Zen Cart and Office 365 Email Issues

[lloyd_borrett]

G'day,

We moved to Microsoft Office 365 for our business email years ago and had to change the way Zen Cart handled email to get them to work together. However, the change made email from within Zen Cart extremely slow - typically a 25 to 30 second wait per email. This causes problems when customers make a purchase and then have to wait so long for Zen Cart to move on and confirm the order. It causes delays every time staff update an order status and sends the customer an email notification.


It's been progressively getting worse. We've now regularly seeing "Email Error: SMTP connect() failed."
We're intermittently not getting some process emails.


E-Mail Transport Method is SMTPAUTH.
Emails must send from known domain: Yes
SMTP Email Mail Host: smtp dot office365 dot com
SMTP Email Mail Server Port: 587


I simply don't know enough about email systems to work through what the issues are.


We know we are also starting to see performance issues as a result of the web site being hosted in the USA instead of Australia. Too many hops to get to the site from Australia where the vast majority of our web traffic is located. We've looked in to moving the web site to servers in Sydney. However, we're being told hosting would go from about $175 per month for hosting, to $550 per month for hosting, which is a massive increase.


Moving hosting to AUS should give us some general page speed performance improvements but may not do much to solve the email issue.


Has anyone else had these sort of email issues (between Zen Cart and Microsoft Office 365) and been able to solve them? If so, how?

Best regards, Lloyd Borrett.

[lloyd_borrett]

The last few days Zen cart has stopped sending all email. Not sure why given no changes were made.

At the suggestion of lat9, I changed the email transport method from smtpauth to PHP.

I looked up an old personal test order. I resent the confirmation email. It processed quickly, not the 30 second delay. I received the confirmation email to my home email.

I placed a new personal test order. The process completed quickly. I received the confirmation email to my home email. The confirmation email didn’t come through to our business email address.

I did a status update in admin. The process completed quickly. The status update was received at my home email.

So, a partial success.

I don’t know enough about it, or how to check, but I suspect we’re not receiving the emails to our business email address because Office365 doesn’t like the email coming from the web site server. This is something a colleague might be able to look into for me.

Best regards, Lloyd Borrett.

[swguy]

Office 365? More like Awful 365.
I gave up on that thing. Use your hoster's email facilities or an external SMTP provider.

[dbltoe]

As Barco57 mentioned in the other thread, it appears that your DMARC setting does not exist for your domain. Unless the party goer (e-mail) shows up at the Disco with a pass (DMARC setting) the bouncer (yahoo, AT&T, etc) will not let them in.

Sent a PM with the suggested settings for your site.