Intermittent send failure using GoDaddy POP account.

I'm not sure that the failure to connect / send to Godaddy, using MAIL, is a surefire sign that Godaddy is offline. As I said above, and Don King summarized so well, MAIL + Godaddy is perhaps not a good match.

That said, I'm reluctant to move away from Godaddy because I have 6 web sites and I'm planning to move to Drupal which 1and1 does not support.... Sad about all this complexity, I guess.

In response to Michael Day3's comment: "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."

Just wanted you to know Michael, the last time I used 1&1's support, I mentioned to the support guy I was talking to that it was snowing where I lived, in New York City. Then he told me it was snowing where he was too: Philadelphia. So I guess not all the tech support is outsourced. Or maybe I just lucked out.

I found out later that North American tech folk
are reserved for people with dedicated servers.

UPDATE: I had to use tech a number of times yesterday because I have never set up wordpress manually before and the clearly outsourced Philippino tech service was excellent...really excellent. They spoke slowly, did not read from scripts and were genuinely helpful.

So...1and1 is looking better and better by the minute in terms of being a replacement for godaddy.
Mail servers still great!!

We found a fix:

Our small office has been suffering with this problem for about a year - though it had gotten so bad the past month or so we were fearing for our jobs because of not being able to send or get our emails without all sorts of rebooting and so forth...

We have done 'months' worth of troubleshooting...

We have a D-Link DGL-4500 Router (v. 1.15) behind an Embarq 660ER DSL Modem.

We have several GoDaddy email addresses and domains (paid and free).

The D-Link router has a setting that you access through the web interface: go to 'Advanced Menu' then 'Inbound Filter' where you can set IP address ranges as 'allowed' or 'denied'.

We put the GoDaddy email server IP address range (which is 64.202.160.0 - 64.202.191.255) into the Inbound Filter and chose 'allow' and clicked 'add' the change to the router.

This **immediately** allowed our emails to come and go - and has continued to do so since making this setting change a few days ago!

If anyone knows 'why' this is working - we would reeeeaally like to know... 🙂

Message was edited by: swoughen

I have a Dlink router and I implemented this filter and my problem disappeared! Now, I need 24 hours or more to be sure, but the most likely symptom did not appear (can't send unless I quit MAIL and return).

I'm wondering if this problem / syndrome is also related to DLink routers (which are pretty common). I installed the Dlink about 60 days ago and I could not swear to it but it seems like the problems with MAIL have been more pronounced of late.

I would like to hear from others on this thread whether they have a DLink router or something else....

If anyone has a d-link AND a Linksys
and can therefore help me understand how I can do on my Linksys
what you have done on your DLink,
I would really appreciate that.

And...
every time I use my 1and1 smtp for email...
I NEVER have problems now.

We contacted GoDaddy about this 'fix' and they said that our Router Firewall was blocking their email server - so after putting the email server IP range in the 'allowed' filter the Router Firewall was not blocking it anymore...

However, we had our email blocked with our Router Firewall set ON (SPI checked) AND with Router Firewall set OFF (SPI unchecked)...that is confusing.

It will be interesting to see if others with this email problem - who are using different manufacturer's routers - can also solve the problem by setting the email server as 'allowed' in their router settings...

If that is the case, we have to wonder if there is 'something' about the GoDaddy email server that is causing the routers to block them...?

I have a Linksys.
I use its firewall, not the firewall in Leopard.
However, the godaddy problem with Mail happens...
- If I have Linksys turned on...
- If I have Linksys removed and with no Leopard firewall turned on
For these reasons I have never considered anything with this problem
other than the source of the problem is with Godaddy.

Interesting find- great work! I'm still researching a new host- will take some time to migrate accounts over, so still running on godaddy. In the interim- I may take a look at finding a similar fix for my Belkin router. I do not believe there is a comparable setting as on the D-Link (to allow certain IP ranges in a firewall-free zone), however, I may give it a shot by just turning off the firewall all together. Hopefully, someone w/ a Belkin (Or Linksys- similar s/w)can figure out a workaround on the settings.

I agree that it seems unlikely that this is an issue with any specific router. I use neither D-link or linksys routers. In fact, I use only Apple at home (though I suppose there are upstream routers) and Apple/Cisco at work. BTW, this has nothing to do with GoDaddy POP accounts either as I'm using IMAP. This is a problem with the intersection of Apple Mail's SMTP client and GoDaddy's SMTP servers. Others earlier in this thread reported other mail clients SMTP implementations behaving similarly, but this hasn't been my experience. I've been running with SSL turned on as of late (the preferred setting IMHO) and there's been a change of behavior this week. This week I've been getting the "try later or try with different server" dialog right away when I try to send and trying again right away with the same server goes through. This seems to happen the first time after waking from sleep most often.

Can you let us know if you find a good new host? Maybe there is one that will help with migration from GoDaddy.

I've been in the same boat as everyone above for a couple of years now. With three or four support tickets under my belt (with both GoDaddy and Apple) have convinced me that GoDaddy is the problem. I'm really not happy about having to go through all the settings for dealing with moving my domain, web site re-direct and email accounts, but it is really hard to run a business where you have to fuss around with every other email - and tell others in your office that you can't fix the problem.

Thanks

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:

I hear you.

Just remember that there were some who reported this same behavior with MS Outlook and other email clients...

And I do suspect that Godaddy have made some improvements on their end, as I don't see any problems now except for occasionally the first send fails right away, and on retry, succeeds. (I used to see the long-hang problem on send - your #2 item, and failures sending attachments.)
It's possible this remaining connect problem is a Mail+Godaddy issue.

yes but...
if you send out 50 to 100 emails a day...
and if most of the time, you have to send twice...
(I too suffered the "immediate bouncer back" that you describe...)
then email becomes a real drag.
Now...thanks to biting the bullet and moving to 1and1...
after many years...(I can't believe I put up with daddy's bad service for so long!)
I no longer have to even think about my email.
It just goes out and comes in the way
we all deserve to have it do.

We have thoroughly investigated this issue and found that some customers using OS X email clients had trouble sending email through our SMTP servers. The communication issues resulted from the email clients behaving differently than we were expecting and different from any other client we tested.

We have implemented changes to allow these email clients to send and expect users will no longer encounter the problem. Those looking for assistance with Go Daddy email may reach our 24/7 support team here: http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/support.asp

GoDaddy says they have found the problem and fixed it!