Blocked IP

Hi,

A friend has a website which has a email form but no longer receives emails from it. When he approached his hosting company, they said the web server IP address has been blacklisted. As a temporary measure they suggested that he configures the form to send out the messages through their smtp server instead.
Would it be a better idea to change hosting company or is there a different permanent fix to this problem?

Thanks for any help.

 

Check with them as to how much time will it take to delist the IP. Does the SMTP server uses a different IP other than the web server ?

 

It's never a good thing to send email directly from a web site unless it is sent via an account on a properly configured email server as there is an increasing chance of it being rejected. Most site/web server SMTP services are not set up with Pointer/Reverse DNS records, and will not accept incoming email for the sending acount. More and more and more receiving email servers are either refusing emails when their is no rDNS or else are giving them very high spam scores. As time goes on this will become more and more prevalent.

The advice given by the hosting company is good advice in general. ALL web programming languages have the ability to send emails via accounts on remote email servers by providing authentication info, so there is no excuse not to do so.

The OP has an additional problem in that his email is being blocked due to the IP being blocked and he has to find out why (spam?), but the advice of the hosting company is good. The permanent fix is to follow the hosting company advice (not think of it as a reason to leave them - it is GOOD advice, be thankful), make sure spam isn't being sent, and make sure emails are sent via properly configured email servers that receiving email servers will be happy to accept emails from.

 

Have you checked email error logs on the server yet? If so, post them here for us to read and determine the issue.

 

Yeah, to determine the cause the problem first of all the email logs should be checked.Thus, you will understand the cause of the real problem.