Confusing Email delivery

[OneApplications]

Hi All,

A few weeks ago I thought i'd cracked the whole Hotmail / AOL / Yahoo mail delivery problem. However I recently changed my VPS Hosting control panel from Plesk to CPanel and since then my mail delivery rates have become rather poor again. So I though i'd do some tests...

The current situation is that I can deliver to ALL Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and AOL accounts just fine if I use Outlook with both POP3 and SMTP servers set to mail.mydomain.com.

The problem is that I need to use phpMailer to send out software keys to customers and these are NOT getting through to Hotmail accounts.

I have RDNS for my domain.
I have an SPF record of "v=spf1 mx ip4:92.48.82.30 mx:mail.oneapplications.co.uk -all"
I have my exim hostname set to mail.oneapplications.co.uk

I decided to send the message that will reach Hotmail (from Outlook) to my AOL account. I then also sent a test email using the phpMailer script to the same AOL account. Both of these messages ended up in the inbox at AOL but only the first arrived at Hotmail.

The header from the one that made it to Hotmail...

X-AOL-UID: 3041.780150954
X-AOL-DATE: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 1:26:42 PM Eastern Standard Time
Return-Path:
Received: from rly-mb02.mail.aol.com (rly-mb02.mail.aol.com [172.20.118.138]) by air-mb01.mail.aol.com (v121.4) with ESMTP id MAILINMB14-d247caf151193; Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:26:42 -0500
Received: from mail.oneapplications.co.uk (oneapplications.co.uk [92.48.82.30]) by rly-mb02.mail.aol.com (v121.4) with ESMTP id MAILRELAYINMB210-d247caf151193; Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:26:26 -0500
Received: from cpc3-stkp3-0-0-cust910.manc.cable.ntl.com ([82.17.71.143] helo=fqp4)
by mail.oneapplications.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.6
(envelope-from )
id 1JVsrW-0004XL-0x
for oneapplications@aol.com; Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:24:38 +0000
From: "Product Activations"
To:
Subject: test from outlook
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 18:26:23 -0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000A_01C87C92.ECB678B0"
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510
Thread-Index: Ach8kutO7I/wkphlQ7CpU6LUE1h4Qw==
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3198
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - mail.oneapplications.co.uk
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - aol.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - oneapplications.co.uk
X-AOL-IP: 92.48.82.30
X-AOL-SCOLL-AUTHENTICATION: listenair ; SPF_helo : ?
X-AOL-SCOLL-AUTHENTICATION: listenair ; SPF_822_from : +
Message-ID: <200803021326.d247caf151193@rly-mb02.mail.aol.com>


And here's the header sent from the phpMailer script that doesn't make it to Hotmail...

X-AOL-UID: 3298.650503666
X-AOL-DATE: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 2:09:02 PM Eastern Standard Time
Return-Path:
Received: from rly-da09.mx.aol.com (rly-da09.mail.aol.com [172.19.129.83]) by air-da02.mail.aol.com (v121.4) with ESMTP id MAILINDA023-a8e47cafb433a8; Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:09:02 -0500
Received: from mail.oneapplications.co.uk (oneapplications.co.uk [92.48.82.30]) by rly-da09.mx.aol.com (v121.4) with ESMTP id MAILRELAYINDA096-a8e47cafb433a8; Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:08:51 -0500
Received: from oneapplications.co.uk ([92.48.82.30])
by mail.oneapplications.co.uk with esmtpa (Exim 4.6
(envelope-from )
id 1JVtWY-0005cT-O4; Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:07:02 +0000
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 19:07:02 +0000
To: oneapplications@aol.com
From: Product Activations
Reply-To: noreply@oneapplications.co.uk
Subject: EPOS-Excel Activation
Message-ID:
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer (phpmailer.sourceforge.net) [version 2.0.0 rc3]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="b1_cfcf3df7ff9d339ef923f60b483cfc1f"
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - mail.oneapplications.co.uk
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - aol.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - oneapplications.co.uk
X-AOL-IP: 92.48.82.30
X-AOL-SCOLL-AUTHENTICATION: listenair ; SPF_helo : ?
X-AOL-SCOLL-AUTHENTICATION: listenair ; SPF_822_from : +

Can anyone see a problem with this header??

Any help greatly appreciated!

[vzAddict]

Hello,

I have setup the domain key for all the domains so please allow some time for the changes to propagate. If you continue to face problem while sending emails to AOL, I would suggest you to contact AOL with these email headers and ask them to unblock your VPS Hosting's IP from their end.

[OneApplications]

Hi VZ,

It was actually Hotmail that was the problem but yes I get the idea.

When you say you've setup the domain keys what do you mean exactly?

Cheers,

Chris.

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by OneApplications

Hi VZ,

It was actually Hotmail that was the problem but yes I get the idea.

When you say you've setup the domain keys what do you mean exactly?

Cheers,

Chris.

Domains Keys, rDNS and SPF records are types of DNS records which are essential for successful email delivery to email service providers like AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo. You can search in google to get detailed information on each of these DNS records.

[eUK-Nick]

Hello,

More information about domainkeys is available here

[eUK-Nick]

Originally Posted by eUK-Nick

Hello,

More information about domainkeys is available here

The working of SPF records is elaborated here

[OneApplications]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. The thing that's confusing me is that if I send the test email (with a message of just "hello") to my hotmail account using Outlook it arrives just fine. If however I use PHPMailer to send the same "hello" message it never arrives, not even in junk. I know it's sending it though because if I use the same script to send to a Yahoo account it arrives.

Surely this can't be an spf problem as this would effect both of the emails regardless of whether they were sent from Outlook or PHPMailer?? Outlook is also sending HTML as standard so it can't be an HTML / plain text thing either.

Very odd!!

One thing that has changed of course since I changed my control panel to CPanel is that now I have exim instead of qmail. I guess these send slightly different headers. Would it be possible to use qmail on CPanel? I can't really imagine that this is the problem but I know I was able to send to Hotmal just fine with qmail on Plesk.

Oh I love email systems!!

[mephisto]

The Message ID on the phpMailer headers doesn't look right to me, in that it's empty.

[OneApplications]

Hi,

Yes you might be onto something there mephisto! I checked back through my Hotmail inbox to find one of the messages that was being successfully sent on my old Plesk / qmail setup and this is the header...

X-Message-Delivery: Vj0zLjQuMDt1cz0wO2k9MDtsPTA7YT0w
X-Message-Status: n:0
X-SID-PRA: Product Activations
X-SID-Result: Pass
X-Message-Info: 6sSXyD95QpW0y7cEZZhmM/acKHto4DH0qkxagH/zZguQZ/Vi60vAaYyD8Vm0Ai/IZy+Z+xonXNh24jH8D5cLnw==
Received: from mail.oneapplications.co.uk ([92.48.82.30]) by bay0-mc3-f12.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.266;
Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:57:38 -0800
Received: (qmail 3733 invoked from network); 16 Feb 2008 11:55:42 +0000
Received: from nora.netpivotal.com (HELO www.oneapplications.com) (67.15.8.53)
by oneapplications.co.uk with SMTP; 16 Feb 2008 11:55:42 +0000
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:34:27 -0600
Return-Path: noreply@oneapplications.co.uk
To: mk2driver@hotmail.com
From: Product Activations
Reply-To: noreply@oneapplications.co.uk
Subject: EPOS-Excel Activation
Message-ID: <5c8e1217a6c333ceaa0393d27431b15b@www.oneapplicatio ns.com>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer (phpmailer.sourceforge.net) [version 2.0.0 rc3]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="b1_5c8e1217a6c333ceaa0393d27431b15b"
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 16 Feb 2008 11:57:38.0257 (UTC) FILETIME=[202FDC10:01C87093]


As you can see the Message-ID is filled in. By the way I actually have two domains running at the moment (the .com and the .co.uk). The .com is on shared hosting with another host. All I do is use the email server on the .co.uk to send the email (hence the originating domain being oneapplications.com). However, like I said it did work like this no problems at all.

So the question now is why I'm not getting a Message-ID tag I assume. I'll do some digging...

[eUKhost.com]

Your PHPMailer should use SMTP authentication of your email server for respective domain as Hotmail won't allow emails which show your local IP address as sender. Emails need to go through our server for them to be delivered successfully.

SMTP authentication is the most important thing which is used to differentiate spams sent from phpmailers and genuine emails sent from email servers.

[OneApplications]

Hi,

I am using SMTP authentication as far as I am aware. This is the PHPMailer code:-

$mail = new PHPMailer();

$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->Host = "mail.oneapplications.co.uk";
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = "noreply@oneapplications.co.uk";
$mail->Password = "mypassword";
$mail->From = "noreply@oneapplications.co.uk";
$mail->FromName = "Product Activations";

$mail->AddAddress("myhotmailaddress@hotmail.com");

$mail->AddReplyTo("noreply@oneapplications.co.uk");
$mail->IsHTML(true);

$mail->Subject = "Software Activation";
$mail->Body = $message;
$mail->AltBody = $alt_message;

$mail->Send();

When you say "Emails need to go through our server for them to be delivered successfully" which servers do you mean? Isn't this the case using the above script?

Cheers,

Chris.