Email (outgoing) stops sending

[lapx10ho]

I am a new user who just recently set up hosting here. I have a tiny forum (PHPBB 3.1.13, latest stable release) set up to send my 4 members an email notification when posting occurs. Since we are just 4 people, this isn't often. The notifications worked for a while, and then they just stopped working. But I can still send and receive email in this admin account using the Horde client without a problem.

In the PHPBB3 admin interface, I get the below attached log message claiming my emails are being marked as spam.

Any ideas as to what might be wrong? Can I really not send out these notification emails to my 4 members because they are identical? I mean come on, this isn't exactly MailChimp here. These are tiny little forum post notifications going to 4 people.

My domain is http://lap.x10host.com/

Email error
Response: 550 This message was classified as SPAM and may not be delivered

 

[lapx10ho]

Even if I send that notification email to only 1 person, your email servers flag it as spam. Looking forward to your kind assistance!

 

[lapx10ho]

Bump

 

[lapx10ho]

Bump

 

[lapx10ho]

Bump

 

[lapx10ho]

Please help!

I can't send a SINGLE outgoing email because of the spam control!!

 

[lapx10ho]

Please help! We are just a tiny nonprofit charity singing group with 4 members. We really need free hosting.

I'd like someone to explain what kind of limitations I'm hitting or if something is just plain wrong. Is this how your service usually functions? And can someone please put an actual value to this:

• There is a hourly/daily limit on the number of emails that you can send.

(That was from your documentation)

I get this error from only 1 outgoing email:

"Ran into problems sending email at Line 1131. Response: 550 This message was classified as SPAM and may not be delivered
.
Backtrace

Connecting to xo7.x10hosting.com:25
LINE: 1034 <- 220-xo7.x10hosting.com ESMTP Exim 4.87 #1 Tue, 11 Oct 2016 09:37:23 -0400

LINE: 1034 <- 220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,

LINE: 1034 <- 220 and/or bulk e-mail. "

But these are not unsolicited and I would hardly classify 4 tiny emails as bulk.

 

[bdistler]

some Email things I know of.....
all Email must go out through outbound spam filters on 10hosting's SMTP server - to be scanned for spam and phishing and other test - messages with no body content - and HTML-only mail (mail with no plain text part) - and messages with no subject - and messages that just say "Testing" (or like that) - and anything else that looks "spammy" (as far as the outbound mail filters are concerned) will be silently discarded - or sometimes the transfer to the SMTP server fails - you will not receive any notice when it fails

spoofing the [ From ] header is not allowed - Emails with the [ From ] header not set with a working Email address that exists and is actually part of your x10hosting's free-hosting account will be silently discarded - you will not receive any notice

you can not set the [ From ] header to a user's email address or to your own external email address - if you need to easily reply to the emails - then set the [ Reply-To ] header (which can be different from the [ From ] header)

 

[lapx10ho]

Thank you for taking the time to write that up, bdistler. I really appreciate your help. As far as I can tell, none of the above issues should apply but I'll continue to check into it. But I very much appreciate the assistance.

Just for further information for this thread, I'll add the actual email in question that is getting refused. I have only altered this text to remove the user's name/email address and some forum links. Additionally, I do have a working email box for the admin user that I can use to send emails from manually. When I receive them from an email client on the outside, the are indeed sourced from "admin@lap.x10host.com". If it makes any difference, I am using basic SMTP over port 25. Since the auth succeeds, the mail from address is correct, the recipient's name is accepted but the data portion is refused, I can only assume there is something about the body of this email the servers dislike. What that could be continues to elude me, particularly since this is a standard message from PhPBB that one would think would be whitelisted.

# Omitting sensitive information
LINE: 1493 <- 235 Authentication succeeded

# MAIL FROM:<admin@lap.x10host.com>
LINE: 1050 <- 250 OK

# RCPT TO:<{username removed}>
LINE: 1070 <- 250 Accepted

# DATA
LINE: 1101 <- 354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself

# Subject: =?UTF-8?B?TmV3IHRvcGljIG5vdGlmaWNhdGlvbiAtICJPcmdhbml6ZSBVcyI=?=
# To: =?UTF-8?B?QW15IEhhcmtlcg==?= <{username removed}>
# From: "=?UTF-8?B?UGl0Y2hlcw==?=" <admin@lap.x10host.com>
Reply-To: "=?UTF-8?B?UGl0Y2hlcw==?=" <admin@lap.x10host.com>
Return-Path: <admin@lap.x10host.com>
Sender: <admin@lap.x10host.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <83a708faeaf012cc49b1cca537b79f44@lap.x10host.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 11:08:56 -0400
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: phpBB3
X-MimeOLE: phpBB3
X-phpBB-Origin: phpbb://lap.x10host.com

# Hello {username removed},

You are receiving this notification because you are watching the forum
"Organize Us" at "LAP". This forum has received a new topic by admin since
your last visit, "Sigh ... this isn't going well but here is one more try".
You can use the following link to view the forum, no more notifications
will be sent until you visit the forum.

{forum link removed}

If you no longer wish to watch this forum you can either click the
"Unsubscribe forum" link found in the forum above, or by clicking the
following link:

{forum link removed}

--
Thanks, The Pitches
# .
LINE: 1131 <- 550 This message was classified as SPAM and may not be delivered

 

[bdistler]

for more than a month my free-hosting Email was down - all incoming and outgoing Email was mark as spam - today it started to work again

here is the test PHP script that I have used over the years at x10hosting - it is working today on free-hosting server [ xo3 ] again

<?php
// rem out AFTER you get this test script to work
error_reporting(E_ALL);

//  test of x10hosting's free-hosting mail system using PHP mail() fuction

// You can send to more than one address like --> "myname@gmail.com, myname@hotmail.com, myname@myphone.com"
// replace inside the quote marks
$to_email = "TO ADDRESS";

// The [ From: ] address must be a valid Email address in your x10hosting's free-hosting account
// you can not use a external service's SMTP on free-hosting
// this script will try to send a copy of this test Email to the "from" address
// replace inside the quote marks
$from_email = "FROM ADDRESS";

// ****************************//
// DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE //

if (($from_email == "FROM ADDRESS") || ($to_email == "TO ADDRESS"))
  {
    print "You need to set the TO: and FROM: address before you run this test script<br>\n";
    EXIT;
  }

// we use a timestamp do to the long delay - sometimes days - to receive this test Email
$timestamp_server = date("D M j,Y H:i:s T",time());

$subject = "Test of PHP mail() at server time " . $timestamp_server;

$mailbody = "Test message sent at server time\n" . $timestamp_server;

$headers = 'Content-type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: ' . $from_email . "\r\n";

// send a copy back - for backup - if you do not receive this test Email at your [ TO ADDRESS ]
// look for it with your Email client or Webmail in cPanel - at your [ FROM ADDRESS ]
$headers .= 'Cc: ' . $from_email . "\r\n";

$headers .= 'Reply-To: ' . $from_email . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Return-Path: ' . $from_email . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion() . "\r\n";

print "PHP function [ mail() ] returns TRUE if the mail was successfully accepted for delivery, FALSE otherwise<br>\n";
print "It is important to note that just because the mail was accepted for delivery<br>\n";
print "it does NOT mean the mail will actually reach the intended destination<br>\n";
print "x10hosting's spam filter may bock it or the destination account may block it<br>\n<br>\n";

if(mail($to_email,$subject,$mailbody,$headers))
  {
    print "PHP mail() returned TRUE<br>\n";
  }
  else
    {
      print "ERROR sending Email PHP mail() returned FALSE<br>\n";
    }

print 'Server date and time ' . $timestamp_server . "<br>\n";

exit(); // to be sure we are done
?>

 

[lapx10ho]

Thanks, I'll play with this script as well. I suspect that email is simply not working from php at all. The Phpbb email scripts are unaltered and work fine for others. Although I have attempted changing some of the values that I do have control over (queue_interval, e-mail package size) that were referenced here:

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/board_watch/faq/741

These values are supposed to impact the way emails are queued and sent to the mail server but I've seen no difference. I currently have the package size set to zero so that I send 1 email at a time and I have my queue interval set to 90 so that I don't send back to back notifications.

Again, thank you for the help!

 

[lapx10ho]

{double post} sorry!