Intermittent send failure using GoDaddy POP account.

Turning off SSL and using port 80 or 3535 seems to work for everyone who has reported a problem sending mail through Godaddy in this thread.

This is not a solution, it is a workaround. It means your connection to the SMTP server is not secure, and it means you are not getting what you paid for. (Unless of course it is a free account.)

After Bruce's comment that Godaddy acknowledged a problem, I reopened my problem ticket and tried again. They flatly deny any issue, and punted to my ISP. My ISP responded that they absolutely do not block port 465 or smtpout.secureserver.net.

Godaddy insists they have no problems, and have declined further help.

I too am in the market for a mail hosting service for my small business, one that supports SSL connections to IMAP and SMTP services. Any recommendations are welcome.

I was thinking about using GMAIL with my domain (not an @gmail.com account, but my own domain.) This is free with no phone support. But I view email as critical, so I want access to phone support. In the case of GMail, that means 50 bucks per mail account, which is way more than godaddy costs for an unlimited mail account.

I have been experimenting with various settings- mtu, ports, etc. Finally decided to get into my Belkin router- virtual server => and open/map tcp/udp for each machine/ ip address using email.

So far, I have had success (keeping my fingers crossed) for a couple of days- with sending over SSL on 465 and w/o SSL on ports 80 and 3535. No timeouts/ or errors (keep in mind this is Saturday/Sunday.early Monday- so, the server load is probably less). I have experienced an error or two where the server wouldn't send at all (as if it was offline)- but none of the immediate lock-ups/errors -- resend as mentioned earlier in the thread.

If anyone has the time- you may want to explicitly open/ map these ports on your router to your machine ip address- and check if you have the same results.

Some days ago, in my troubleshooting, I took my computer completely off my router, and connected directly to my cable modem and disabled all firewalls. It did not fix the problems I've had for months sending mail out through smtpout.secureserver.net on ports 25 no ssl, or 465 with ssl.

However, in the last few days godaddy's servers have been behaving much better, as you also note. Although I still have gotten a few initial dropped connections, an immediate retry generally has worked. That has not been the case in the past, often trying over and over won't connect.

Bringing up the Connection Doctor (under the Windows menu in Apple Mail) I can check connections and today I have been getting all green each check. In prior days, I would get green on my incoming pop accounts, but having all kinds of trouble getting connected to godaddy's outbound server ports.

I too had the same Mail/sending problems as everyone else on this forum. And I know half a dozen friends who use Apple Mail and GoDaddy and have the very same problems. I did the Gmail thing for a while and it worked fine. And by adding a custon 'From' address in the Gmail options, folks don't see gmail ever mentioned when I send mail. But I wanted to bypass Gmail and just deal with a primary mail server. My solution: After using them for over 7 years, I got rid of GoDaddy entirely (hosting plan, domain registration, and email) and signed up with '1and1 (www.1and1.com). Couldn't be happier. No more problems sending mail. And 1and1 is a lot cheaper than GoDaddy!

Has anyone else left GoDaddy for a new host/email provider? I have about 20 domains and a couple email plans that I would like to transfer. This 'email not sending' is so unprofessional and unproductive. Whoever's fault it is, Apple or GoDaddy, I'm so tired of huge corporations not giving a crap, especially because we do keep paying. DON - how was the transition to 1and1? Anyone else use this company? Or does anyone recommend another reputable hosting/email provider? I am ready to switch. Thanks

Mike

In response to Mike, here's how my switch worked with 1and1.

To start off with, the reason I choose 1and1 was simple. I needed a company that worked with Mac people. And they've been advertising in MacWorld magazine for a while now, so I figured they would be tuned in to the Mac. A simple assumption on my part, and I was right. They claim to be the world's largest web hosting provider. Don't know if that's true or not, but who cares. The switch worked for me.

Now to how the switch actually worked. I was very hesitant to leave GoDaddy (or anybody), because of all the hassle of setting up everything all over again. And I won't say it was a totally smooth transition. I had to play around with the settings for awhile until everything worked. But 1and1 made things easier than I thought. And they let me upload all my files, register my domains with them, etc. a few days BEFORE I closed out GoDaddy. So 1and1 was very helpful in that regard. In effect, I had all my website files on 2 different servers for a few days. This was why none of my websites (I have 4) were down at all during the transition.

Bottom line: yes, the transfer was a pain all around. It's always easy to just stay pat. In the end, I'm glad I switched. I don't think it matters the name of your internet/email provider. If it isn't working for you, whatever that thing, then it's time to look around elsewhere. (P.S. If my girlfriend reads this, Honey, I wasn't talking about you!)

I've been having this problem intermittently as well, both with my iPhone and with Vista's Mail. If I close out of either mail program and them come back, the message is usually sent.

As for the SSL stuff, after much banging around, clicking on links, and reading some of the above posts, here's what is working for me (at least for now):

Incoming Port 995
Outgoing Port 465

Password Authentication on for both.

If you use GoDaddy's online webmail through secureserver.net, I was told the data is already encrypted, but I didnt want to have to deal with that.

Well- I gave it a shot- seems that I'm still having probs this week- both on my Mac laptop and on my PC desktop (PC is having more problems sending). Both using Thunderbird- non-SSL. Frustrating- and no end in site. Guess Godaddy doesn't want to address the problem. I may call them one more time tomorrow- but, next week I will seriously look at switching providers. Don't want to- but, send errors are too much of a hassle. Guess I'll have to look at 1&1 to start. If anyone has additional reliable providers- please let us know.

Well, I'm still crossing my fingers here, but I too have been noticing much less trouble with sending over SSL ports. I occasionally see the initial failed connection, but maybe only 20% of the time, and an immediate retry works every time so far.
I even tried sending a large attachment, which, last month was guaranteed to take many retries over the course of a few days to coax it to actually send. This time, it worked fine the first time. Amazing.
Maybe Godaddy actually fixed some of their problems... sure hope so.
It's nice to know about 1and1.com. Competition is good.

I am beginning to suspect MAIL, not Godaddy on this. Of course, Godaddy may be doing something strange that MAIL does not cope with, but hear this:

Here is the sequence of events which happens practically 100% of time.

1) open Mail, mail is retrieved. Sometimes takes two tries (I have 7 mailboxes at Godaddy)

2) create new message, hit send; activity window shows trying to connect forever.

3) kill that; quit; re-open; now the outbound message is in the "outbox" which now appears.

4) most of the time, when MAIL does its first retrieval, the mail in the outbox is also sent.

5) If not, this works 99% of the time: go to outbox, open the message, click on SEND and it goes right away.

In other words, there are modes of trying to send the message from MAIL which do not work most of the time and modes of sending which seem to work almost all the time. This suggests to me that MAIL is doing slightly different things under these slightly different circumstances and some of them work fine with Godaddy.

!!

Well, port 25 has been working for two days now, on two different machines, one using Thunderbird and the other Entourage. This is the most stable i've seen it since switching over 6 months ago. Hopefully, it'll last.

I get almost the same behavior as Jim. The first SMTP session of the day hangs, killing it and restarting mail, SMTP seems works for the rest of the day. Only an issue with GoDaddy SMTP and Apple Mail (insofar as I've experienced). I've tried all non-SSL ports and SSL with the same behavior at some point on all.

Jim / Turnip Video wrote:
I am beginning to suspect MAIL, not Godaddy on this. Of course, Godaddy may be doing something strange that MAIL does not cope with, but hear this:

Here is the sequence of events which happens practically 100% of time.

1) open Mail, mail is retrieved. Sometimes takes two tries (I have 7 mailboxes at Godaddy)

2) create new message, hit send; activity window shows trying to connect forever.

3) kill that; quit; re-open; now the outbound message is in the "outbox" which now appears.

Message was edited by: Benjamin Eric Morin

In response to Jim / Turnip Video:
My experience with how Mail worked was exactly the same as yours. Exactly! And for sure, I've always suspected that Mail had a hand in the problem. But I also suspect GoDaddy too. It might just be a matter of their both being a bad match for each other. It hasn't always been this way in the past, so I'm not sure of this. It's anybody's guess at this point, because no one wants to own up to anything. But I had to break up the combination of Mail/GoDaddy some way to get my email working again properly. And since I definitely wanted to keep Mail, the obvious one to go was GoDaddy. Drastic I know. But that's what I did (my switch to 1&1 in written about twice elsewhere in this thread). And so far (a few months), everything work's the way it should and is back to normal. I say this with my fingers crossed. It seems the more setups computers have in the way they are configured and in the software they use, the more problems there are. I guess that's the way things are going to be. It makes us all more computer savvy, but I wish it were simpler. I really do!

Having heard of 1and1 for years and also now knowing that they work with Macs, I decided to leap after reading your posts. At the moment, I am only moving one domain over and checking how everything goes. The first thing I have noticed after the last 24 hours is that their smtp is NEVER offline so unlike godaddy that more times than not will cause Mail to make me send my email twice....I never have to with the 1and1 servers. For those of you who are bloggers...1and1 does not provide wordpress fantastico scripts so wordpress installation is manual. But once I have mastered that tonight, as long as mail continues to go well, i will move the rest of my domains over.
By the way...I really don't think that this problem has much to do with Mail at all. I think the problem is almost entirely godaddy. After all, my gmail smtp is NEVER offline...my cantv smtp (my isp) is never offline...but the secureserver smtp is almost always offline requiring me to hit send and then have Mail ask me if I want to try a different server practically every time I send mail regardless which port numbers I am using. While I detest the whole concept of outsourcing and I especially hate the usual quality of tech support out of the Philipines, so far the 1and1 outsourced tech support SEEMED as if they were doing more with me than reading from a script. we'll see!

I had same problems as stated here.
When I use my new account at 1and1.com, this no longer happens.