Email Service Providers

RLJB

Does anyone use an email service provider such as SendGrid or Elasticemail?

If, so can you advise success/failures of such systems when using Aware?

We have tried both of the above, and hit the same problem with both, in that they are successful to start with and then stop working and drop our emails. Aware says we have connected to their smtp and sent while they claim we have not connected.

We have some decent sending volumes now, so we can't just rely on a gmail account to send, and our hosted email is worse (they keep changing our password, probably because of our volumes - but they deny it).

Tks

rocketman

Hi Rod,

Have you considered running your own mail server? I use MailEnable which came free with my server package from 1and1. Does all I need it to. As long as your hosting provider give you the ability to point the MX record to your server - it might be the best way forward

RLJB

Hi Rocketman

Well yes and no.

Have considered it, but it seems like a bit of work I would rather avoid and we moved all our servers to cloud providers, so we would be inclined to put it on a public cloud provider however I read that these IP ranges that get allocated are almost guaranteed to be grey/blacklisted so you can expect to hit the spam folder on most sends - not great.

I did have a crazy idea to set up a mail server, allow customers to have their own domains for email, then have Aware tap right into the mail server DB tables and recreate a mail inbox within Aware so we could add a bunch of extra functionality.

ACDC

I have always suspected the problem lies within the email interface of awareim.

With regards to changing the password on the ISP side, I originally had the same issues, but then discovered if i changed the password on awareim side and then changed back to the original password it rectified the problem and email sending resumed.

So without changing the password at the ISP I was able to resolve the problem on my side.

I think somewhere in the process of sending, Awareim email interface gets corrupted from time to time(under certain conditions) resulting in the block.

I must say its been quite sometime since I have had the problem, but i f it does happen I use the same procedure to resolve the issue. It might be a good idea to periodically run a background process that changes the email password back and forth to remedy the problem

kklosson

I've been very happy with Jango Mail. I can't think of a better use case for outsourcing than smtp service. It's not what I do, so I buy it.

Powerm

I confirm I have to change from time to time the Email Incoming port from 143 to 110 and back 143 to make the process resume...

As mail server I like atmail.com

RLJB

A shout of thanks to ACDC and Powerm!

We have confirmed that changing either the port number OR the password in Aware system settings back/forth will fix this issue. Thus the issue is with Aware not the Email Service Providers.

Obviously picking up emails is less of a concern (depending on your app and the need for timeliness) as the emails remain on the server until you change your password/port and they get picked up then. BUT on outgoing/sending the mails just do not get sent - which is a much bigger issue.

We now have set up a scheduled process that runs every hour to change port # back and forth but it would be better if this could be fixed - Support?

tford

I've been using AwareIM to send outgoing emails for 4-5 years with no problems .. never needing to change port or passwords. The only situation where I've had files in the Unsent Emails folder is when the credentials of the sender are not accurate.

ACDC

I think its got to do with something getting corrupted along the way based on a set of circumstances unique to the installation. At one time it was happening regularly to me and then it just went away.

It might also have something to do with the volume and frequency of sending emails. But the problem is definitely lurking there

rocketman

Can't agree ACDC,

We send around 500 email/day in batches of around 150 (sometimes our members wish we didn't - but that's another story). Been running for three years now without a hitch.

We also have scheduled tasks running at weekend to remind delinquent payers and to notify members of upcoming club duties - so maybe 1200 over a weekend

and I don't understand why your mail in the unsent mail folder doesn't go. provided the user credentials are correct it will (should) go when next there is a valid connection.

One Gotcha that might be worth looking out for is if your smtp provider doesn't allow multiple logins. If you log into an email account with - say - outlook, it might block the awareim from logging in until the outlook connection times out

.... and er ... MailEnable took around 10 minutes to set up. I don't even check the logs anymore

ACDC

Hi Rocketman

Thanks for the stats on your email success, its good to know that it can work reliably - if you are lucky !

Its important to note that I said "a set of circumstances" that create this problem, you have obviously been fortunate to escape the problem. BUT the problem does exist as more than one user is experiencing this issue

Also, I don't think its on the ISP side as I tried multiple mail providers and was able to reproduce the same problem, so its a local issue.

So the workaround in the meantime for the unfortunate ones is to do the periodic reset of the password or port number as mentioned earlier on in this thread

ACDC

I forgot to mention that the emails weren't even making it to the unsent folder.

So when the email was sent you would assume it was sent when it was not

RLJB

I have to agree with ACDC on this, there is a set of circumstances that causes a fail on send. We also have business spaces that experience no problem at all. But 2 or 3 business spaces that now always get this issue.

The aim now is to determine what those circumstances are. I suspect it's a configuration issue.

Rocketman - I don't want to be inflammatory, but how do you know for sure that those 500 emails are sending successfully and getting received? Aware log says fine, nothing in UNSENT mail, etc. I was under the impression our mail was sending until I started checking logs on the mail server and then BCC all outgoings and did a manual cross check. The problem is that it does work, but then it stops, so spot checking by sending 1-2 emails to yourself on occasion isn't going to be a fool proof test method.

Powerm

I've connected my app to this service, to make sure our emails are delivered. Reports are sent back to us with recipient read time, IP and full header : _http://www.readnotify.com/ . My app reads the tag in email subject and inserts it to the correct account 😉
Their interface is not user friendly but that service has no competitor.

RLJB

Hey ACDC

How are you going with your emails failing to connect? I have about 5 business spaces that consistently fail to pick up mail, nothing in UNSENT mail folder and nothing in the log.

It takes a change of password to get it working again. Are you still having this issues?

ACDC

Hey Rod
From time to time i get users calling me about email not getting through, so I do the reset of ports and passwords as mentioned before and the problem goes away for a while, so the problem still seems prevail

I still cannot put a finger on why this happens. It seems to prevail on adhoc emailing. I was hoping the replacement of JBOSS would get rid of the problem as I suspected the issue had to be with a jboss db issue of some sort where the attributes are corrupted in the db, but obviously not (thats of course if you are on the latest version, I am not)

Anyway for strategic email on other bsvs where email is a key process,I have changed to Jangomail.com who have an excellent call back url feature that lets me have a process running in the bsv that responds to the success of the email via their "call back url feature- comfirmation sent notification"This gives me advanced warning of email not being delivered and then the user on the system may be notified of the event -

kklosson

I use Jango as well. Can you possibly share your call back procedure?

hpl123

This is an important thing, is everyone who uses email experiencing this problem or is it just a few developers? I intend to use email extensively and need to know it fully works?

Thanks

hpl123

kklosson wrote
I use Jango as well. Can you possibly share your call back procedure?

I would also appreciate if you share this procedure. The problem should hopefully be fixed though but this procedure can be good for other uses.

hpl123

rocketman wrote
Hi Rod,

Have you considered running your own mail server? I use MailEnable which came free with my server package from 1and1. Does all I need it to. As long as your hosting provider give you the ability to point the MX record to your server - it might be the best way forward

Rocketman, I am thinking about trying MailEnable as well. Do you mind telling me a little bit about your usage of it? Here are some questions. Thanks in advance.
-difficult to use/configure?
-standard/professional version?
-do you use webmail? and if so on your own domain?
-does it use a lot of server resources?
-is it reliable?
-can one configure the webmail with own logo etc.?

Thanks