Bluehost mail and Apple Mail

I, too, am having this problem. I tried the following:

1. Deleting and re-adding the Bluehost email account on my Mac and iOS devices, using the settings suggested in Bluehost's help, which have the user set the incoming and outgoing mail host as mail.domain (no luck)
2. Logging into Bluehost and changing my email password, then repeating the attempt (no luck)
3. Calling Bluehost, where the tech support person suggested box5329.bluehost.com as the mail host. Importantly, one must deselect the "automatically manage…" box to be able to enter the port (incoming = 993; outgoing = 465) and TLS/SSL settings:
4. (Still no luck)
5. Responding to the tech support person's statement that it must be a Mac cache problem by starting up in safe mode and retrying all of the above plus #6, below
6. Using my main Bluehost username rather than my email as the username (again, no luck)
7. Logging back into Bluehost and changing my email password again, then repeating the attempt (and…no luck)
8. Staying calm and poised about this frustration (not much luck!)

Has anyone found a solution that I missed in the thread? Can anyone see an error on my part?

Mid-2014 MacBookPro 13", MacOS 10.15.6, Apple Mail 13,4, AirMail 4.1

Okay, one last report:

After two more calls to Bluehost (and I have to say, they always answer right away) the problem has been solved! It involved several layers:

1. Some time ago I had finally "caved" in to the onslaught of Bluehost emails recommending turning on the (free) SpamExperts. For some time (several months, I think) this didn't create a problem, but suddenly this week it was treating every single email I received as spam!
2. At the same time, somehow my DNS (Domain Name System, for all those of you who, like me, really just use this stuff at the level of a mail client and don't ever bang down into your Bluehost cPanel settings) records were lost/changed.

The steps taken by Bluehost (which, it turns out, I could have done, so I offer the "lesson" here):

• One Bluehost agent eliminated SpamExperts, which didn't fix the bounce-back/non-delivery of any messages, but did at least recognize my mail.domain as host instead of host fallbackmx.spamexperts.eu.
• In the Domains panel in cPanel, my DNS records were fixed.

• Be sure that your CNAME for IMAP, SMTP and POP hosts show as mail.yourdomainname.

• Be sure that under your MX (Mail Exchange) Advanced Settings it is set to Local Mail Exchange and, as above, points to mail.yourdomainname.

• Note: It can take up to 4 hours for the DNS updates to be pushed out and take effect, but they worked for me.

(The things we do just to get back to receiving way too many marketing emails….)

I may finally have gotten resolution on this problem! I just tried emailing my non-functioning Bluehost email address from my mac.com one. The message bounced back with this error message:

The support agents on first two calls I made to Bluehost had me walking through the settings in my mail client, which made no difference. But this time…the agent dug in a little and discovered that the DNS server had somehow lost information for my account, which he then added back in. He told me that it may take up to 24 hours for everything to level out, but I'm at least hopeful for the first time!

Things were working for me (for many years) until earlier this week, so if anyone else has had trouble perhaps there was a server malfunction that affecting many users.

Sending mail you need to confirm the SSL TLS settings are correct and the port settings are correct. Spark is sometimes a better client that Mac OS X Mail, and less cumbersome than Thunderbird.

Note, if Bluehost does not provide you internet access directly, your outgoing mail server settings need a username including your whole email address, not just your username, and should include a port such as 587, 2662, 2626 if not a standard IMAP port.

This is nuts. I thought we'd left the days when a given service only worked properly on Windows and not Mac years ago. There should be no need to use anything other than Apple Mail to set up the account. Every other email provider I've come across seems to be able to manage it.

You have neither of you mentioned anything about accepting a an SSL certificate when setting up the account as mentioned in the Bluehost setup guide here https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/email-application-setup-apple-mail I'm not overly impressed that their guide seems to be somewhat dated as things have moved on considerably since Yosemite, which is referenced in the guide.

Are you still needing help on this?

In Mail's Window Menu, choose Connection Doctor, any red dots for status, if so what is the message?

Then click the Show Details button & Check again.

According to their tech note you should be using port 465 on the outgoing server and not 587 and you also need to uncheck the 'Automatically detect and maintain....' setting.

Grr….

Looks like it’s Roundcube for us for awhile.

I actually use Airmail (with the pro upgrade). But neither client will talk to Bluehost anymore, for what that’s worth.

Great work, thanks! :)