Bug Mail was never received by recipiences

[highlander]

After receiving some help from Fillip H. I was able to create a mailing list for my forum membership of 21,000 users. Finally, I sent out a site wide newsletter to the entire forum membership, after testing it numerous times successfully with a smaller number of users - between 1 and 10. I watched it run cycling through all the 21,000 users and showing success (or fail because admin flag was set). My problem is that people didn't get the newsletter. I know that two of the original 10 users on the site received it (e.g., user numbers 2, 8). However, user 40xx didn't get it. User 83xx didn't get it. It's like it stopped sending somewhere early while the program was running. I don't know where.

I also know that I can subsequently successfully send the newsletter through the same means to a smaller number of users (say just myself) and that I can use the email account being referenced with no issues to send other messages.

Is there a reason this could happen? How can it be diagnosed?

 

[Fillip H.]

vBMail uses the vBulletin mail queue, configurable in the Email Options in vBulletin. If the number of emails to send per batch is set to 10, it will take 2100 minutes (35 hours) to send all the emails to 2100 users. I'd recommend increasing that value to 250.

 

[highlander]

vBMail uses the vBulletin mail queue, configurable in the Email Options in vBulletin. If the number of emails to send per batch is set to 10, it will take 2100 minutes (35 hours) to send all the emails to 2100 users. I'd recommend increasing that value to 250.

I did that. It doesn't seem to have made any difference. This is what the hosting provider said:


Currently there is no emails in the server email queue as pending.
When I've checked the server settings I could notice that "Max hourly emails per domain" was set to 200 now I've changed that to 500.

It's been three full days now (72 hours).

 

[Fillip H.]

Have you checked vB's mailqueue table?

 

[highlander]

Have you checked vB's mailqueue table?

I just checked it now and it's empty

 

[Fillip H.]

Do you have access to your server's mail delivery reports via a control panel interface such as WHM?

 

[highlander]

Do you have access to your server's mail delivery reports via a control panel interface such as WHM?

I believe I have found some error messages that help to explain this. I looked at email trace for a number of users and see this error message at the time I sent the email

Domain typologycentral.com has exceeded the max emails per hour (250/200 (125%)) allowed. Message discarded.

What would cause this? Is there some fix? This is what the hosting provider said:

You can set the mail account per domain

Home » Account Functions » Modify an Account

We have set this also to 500. Please let us know if you continue to get this message for new mails

 

[highlander]

I see that I can change this setting on the server:

Maximum Hourly Email by Domain Relayed

It was formerly set to 200. The hosting provider bumped it up to 500 after I had the problem. Based on my investigation of the logs, I believe what happened the first time is that the email went to the first 400 users. For the first 200, it was completely fine. For the next two hundred, it gave the error but said it would try again and the second attempt was successful. For everything after that, it failed. So my forum newsletter that was supposed to go to about 17,000 people ended up going to only 400.

If I make it unlimited, it will probably eliminate the issue. However, I'm concerned about my forum getting blacklisted. Do you think that is a risk? If so, is there a way to manage that?

 

[Fillip H.]

We have our emails per hour set to unlimited, and while we have had issues with blacklists, they can for the most part be resolved. It's worth mentioning that it's very very difficult to get blacklisted when using vBMail, as vBMail follows spam policies by having one-click unsubscribe links.

Blacklists will only happen if bots get access to your mail server and starts sending mail as you.

Every reputable mail server and/or blacklist have a contact form where you can notify them that you have discovered the source of the spam, closed the loophole and that your server is no longer sending any spam. They will then unblock you

 

[Fillip H.]

As this ticket has received no further replies, I'll close it. If you have any further issues or queries, please feel free to start a new support ticket. Thanks!