Client not receiving emails-sometimes

[a1000w]

Weird problem, don't know what to advise.... my client's website, which I recently transferred to BlueHost, is using his newly-set up email through BlueHost, of course. On his website is a simple mailto: to contact him.
I've been successful in making that work. He says he has a couple of people who say it doesn't "go through."

And.... he says he is not receiving regular emails from some people either and that he has sent some from his email address that the recipients have not received.

Unfortunately, he's not giving me any more facts. But.... I am not sure what else to tell him about why he may only be seeing sporadically successful email usage.

Is there somewhere to check spam filters on BlueHost? Help!!!
Thanks.

[Early Out]

Unless you've elected to use SpamAssassin or Postini, there are no spam filters on BH email.

[a1000w]

Understood.... however, that doesn't address the problems my client is reporting. Any ideas what's happening? Anythiing? I haven't experienced this on other webhosts.

[Early Out]

Without some controlled tests, I'm always suspicious of people who say that their email "doesn't go through," or that they don't receive emails. Most often, their own ISPs are doing some heavy-handed filtering that they aren't aware of.

With simple "mailto" links, you also run into users who use webmail, and don't have an email client program properly configured. So, when they hit that link, they have just about zero chance of getting a message sent.

I've been using BH email almost exclusively for the last couple of years, both for POP and SMTP. The only delivery failures I've ever encountered have been caused by other ISPs blacklisting the BH mail servers (a temporary problem in each case), and each of those failures gave me a bounce message that let me know there was a problem. I don't believe I've ever experienced any "mysterious disappearances."

[elizzelle1]

I have also been having email difficulties in the past couple of days. I have two specific instances: a Yahoo group I've been a member of for years has suddenly begun refusing emails from my Bluehost address (although emails from another address go through with no problem) and an address I mail to daily has suddenly begun dumping my emails into spam.

Now I know Yahoo's generally crazy and it could be my friend's ISP refusing my Bluehost emails. But for both things to happen at once is kind of weird. Came here to see if anyone else was having a problem and apparently they are.

Has there been any sort of change in the Bluehost email setup in the last few days?

[Early Out]

Yahoo (and others) periodically blacklist BH's mail servers. It usually gets fixed in a reasonably short time.

It happens because BH customers have their incoming messages forwarded to their Yahoo accounts. All the spam they're receiving comes with it, so Yahoo sees a flood of spam coming from a BH mail server. Never mind that the spam isn't originating on the BH mail server - Yahoo doesn't care about that. Yahoo just knows that it's being connected to by a mail server that is then delivering a load of spam. So, the BH mail server gets blacklisted.

Individual messages being classified as spam by another ISP is a different issue (blacklisting results in a refusal by the other mail system to accept any delivery of messages from BH - they don't land in a spam folder - they never get that far). It can't really have anything to do with the BH email setup. An outgoing message is just an outgoing message. Only a change in that ISP's spam filters can change whether your particular message is regarded as spam.

[KyleMeadors]

I am having a similar problem. As of last week, I was able to successfully post to a group elist I often use. However, emails last night and this morning to the same elist did not go through. Upon contacting the admin, he is reporting the emails are arriving and show in the log file but are without the SMTP MAIL FROM address. Without that value, the messages are discarded.

Has anything changed in the Bluehost SMTP server to remove this?

[Early Out]

You need to contact BH support about this. This is a user-to-user forum, so no one here knows whether BH has changed anything in its mail server configuration.

This could be a problem just on one of the many, many mail servers, too. FWIW, I've seen no problems, and have been trading emails with people all over the place, on various ISPs, in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. No failures that I'm aware of.

[KyleMeadors]

Just update on this. I did contact BH support, and they indicated they are aware of this problem of how some servers are not reading this header correctly, and they are looking to have a fix by late today.

[Early Out]

Good news - thanks for posting back about it.

[markdinatale]

Just update on this. I did contact BH support, and they indicated they are aware of this problem of how some servers are not reading this header correctly, and they are looking to have a fix by late today.

Having the same issue on my end...promted me to join the forum. Thank for the info KyleMeadors.

Problem started yesterday when two of our email accounts emails were not getting through to their intended recepient. No bounce notification, doimain is on the white list on the receiving end.

Noticed that both email account settings in the mail client did not have Outgoing Mail username and password filled in.

This seems to have resolved the problem!