Problem Description
- You have an email account hosted with us that is configured to forward to another mail account that is not hosted with us (like Google Apps or Outlook.com, but could be any 3rd party / external email service).
- Some or all messages are not making it to the final destination that is hosted externally.
This is a problem with the way mail providers handle forwarded messages. When you enable forwarding on an account at Websavers, it behaves exactly as it should: all messages sent to that address are forwarded to the address you've configured exactly as they were received. Unfortunately many external mail providers do not utilize forward detection, such that when these messages are forwarded through, the final server treats both our server and the original source as the source of the message simultaneously. This creates two possible problems:
- The Websavers server is seen as the source of any spam sent to the Websavers hosted email address, even though we're just passing it along like the configuration indicates it should, and so our server might get a negative reputation even though we're not the ones doing the spamming (and even though Google's servers should know better), and
- The message never needs to be authenticated against a user's login (because it's just passing through our server) and therefore the original headers include the IP address of the computer sending the email. Without authentication, that IP will fail authentication checks and mail software will indicate the message may be spam or the sender cannot be verified.
Update Jan 2024: Google's systems appear to have been adjusted to make this even worse. A larger volume of forwarded messages are being either delayed or dropped with a message like this: 450-4.2.1 The user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that 450-4.2.1 prevents additional messages from being delivered. Please resend your 450-4.2.1 message at a later time. If the user is able to receive mail at that 450-4.2.1 time, your message will be delivered.]
Sometimes these messages eventually make it through with a big delay, other times they're never received. This is an issue on Google's side, not ours.
Problem Resolution
- Access your email adirectly, avoiding a 3rd party account: Rather than forwarding to a 3rd party account like a Google email address, instead disable forwarding (see below) and access your Websavers hosted email directly. Managing your mail directly not only resolves issues with forwarding to 3rd party services, but also comes with the advantage of full support from Websavers.
- Use POP retrieval rather than forwards: with this option, rather than all incoming messages being unreliably sent to an external email address, the 3rd party email service will grab the messages from our servers, thus eliminating the forward action.
Follow the steps below to proceed.
How to disable mail forwarding with Plesk
- Follow this guide to log in to Plesk
- Choose the “Mail” tab on the left, or click “Email Addresses” under the domain you wish to add an email account / forward for.
- Select the email account for which you wish to disable forwarding
- If you don't know the email account's password, you may wish to enter a new one here
- Ensure the "Mailbox" checkbox has been checked
- Select "Apply"
- Choose the Forwarding tab
- Uncheck the box “Switch on mail forwarding“
- Click OK.
You can now access the email account directly at webmail.websavers.ca and you can configure a mail app on your device(s) to access your email.
If you must have your emails pulled into a Gmail or Outlook account, you can now enable POP retrieval by following the matching guide: Enable POP retrieval with Gmail and Enable POP retrieval with Outlook.com/Hotmail. If your 3rd party mail provider does not have a POP retrieval option, your only choice is either unreliable forwards or directly accessing your email - we recommend the latter.
Note for those using Gmail: there are signs that Google servers are also filtering messages retrieved through POP connections much like they do for forwards, however Google support should be better able to help with issues like this as the POP retrieval process happens entirely on Google servers.
Troubleshooting Note
Because we provide options that totally resolve this issue (directly accessing your email) and we have no access to troubleshoot issues with 3rd party 'final destination' email addresses (unless that's also hosted with us), we can rarely help resolve issues with forwards. Therefore, in order to obtain support with mail forwards, you must have clear proof from the final destination email service indicating that the issue is with the configuration of our services. An example of this could be a bounce message or a mail server error report. If your final destination email address is a Gmail address, we will require a report from Google support that includes the exact error from the Google server attempting to receive that message.
