Cant sent email to hotmail accounts suddenly

[paulsra]

hi all,

iv noticed the last few weeks that several customers are not responding to the confirmation email during the registration process.

i relized that they all have hotmail accounts, so after a few test emails, i confirmed that i simply cant send emails to any hotmail account.

does anyone know of any new policies hotmail may have implemented or any other ideas on what might cause this?

on googling the subject, one thing i thought it might be is this new spf record that hotmail now uses, but no one seems to think they are rejecting upon this basis...

thanks for any response.

[Lhotch]

If your not already set your site up to use smtp mail and see if that helps.

[Mike-N-Tosh]

I've had issues with hotmail users as well as some of the big email sites. Yahoo and even Comcast. Most of the time, it is that they receive the first email (the confirmation with the user/account info), but fail to receive the second email with the activation link.

I edited my confirmation email, indicating that they should be receiving two emails and if they do NOT, then go to the site and attempt to log in. When it fails, because the account has not been activated it reveals a link for the activation email to be resent. This has worked for me very well.

-Mike
P.S. It has been reported on this forum that there is a higher success rate when using SMTP email instead of php sendmail, but I haven't switched.

[paulsra]

iv just relized that i have other domains running that cant send to hotmail that are on the same server so it seems that 68 is not the problem. thanks for your answers.

i am not using smtp as i had different problems with hotmail using that method, and am not game yet to diagnose the problem and make the change.

[Lhotch]

Originally Posted by paulsra

iv just relized that i have other domains running that cant send to hotmail that are on the same server so it seems that 68 is not the problem. thanks for your answers.

i am not using smtp as i had different problems with hotmail using that method, and am not game yet to diagnose the problem and make the change.

The most likely reason your mails from your domains arent getting through, assuming they are all on the same host, is that your host is blacklisted.

Thats one problem with shared hosting. You share a server with a few hundred other people/domains. Someone signs up with thye host and quickly goes to work setting up scripts etc to mass mail etc and the source IP gets tracked back to the host server, then all domains on that server get black listed.

[civ]

Hotmail has been checking for SPF records for years - setup a proper SPF record for your domain if you want to reach hotmail users.

[paulsra]

the problem is the Microsoft "smart screen filter" implemented by hotmail, according to the hotmail tech support. The problem has been sent to yet another department at microsoft for further scrutiny. Apparently the SFP record, or lack thereof, will only send the mail straight to the recipients junk folder, but it will still get there.

[Lhotch]

Originally Posted by paulsra

the problem is the Microsoft "smart screen filter" implemented by hotmail, according to the hotmail tech support. The problem has been sent to yet another department at microsoft for further scrutiny. Apparently the SFP record, or lack thereof, will only send the mail straight to the recipients junk folder, but it will still get there.

But getting there is most of the battle. From there each user can approve your mail. Simply on your registration page notify people to check their junk mail folder and to ad it to the white list.