently. Everything indicates it goes through, but it ends up in neverland, neither received nor to the SPAM folder...

This brings up something I've been meaning to ask. I use domain keys and the e-mail address I use is an IRM account, not the actual domain. Does this make a difference? Is Hotmail seeing a conflict in the domain key vs. the e-mail address and poofing the email into space?

[happety]

Let me start with this - It's been about 6 months since I moved a couple of domains to FQ. I am so happy being here. The hosting has been great, the customer service even better. I also love the incoming email tools and I've been quite pleased in this respect...

With that being said, I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to send e-mail from FQ. Like mentioned above, my e-mail sent to Hotmail accounts just disappears. E-mails sent to Yahoo accounts sometimes go through, sometimes bounce, sometimes deliver 2 days later and sometimes just go poof into Internet nothingness. In addition, it seems hit or miss on sending to normal domains (non mass e-mail domains.)

From reading the forums, I know some of it is the other domain's fault, but I've never had these issues with other hosts. I also know that customer service here has been good at reading headers and figuring out the issue (which I haven't submitted yet,) but the issue remains - Outgoing e-mail from FQ is inconsistent at best.

I'm not trying to rant here - I just want to have confidence that when I send an e-mail, it will actually be received. All of my e-mail now is personal, but I'm ramping up a commercial website and there is a big difference between my wife not getting my e-mail grocery list and a potential customer not getting my correspondence.

The only reason I mention this in a public forum is to allow all of the other members to respond and refute. Am I the only one here that crosses his fingers each time I send an e-mail?

[Buck]

I've been here a long time, and never have the problems you mention. Most of our e-mail comes from local client apps (Outlook) with one account using Quest Mail. We also have an ezMLM Mail list with about 2,000 subscribers that we use, and I don't have problems with that, except for the AOL users who consistently mark the e-mail as SPAM, resulting in a Mailing List Complaint notice. :(

[happety]

Let me add a couple of things.

1. Like mentioned above - I use domain keys, but my e-mail address is the domain of an IRM account. Does this make a difference? Is my IRM domain conflicting with the domain keys authentication? I don't understand 100% how DK works.

2. I use Thunderbird - This couldn't be a client issue, could it?

Today, I sent two separate e-mails to two different people (one of them was to multiple people.) I received a delayed delivery notice for one. I then called the other person and although it's hours later, he has yet to receive his.

[Daytripper_MI6]

I have been experiencing the same problems on one of my FQ hosted sites. It involves emails sent to complete the site registration process. We don't allow AOL addresses (We all know why), but email sent to Hotmail and Yahoo addresses are hit and miss, mostly miss. So I'm in the same boat with you. :dunno:

[Terra]

Outgoing e-mail from FQ is inconsistent at best.
Unfortunately, there is not much we can do, and we have been beating on their door for years...

Once our mail system hands off the email to the remote mail servers, then what they do with it is up to their own delivery practices...

I don't think there is really any discrimination going on, because we are ever vigilant on handling any spam issues and are lightning fast in handling them... From a web hosts perspective, we get the occasional problems from a site's scripts being exploited and then hijacked to send out junk mail... Another issue is when a site owner's local computer has been hijacked, and the spammer uses their computer to relay the spam through our mail servers using the trusted mail sending authentications...

In almost all cases, we notice and swiftly descend down upon the cause of the problem and put a stop to it... I would say without hesitation that we are MUCH better than most in handling this fairly and quickly...

With that said, once we pass off the email to the remote mail servers, it then becomes their responsibility to get it into the recipients box... What happens over there is a black box that we simply cannot do anything about... We did roll out DomainKeys to help with this issue, but have found that even doing what they requested has still been hit or miss, and our DomainKeys has been validated as working 100% correctly... Hotmail and Yahoo are a couple of the worst mail providers (I won't even mention the brain damaged A*L) that we unfortunately have to deal with, whereas GMail has been the least problematic of the large mail providers...

We will even take the time to diagnose email delivery headers to try and figure out what happened to the email, yet I doubt you will get much luck in having one of the big email providers to do that for you...

If it is shown that we handed off the email successfully to the remote mail system, I would ask that you email their tech support and see if they can trace it in their delivery system - simply because we can't due to the black box issue... I would be interested in seeing what they say...

[Melissa]

It also should be noted that this is not a problem that only affects some FutureQuest clients. Doing a search on Google will bring up many such cases with other providers affected by Hotmail as well. Here's a quick one with links to others:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19604658-Unable-to-send-email-to-hotmail
(I also personally know others that are affected by this, that are not hosted with FutureQuest.)

Yahoo's deferral of email is also quite famous and its affects widespread... :sad:

However, happety (and others), we do always encourage you to write in to the Service Desk (http://service.futurequest.net/index.php?_a=tickets&_m=submit) if you have questions about how a particular email was handled especially if you are experiencing any problems in sending to providers other than Hotmail or Yahoo. We'll just need the following information from you when you do so:
To address:
From address:
Date sent:
Time sent (specify timezone, please):

[happety]

Thanks for the clarification. Maybe this is just the state of e-mail today, and based on the link you posted Melissa, it appears using Thunderbird doesn't help the situation. I will further research this to determine how true that is.

I don't want to bombard the Service Desk everytime I have an e-mail issue, but I will send the two e-mails I sent yesterday to see if you can find anything odd.

[happety]

Based on Terra's and Melissa's response and the additional research I've done, it does appear to not be limited to FQ, but all e-mail providers. It's a sad state - as I've read many times, sometimes it seems the cure is just as bad as the illness when it comes to SPAM control.

I just signed up for a dedicated SMTP service (http://www.authsmtp.com/)that I've been playing with today. This particular service seems to be able have some control over outgoing messaging that other providers can't practically offer (and rightly so.) In my limited testing so far, all of my e-mail has gone through immediately - to Yahoo, Hotmail and all other domains. After continued use, I'll report back at some point and let everyone know how it's working.

[ffurtado]

For the past month we have been having problems delivering our ezMLM-idx email to our membership. This includes MSN, HOTMAIL, and EXCITE email addreses. We have asked our members who use those services to re-subscribe to our list with a GMAIL address. So far that has worked for us. Still, our messages fail to be delivered to some members randomly every time we send out our List for various unknown reasons. We are worried that at some point soon, few of our List mail messages are going to get to the majority of our members. Any suggestions for a better system will be appreciated.

[sheila]

For the past month we have been having problems delivering our ezMLM-idx email to our membership. This includes MSN, HOTMAIL, and EXCITE email addreses. We have asked our members who use those services to re-subscribe to our list with a GMAIL address. So far that has worked for us. Still, our messages fail to be delivered to some members randomly every time we send out our List for various unknown reasons. We are worried that at some point soon, few of our List mail messages are going to get to the majority of our members. Any suggestions for a better system will be appreciated.

In my experience, we really do not see gmail mysteriously dropping and failing to deliver emails that they accepted from our servers (whereas we do see this with Hotmail/MSN).

Did the gmail recipients who said they didn't receive the email check their spam folders to see if it was filtered in there? If they find it in there, they should mark it as "not spam". Have they added the mailing list address to their "contacts" list? These things should help them to receive the newsletters.

[ffurtado]

Sheila, Sorry I did not make myself clear. We have not had a problem sending our list email to any Gmail account so far. It's email to other ISP addresses in addition to MSN, Hotmail, Excite that are lost at random.

FYI, here is some information I just received from one of our members who complained to MSN about not being able to receive our list email.

From: MSN Customer Support
To: Wayne
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 9:35 PM
Subject: RE: SRX1065098651ID - MSN Premium Internet Software:Other

Hello, Wayne

Thank you for writing to the MSN Internet Access Technical Support Team. This is Sheila and I understand that you are unable to receive e-mail messages from the XXXX@lists.XXXX.com account because it is being blocked by Microsoft. I know how inconvenient this issue can be. I am here to provide you assistance today.

It is likely that the e-mail filters from our end are recognizing the e-mail messages from XXXX@lists.XXXX.com as spam thus it is being filtered before even reaching your account. To properly address your concern, the MSN Hotmail Domain Support Team needs specific information from your e-mail administrator. The administrator will need to fill out the form found at http://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsmsbl&mkt=en-us

I also would like to share to you the recommended practices of Windows Live Hotmail to ensure that e-mails will be delivered properly. You may get the document from http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/3/3/e3397e7c-17a6-497d-9693-78f80be272fb/enhance_deliver.pdf

You may also inform the e-mail administrator of XXXX@lists.XXXX.com to refer to the websites below so that their users can send e-mail to MSN and Hotmail users.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/3/3/e3397e7c-17a6-497d-9693-78f80be272fb/enhance_deliver.pdf

http://postmaster.live.com

http://www.microsoft.com/postmaster

http://www.microsoft.com/SenderID

https://postmaster.live.com/snds/index.aspx

I appreciate this opportunity of providing you assistance. Have a wonderful day!

Sincerely,
Sheila

MSN Internet Access Technical Support

[Bob]

ffurtado,

Hotmail/MSN provides a "Junk Mail Reporting Partner Program" (https://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#JMRPP) that supposedly would allow you to receive reports about any e-mail that is reported as junk e-mail by a Hotmail/MSN user.

This would have to be signed up for under each domain you send mass mailings from, they require the following.

Primary company contact name -
Primary company contact email address -
The home page where people sign up for each list -
The opt-out link for each list -
Sample sender IPs for verification -
Is the IP address registered under your company's name/domain name? -
If no, do you have exclusive sending rights from the IP via your hosting company (not shared with any other senders)? -
Can you remove addresses which complain from these lists? -

You would provide all your Contact and mailing list details, your FutureQuest Dedicated IP address, you would answer No to is the IP registered under your companies name but Yes to exclusive sending rights.

https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts

This should be useful for anyone sending ezmlm-idx mailing lists to large numbers of Hotmail/MSN users.

-Bob

[frankc]

https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts

This should be useful for anyone sending ezmlm-idx mailing lists to large numbers of Hotmail/MSN users.
That gives me a "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage". :dunno:

[sheila]

That's strange. The link works fine for me in Safari. I do get a certificate error, but I just tell my browser to ignore the error and go on.

Really, you'd think MSN's site would support IE (their own browser), but you might want to try with a different browser.

I also just tried it in Opera as well, and it generates a certificate error there also, but the page does open and display in my browser.