Using Own Domain On Fastmail Cannot Send Emails

[InquiringMind]

Help !!!

I have purchased a domain for a family member.
I set the domain name servers.

I setup the fastmail account for them.
Fastmail's automated setup for Domains indicates all is set properly.

The email account can receive emails with no problem.

I sent one email from the new account and it worked.
But after that first email, no other email makes it to the named recipient including the very first one.

Oddly the emails show up okay in the sent folder.
I can send an email from the account right back to the account with no problem.

Neither sender nor recipient has a black list, a domain block, nothing is in anyone's spam folder, there are no bounce messages. It just never makes it past Fastmail's system out into the internet.

Cannot even send to a mail tester.

Something is not set right, but I cannot figure out what.

Domain name registrar says it is Fastmail's problem to figure out.

I have put in a ticket to Fastmail, but no response yet.

Anyone know what is happening here ???

Help please.

[InquiringMind]

The emails arrived, but hours later.

Sent some new ones, not received yet.

Bizarre.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by InquiringMind

The emails arrived, but hours later.

Sent some new ones, not received yet.

Bizarre.

This is greylisting with new domains. Lots of recipient mail servers will do this. It is irritating, but should resolve itself automatically within a few days.

[InquiringMind]

Originally Posted by BritTim

This is greylisting with new domains. Lots of recipient mail servers will do this. It is irritating, but should resolve itself automatically within a few days.

Thanks BritTim.

My family member got this reply from Fastmail.com:

Thank you for your patience! I'm sorry to hear about the delay in your Outbound emails. I can understand how frustrating this can be. I'm sure I would be upset too.

I've taken a look at what has occurred and I'm happy to explain what actually happened.

Your outgoing emails were put on hold for spam check. Outgoing emails from new accounts are investigated to see if spam emails are being sent out. This is to prevent the abuse of our system.

Thus, messages sent from newer accounts are held in our outgoing server as they're going through more rigorous spam checking. Once the spam check is done and if the message is found to be ham, the emails are then sent from the servers.

This is the reason you see that emails are delivered after a delay.

As your account gets older it won't be subject to the same level of spam checking, so you shouldn't see further problems after your account's first month of use.

I hope that provides some reassurance. Please feel welcome to reach out to me with any additional questions you may have. I would be more than happy to help!

This reply seems to indicate that a new email account that uses it's own domain is essentially unusable for the first 30 days. Delays of nearly two hours in sending out emails is non-functional for anyone, individual or business.

So, BritTim, do you think that in a few days the delay will decrease to something more rational like a few minutes or is it basically that Fastmail expects people to commit to an email account a month in advance of when they actually need it.

And, my family member has tried to contact them repeatedly. What Fastmail Support does is they give the same pre-scripted response and then they immediately close the ticket so you have to start from scratch.

I have had good service from Fastmail for years on accounts using Fastmail's domain. That is why I recommended that my family member use Fastmail. There really should be some bold print warning during signup that there is this 30 day 2 hour hold on outbound emails. I feel very foolish that I gave this recommendation to a member of my own family and I regret all the other recommendations I gave of Fastmail to other people over the years.

[Grhm]

I use several of my own domains but I've never come across this before. It seems bizarre. What exactly are Fastmail doing with the e-mails during those two hours? Surely they don't have people opening them and reading them to check they're OK? But what else could justify such a long delay?

[InquiringMind]

I am a total newbie to all of this domain stuff.
But I am a relentless pursuer of knowledge.

I did a DNS lookup of the domain and found that many of Fastmails IP's are on a block list.

Is this a part of Greylisting or is there some problem going on with Fastmail that they do not want to fess up to ???

66.111.4.54
IP blocked by dnsbl.spfbl.net


66.111.4.53
IP blocked by dnsbl.spfbl.net
IP blocked by zen.spamhaus.org
IP blocked by xbl.spamhaus.org


in1-smtp.messagingengine.com 66.111.4.74
IP blocked by xbl.spamhaus.org


in1-smtp.messagingengine.com 66.111.4.72
IP blocked by dnsbl.spfbl.net


in1-smtp.messagingengine.com 66.111.4.70
IP blocked by dnsbl.spfbl.net


in2-smtp.messagingengine.com 64.147.123.52
IP blocked by zen.spamhaus.org
IP blocked by xbl.spamhaus.org


in1-smtp.messagingengine.com 66.111.4.73
IP blocked by dnsbl.spfbl.net


in2-smtp.messagingengine.com. 64.147.123.51
IP blocked by zen.spamhaus.org


in1-smtp.messagingengine.com 66.111.4.75
IP blocked by dnsbl.spfbl.net


in1-smtp.messagingengine.com 66.111.4.71
IP blocked by dnsbl.spfbl.net

[BritTim]

Fastmail's response, and your most recent investigation, indicates that this is not greylisting at the recipient's end. Instead, I suspect Fastmail has recently had a problem with people using new Fastmail accounts for spamming. In the past, they severely restricted the volume of emails you could send during the trial period before you paid, but otherwise left you alone until someone reported you as a spammer. It appears they are now more strict. Possibly, spammers were opening many new trial accounts negating the sending limits.

I wonder if they ease up once you pay. Your sending limits dramatically increase at that point, but I do not know if they then also trust you enough to send your email without spam checks.

I am glad you have raised this here on the forum. It is a rather disturbing development.

[InquiringMind]

Hi BritTim,

I could understand if I was sending pictures, videos, pdf's, etc., to many recipients, diverse domains, blah blah blah.

But I have just been testing the email that I helped create for my family member using just a few words of text, and have been sending the test messages to my own fastmail, gmail, and tutanota accounts.

To have these simple emails, and so few of them as well, take nearly two hours to arrive is crazy. I cannot image as Grhm wrote that they are reading individual emails, so why would it take so long for their antispam software to review outbound emails from new accounts. Who in their right mind would wait one month after signup to use the account.

As to payment, in a post on a reddit forum, someone remarked they were having the exact same problem even though they paid in full up front.

[InquiringMind]

Here is the Reddit post from Two Months ago.
Wish I saw this before starting my family member with them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fastmail/co...t_emails_from/

[InquiringMind]

I hope that I am not jinxing myself here, but it seems like it is working properly now.

I do not know how it was fixed, I am just glad it is and I hope it stays that way.

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by InquiringMind

And, my family member has tried to contact them repeatedly. What Fastmail Support does is they give the same pre-scripted response and then they immediately close the ticket so you have to start from scratch.

In my experience, tickets that are "closed" can be replied-to, which opens them again. Think of this "closing" as just FM's hope that they've given a stock answer to a simple question and that's that. I get this quite often with questions that the responder hasn't fully understood.

[InquiringMind]

Dear JeremyNicoll,

I wish that I had that positive experience, but unfortunately whenever I have replied to a closed ticket, days go by with no response, and ultimately I had to start a new ticket to get a response. So, I do not even try to respond to a closed ticket anymore, I just initiate a new one to avoid waiting for a reply that will not come.

[SideshowBob]

Originally Posted by InquiringMind

I cannot image as Grhm wrote that they are reading individual emails, so why would it take so long for their antispam software to review outbound emails from new accounts.

One reason for doing this is that spam can usually be identified more accurately after a delay. Another is that once an account is identified as spamming, earlier spams can be stopped even if they weren't caught by the spam filter.