Author Topic: Help! Emails partially delivered using SMTP (Read 1696 times)

admin2 · « **on:** July 03, 2007, 06:07:35 am »

Hi

I've been trying to send to my subscribers, at batches of 12,000 emails each

I configured ListmailPro using SMTP, and from my seed emails (that I planted at 500 emails apart), it looks like no more than 10% of emails were delivered.

So far only one batch is successful, but the other 5 batches were only partial.

These seed emails were mostly of the same local domain (plus a mix of my other domains), so it's not likely it is undeliverable or blocked.

The ListmailPro's log file shows all emails were sent to SMTP successfully.

I'm using Thirdsphere, on EmailPlex email cluster hosting. Their technical support couldn't tell me if anything is wrong with their SMTP server.

I don't know what else I can try now, so please help!

Thanks!
Thomas

PS I did try sending using another autoresponder software, on the same host, but seems all were delivered.

PPS I also tried using PHP Internal Mail, all were delivered, but some were sent in duplicate, some even triplicate!

DW · « **Reply #1 on:** July 04, 2007, 02:52:07 am »

Hi Thomas,

For your next mailing please have the "Always write SMTP log" option enabled (send a test mail to make sure it's working). This will show us whether the email was accepted by the server and give us some evidence to present to ThirdSphere.

I don't know if ThirdSphere has done this before but they can use a log analysis tool from http://sawmill.net to tell you exact delivery success/failure rates for your ListMail "Bounce to email". I just use the free trial of their 'Enterprise' version (enter a non-existent email to download)... the software is way too expensive.

This is definitely ThirdSphere's job - a tough one that comes with their decision to offer bulk email hosting. It's not good to hear of them avoiding these issues.

I have another client with a list of 50,000 on their email cluster service and he too is complaining that things aren't being delivered, although it could be domain/email-specific... Maybe we can get a thorough analysis out of them on this.

Regards

admin2 · « **Reply #2 on:** July 05, 2007, 10:53:23 pm »

Hi Dean

Thanks for your reply.

I did enable the "SMTP Log" option for my last mailing. I extracted the first parts of it and showed them to Thirdsphere. It showed all were delivered.

Thirdsphere also confirmed that their logs showed my emails were going out. It's just that my own seed emails are not being received.

Do you want to take a look at the log file (it's 2.6 MB) ?

My ticket is handled by Andrew at thirdsphere@web-hosting-support.com

Or could it be some config settings in ListmailPro? I configured using SMTP, with authentication, and using bounce.cgi method.

I remembered emailing out successfully using my other autoresponder software, which was installed in Thirdsphere.

Thomas

DW · « **Reply #3 on:** July 06, 2007, 05:05:31 pm »

Hi Thomas,

Are you sure the ListMail logs state OK for the right amount of emails? If you can count the number of times your server said "Ok accepted for delivery" (check one delivery in the logs for your exact proper syntax) that should tell you how many were sent to the server by ListMail.

All ListMail can do is send the emails to the server - do you see your seed emails in the ListMail logs as sent to the server or "accepted for delivery"?

Are your seed emails unique to your ListMail lists? I recommend asking ThirdSphere if they can trace email to one or two of your seed emails to final remote delivery. If they say the email was accepted by the remote server, are you sure your receiving server or local email client is not filtering the email?

What happens when you add a seed email to a much smaller test list? Do you get the email sent to it then? Note that there are two email processes you can try - PHP mail (welcome/confirm messages) and SMTP (Send Email).

Regards