Email Connection Problems

[mediahosting]

Hello,

I have been having problems on my reseller server connecting to port 110 or with username & passwords etc. Having to reconnect many times a day.

At least 20 times daily my Mac with OS X 10.3 using the default mail app, set to check mail every minute. I have been told that I can set it to check 60 times per hour, so once per minute should be fine.

This started happening over a month ago when IP addresses were changed for security purposes. A good idea, because the server was being hacked.

I've called in with this problem, emailed 5 times or more and nothing has been solved with my problem. I get emails back from support saying "Email is up, no problems currently". But my clients have the same problems on this server, so I've basically had to move all my clients to different servers if they use mail as much as I do. Sucks!!!

What I have done to try and solve issues on my end. 1st. Reset my Router, Reset my Cable Modem (several times, for minutes at a time). Tried using my IP address instead of my domain name to check mail. Doesn't work! All my usernames & passwords are fine etc. Definitely a head ache...

Any help here would be nice.

My email address is: support@webgenichost.com

Thanks,
Kris Parker
Media Hosting

[Tomas]

What server are you in? I've had no problems at all with my email servers. And yes, email not working really sucks!! My clients would scream if they cant access to their accounts!!

BTW, have you tried with webmail? If they go through, then, there's another problem.

[mediahosting]

Tomas,

The problem is not with Horde or other mail programs. It's purely a port 110 problem & connection failures.

The server is called "Eclipse".

Kris Parker
Media Hosting

[tondelo]

Kris,

To quote Brent on thread http://forums.hostgator.com/showthread.php?t=1332

"We have limited it temp on some boxes to 30 connections a hour to flush these people into changing their settings.

There's no reason for email to be checked minutely when people sleep. Most of the server loads are from few 100 pop accounts checking every minute.

Please disable auto checking and just check your mail when needed. If you need auto checking set it to every 20 minutes or so."

Personally I didn't go so dramatic as 20 minutes but I did change the clients that were having problems to check every 5 minutes and walla, the problem went away..

Hope that helps,
Tony

[Tomas]

I don't really like that idea. If you're running a website which has a helpdesk, you'll need to check emails every 5 minutes or so, basically, to provide the best support experience to your customers.

Presonally, I think checking email every 1 minute or 2 is a little abusive to serverload, but not five!

[tondelo]

I agree so if the connection allowance is at 30 an hour you should be able to set the rate to the four or five minutes you are comfortable with and still keep everyone happy..

My clients are comfortable at 5 minutes and didn't even realize that it was set to every minute..

[mediahosting]

I wouldn't want to be excessive in my usage!

Problem seems to be solved. Thanks for the info ALL, wish I would have gotten something a month ago in a simple email saying that limits had changed.

Kris Parker
Media Hosting

[ZachSteel]

I've been reading:
http://forums.hostgator.com/showthread.php?t=1332, and
http://forums.hostgator.com/showthread.php?t=1290

and still have some additional questions as my clients are also being affected.

I currently host 27 clients under my reseller account (on porsche), all through the same IP. A number of my clients have a number of parked domains and several have 20-30 email accounts set up. More and more of my clients are reporting problems particularly with email, but also with being able to connect to their website.

I'm also noticing very slow connection times specifically to POP between 9am and 11am GMT every day on porsche with periodic slow times in the afternoon (GMT) too. SMTP is sometimes affected but HTTP traffic is usually OK.

Here are my questions:

• There is a limit of 200 connections per hour. What is a connection? Is it a connection by an email client (eg Outlook) to a POP3 server, an SMTP connection by an email client to send email, or a PHP script running on the server using the inbuilt mail() function, or a combination of all three? Please confirm by stating exactly what a connection is classified as.

• Does the connection limit apply to all the accounts under the reseller's account as a group, or is it per account within the reseller's account? Or does it apply per IP, or per server (eg porsche)?

One of my clients requires checking email every minute due to the way they manage orders and the nature of their business (they want instant notifications). Will such emails magically disappear with your new limits?

Loss of emails equates to loss of business and I am not prepared to put my company or my clients in a position where they are vulnerable because Hostgator do not advise of limitations with their service provision. Email is the first and primary use of the Internet for business and, in my view, is mission critical. We can cope with a website being down for a few minutes occasionally, but just one email not being sent or received due to enforced, hidden limits is unacceptable.

I look forward to hearing your reply and being able to provide my clients with the service they expect.

Best regards
Zach

[GatorBrent]

That is a 200 outgoing email limit per hour.


It's per email address the limit is set on.




I'm sorry about your client however I highly doubt he checks his email every minute while he's sleeping or working.

If things are going slow for you at certain times on pop it's most likely your isp having issues. If your on a cable connection this is very common during peak hours since you are sharing your connection with 100's if not thousands of users.

[Curtis]

so i can have 10 emails with 200 limit per one
or does the 200 limit meen i can only use 200 for all 10 emails

[ZachSteel]

Originally Posted by GatorBrent

That is a 200 outgoing email limit per hour.

It's per email address the limit is set on.

I'm sorry about your client however I highly doubt he checks his email every minute while he's sleeping or working.

If things are going slow for you at certain times on pop it's most likely your isp having issues. If your on a cable connection this is very common during peak hours since you are sharing your connection with 100's if not thousands of users.

Thanks for the reply. That sounds much better than what I had assumed from the other posts. So, a client with 20 email accounts can send 200 emails out from each account each hour (ie a total of 4000 emails per hour from their business), and when one email address reaches its quota the other email accounts are not affected.

Just to clarify - the 200 email limit is independent of the number of connections they make to the server, so it could be 1 connection to send 200 emails or 20 connections to send 10 emails each.

Because we're talking about sent emails, does the PHP mail() function count towards this quota if it's sending out emails for a mailing list?

Hope somebody can help.

Tx
Zach

PS - I'll make sure the particular client switches off email at night when they're closed. They need the immediacy during the day as we use direct "email to print" features at their premises so that orders go direct to despatch as soon as they arrive. They can receive time critical orders so it is, unfotunately, necessary.

[GatorBrent]

Just to clarify - the 200 email limit is independent of the number of connections they make to the server, so it could be 1 connection to send 200 emails or 20 connections to send 10 emails each. yes that is correct. This 200 hourly limit is per domain. this is there to stop spammers since no one can type 200 emails a hour. And anyone sending to a large group needs to use phpmail which has no limits and can handle large volume better than pop.


Your client could easily set it to every 5 minutes. Even NASA isn't so mission critical an email has to be read within a minute, every minute of the day 24/7/365

He can even disable checks completely and just check himself when needed whever he pleases manually.

[ZachSteel]

Thanks for the clarification Brent. Looks like I'll need another company to host my email services for larger clients. Good to know where the limits are .

I'm in the process of educating my clients about the connections so that we can manage server load as best we can ...

Zach

[Curtis]

does anybody know of a email client that it will pop up when a message has been recieved and it can be set to connect at differnet intervals

[Brink]

From what Brent is saying, if I understand correctly, the php module in apache is not subject to the limitation, only pop is limited to 200.

Sounds like someone needs marry a php script with a java or vb script.

Client side VB/JS script has server side PHP check the mail every minute, then VB/JS should be able to print new mails if it recieves any from the php.

Should that work? or does php just access pop for us keeping us limited to 200 per hour as well as loading the server even more than checking pop every minute?

[xlr9]

Originally Posted by Curtis

does anybody know of a email client that it will pop up when a message has been recieved and it can be set to connect at differnet intervals

Why don't you just stay connected with IMAP? Why are you wasting your time with POP??? am I missing something here? imap notifies you immediently, you dont have to "check" it

[Curtis]

well in webmail you have to refresh and if i popuped then you can be alerted scraight away

[Cplbrian]

I am very concerned when a client of mine sends me an email that shows a rejected email to my resellers account. I havent made any changes and now there are random emails getting kicked back!? I have also noted long load times for many of my clients sites...its very random also and usually only last about 5 minutes or so...but long enough for all my alarms to go off for down sites!! Is this possibly a dns issue? I am using enom with a registered dns at hostgator! Everything has been working great until today and out of nowhere saturn server craps out!! PLEASE help...my interactions throughout the day with techs via IM's has been it loads fine on our end...ok but its hard for me to accept 3 different ISP's being down (Earthlink, integra(commercial T1) & Comcast)

Is it acceptable to point email alarms to tech supports email address so they get the error at the same time I do at least until we figure out whats up?
-Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem [mailto:mailer-daemon@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 4:26 PM
To: XXX@XXX.info
Subject: Returned mail: delivery problems encountered

A message (from <XXX@XXX.info>) was received at 15 Oct 2004
23:25:34 +0000.

The following addresses had delivery problems:

<me@mydomain.com>
Permanent Failure:
550-Verification_failed_for_<XXX@XXX.info>
Delivery last attempted at Fri, 15 Oct 2004 23:25:36 -0000