Customers with HOTMAIL accounts do not receive messages

Hi there!

Having some complaints from people that they haven't received emails from my site, such as 25% off offers etc (see https://www.backlesslingerie.com)

Have narrowed things down to the extent that I now know it is ONLY customers with hotmail addresses that don't get emails - so, I set up a dummy account on the website and tried sending to my own hotmail - sure enough, no dice.

Hmm? mail server issue I think to myself - do, I change the email address to another of my email accounts (NOT hosted on same server - actually to a yahoo address) and send - No worries, it arrives.

Hmm.. perhaps hotmail is blocking my mail server? So I try sending an email to my hotmail address from my backlesslingerie.com email account, no probs - it arrives.

Ok - so a) we know that zen cart can send to external email addresses - TICK. b) We know hotmail can receive emails from my domain TICK but for SOME reason, hotmail doesn't like receiving from zen-cart... HMM

any ideas? Running Zen 1.3.0.2

Dockarl

did you try adding your site address to your approved (friends) list in your dummy hotmail account and see if that worked?

Hi - yes I did, after following some other threads, and it made no difference.

As I said, I also sent an email to my hotmail account from the exact same email address using my servers webmail service, and that came through no probs, so looks pretty certain it is a Zen-centric issue.

All the best,

Doc

So I try sending an email to my hotmail address from my backlesslingerie.com email account, no probs - it arrives.Did you do this via a webmail interface on your mailserver, or via some software on your PC? Which software? Do you have it configured to send mail from your mailserver, or simply send via your ISP but use your lingerie domain as the return address? Many factors can affect how it all works.

It's quite possible that hotmail has blocked ("blacklisted") your mailserver due to spamming activity from someone else on the same physical server.

Hi DrByte -

I actually sent it from outlook in hindsight - set up with SMTP authorisation for outgoing messages, with my mailserver (mail.backless<nospam>lingerie.com) which is at the same IP as the zen install.

Both send and receive through same server.

Also, Zen sends through to my other email addresses - for instance yahoo, bigpond etc without any hassles.

All the best,

Doc

Also just sent from my server cpanel via webmail - comes through to hotmail no probs, albeit classified as junk.

You're using SMTPAUTH mode in Zen Cart ?

Yes I am Dr Byte, and assume it is working correctly since it sends to other external addresses ok.

If you change the setting for Admin->Configuration->Email Options->Emails must send from known domain? to Yes, does it change anything?

Doing this sends an extra "from" address in the email headers, which could help prevent spam detectors from improperly classifying your message.

Hi DrByte,

Yes I have tried that also, and no dice.

All the best,

Doc

Bizarre.

I guess my next tactic would be to compare raw email headers between messages received from the shop vs from your PC and even webmail, to see what differences might be contributing to this phenomenon. Granted, not every email system is as easy as the next to display raw header details.

Good idea DrByte,

I'll get on to that and let the forum know the results.

Cheers,

Doc

I am having this same issue with my clients site http://www.aikenskincare.us. It only occurs for hotmail accounts and all others work fine. Look forward to a solution....

one more thing using sendmail not smtp

found a solution to my problem...

My head tag was not closed in my template. Other email programs rendered it properly but Hotmail showed nothing once I added the missing tag everything worked for me.

Try to check your templates and the email you are sending out to make sure tags are closed it might fix your problem too.

cuda

I also had a problem with not receiving order emails, at our local Win 2003 exchange server.

I checked the mail log for our web host, and saw some messages from our server that the lines were too long. This didn't make a lot of sense, because other servers seemed to be fine.

However, I checked back to an earlier version of ZC and found that the mail encoding had changed.

Once I changed the setting for mail encoding it was fine.

See this thread: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41984

I think I saw some error messages indicating that Hotmail had a similar handling problem, and it was solved by my changing the mail encoding format.

---Diana

Cuda,

What was the header file change that you did? Coz I'm facing the sme problem while sending out Order confirmation mails to yahoo or hotmail accounts

jameschacks:

Cuda,

What was the header file change that you did? Coz I'm facing the sme problem while sending out Order confirmation mails to yahoo or hotmail accounts

My sollution was to go over my email template to make sure all my tags where closed in my case I did not have my head tag closed </head> but that was in my case go take a look at your email templates and make sure all of your markup is well formed....