Advice on undelivered emails

This is really an issue with emails not being delivered, rather than anything with UE not working.

I have a set up where an email gets triggered by a form submission that we know is working from testing.

But we know that someone didn't get the email, which logs indicate was due to grey listing at the recipient' send. Unfortunately it looks like the grey listing is preventing it ever being delivered.

The odd thing is that a regular email sent from a computer using the address arrives, but the email generated by the script does not, which seems odd and suggests there's something in the script contributing to the issue.

Which in turn is odd, because I know the emails do get delivered in testing.

So I'm not sure if there's an obvious answer to this one, but if anyone has any experience with a similar issue that might be a help I'd appreciate any suggestions.

"The odd thing is that a regular email sent from a computer using the address arrives, but the email generated by the script does not, which seems odd and suggests there's something in the script contributing to the issue."


Actually, this suggests that 2 different SMTP servers are being used, the one the script uses to send the email has that address grey listed, but the one your email client connects to does not.



really isn't anything that can be done about it other than setting universal email to use a different SMTP server or contacting the host to have that address removed from the grey list.

Thanks Jason - that makes sense with the SMTP servers.

This has always worked out of the box, but looking at the UE behaviour settings I can see that no SMTP info is used.

So I have asked the hosting company for the settings I should use here for emails being sent directly from the server.

In theory, if this info is missing from any email headers that might be what is getting them flagged as suspect by some recipient's servers. So hopefully adding them will resolve the issue.

leaving the smtp settings empty just tells the script to use the defaults from the php.ini file. it would have nothing to do with the address being flagged, that is on the smtp server end.

Oh well, so much for that theory!

Would using mail or PEAR Mail with SMTP make any difference?

The only other thing I can think of is that I know the emails for the domain are running off Google's email servers, rather than the host's own servers.

If these emails get sent directly from the host server would they be using the host server's SMTP settings from the php.ini file, whereas an email sent from a computer using the same address would use Google's SMTP settings.

In which case entering the Google server's SMTP settings in the UE behaviour settings might help?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree again?

the method of connecting to the smtp server makes no difference.

It is the specific SMTP server that is being used to relay the email.


"whereas an email sent from a computer using the same address would use Google's SMTP settings."

only if you use Gmail as your mailing client.


it is possible to use the gmail smtp server for sending emails if you use the Pear Mail for SMTP mail object.

you need to enable authentication, use your gmail address and password as the username / password.

set the smtp server to:

ssl://smtp.gmail.com and use port 465

I'll need to check with the site owner, but I'm not sure it has to do with gmail.

If the email is being sent direct from the server using UE, that is using the default SMTP settings of the host server?

What SMTP settings are getting used if I send an email from the same address from my computer?

"What SMTP settings are getting used if I send an email from the same address from my computer?"

whatever your email client is configured to use.

if you use gmail as the email client, it will use the gmail servers.

It's an interesting question actually - I'll see if I can find out, then in theory I can use those in UE.

"then in theory I can use those in UE."

maybe, maybe not. the SMTP server may not accept the connection from a web script, or you may need to use Pear Mail if it requires authentication.