If you need to know how to troubleshoot connections to e-mail accounts, this article has the right information for you.

Troubleshooting e-mail accounts

There are a couple of categories for problems related to e-mail, these are:

• You cannot access the account to view incoming messages.
• You can access the account and view incoming messages, but you cannot send outgoing messages.

Problems accessing the account

There can be multiple reasons why you are not able to access your e-mail account. In order to find out what actually causes this problem, you should follow this checklist:

• Make sure your Internet connection is working. For example, try to load a web site in your web browser.
• Make sure your domain name is using TBC-Hosting name servers.
• Make sure the POP or IMAP server for the e-mail account is set to mail.example.com, where example.com represents your domain name.
• Make sure you are using a complete e-mail address (for example, user@example.com) as the username for POP or IMAP authentication.
• Make sure your e-mail client is configured properly according to the instructions in this article. This step does not apply if you have previously used the client to access the e-mail account successfully, and you have not subsequently changed any settings.
• Determine if your computer is behind a firewall. If you are trying to access the e-mail account from your workplace, for example, this is often the case. If your computer is behind a firewall, ask the network administrator to verify that the required port is allowed through the firewall. If the port is not allowed, this is why you cannot connect to the mail server.
• Contact your ISP or internet provider and verify that they do not block the required POP or IMAP port. If the port is blocked, this is why you cannot connect to the mail server.

Problems sending e-mail messages

In case if you are able to access your e-mail account, but you can’t send messages from it, you should check the following possible sources of this issue:

• Make sure the outgoing SMTP server for the e-mail account is set to mail.example.com, where example.com represents your domain name.
• Make sure you have enabled authentication for outgoing e-mail on the client.
• Make sure you are using a complete e-mail address (for example, user@example.com) as the username for SMTP authentication.
• Determine if your computer is behind a firewall. If you are trying to access the e-mail account from your workplace, for example, this is often the case. If your computer is behind a firewall, ask the network administrator to verify that the required port is allowed through the firewall. If the port is not allowed, this is why you cannot connect to the mail server.
• Many ISPs block port 25 to reduce spam. Contact your ISP or internet provider and ask if they block port 25. If they do block port 25, try using port 2525 instead (or even better, use one of the secure SMTP ports 465 or 587).
• Make sure all message recipient e-mail addresses are valid.
• If you are trying to send a large file attachment from one of our shared or reseller servers, the maximum file size allowed is 50 megabytes. Sending large file attachments through e-mail is inefficient, and slows down servers because they must be scanned for viruses and spam. If you must transfer large files, consider an alternative like FTP.