topic Free-Online email servers in Email

Free-Online email servers

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 07:19:31 GMT

Late last night I was getting email server connection issues, today I see free-online now connect to

nslookup mail.free-online.net Non-authoritative answer: Name: mail.freeonline.enmail.co Address: 91.204.208.193 Aliases: mail.free-online.net nslookup relay.free-online.net Non-authoritative answer: Name: mail.freeonline.enmail.co Address: 91.204.208.193 Aliases: relay.free-online.net nslookup imap.free-online.net Non-authoritative answer: Name: mail.freeonline.enmail.co Address: 91.204.208.193 Aliases: imap.free-online.net

Prior to the change they were plusnet IP Addresses (212.x.x.x and 217.x.x.x)

Hopefully the cutover will work this time

Re: Free-Online email servers

OriginalBigBri — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 08:10:55 GMT

Have you actually managed to receive emails?

I can see those IP addresses when I ping mail.free-online.net, but I'm getting request timed out from the ping, and Outlook is failing to receive, with the following:

"Your email server rejected your login. Verify your user name and password for this account in Account Settings. The server responded: -ERR internal server error"

I tried sending an email, which appeared to work in Outlook, but never arrives at the other end.

On the other hand, I sent an email TO my Plusnet account from my work email, and my gmail app on my phone received it, but Outlook didn't. I tried sending from the gmail app and the email is sitting in the outbox unsent.

EDIT:
Sorry, turned out to be an Outlook problem. For some reason it had decided to change my login from
myaccount+mailbox
to
mailbox@myaccount.co.uk

No idea why, but it seems to be working now I've changed it back

Re: Free-Online email servers

MisterW — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 09:05:40 GMT

@OriginalBigBri thanks for the update.

@Dan_the_Van I assume your email is working ok ?

Re: Free-Online email servers

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 09:13:55 GMT

@MisterW

I use IMAP

I am receiving forum notifications, I have checked the other emails and nothing seems to be wrong

Re: Free-Online email servers

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:12:50 GMT

@MisterW

I am not convinced POP3 is working correctly I see this message when testing with curl.exe with pop3 and pop3s

< -ERR internal server error * closing connection #0 curl: (67) Login denied

The same credentials are fine with smtp and smtps

< 214 end of HELP info 214 end of HELP info * Connection #0 to host relay.free-online.net left intact

Re: Free-Online email servers

MisterW — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:40:11 GMT

@Dan_the_Van thanks, I'll pass it up to the team

Re: Free-Online email servers

John_Hull — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 14:41:19 GMT

I don't know if this relates to the problem I'm having or not.

Today, when I try to send emails via Outlook on my laptop, I get a message saying that I couldn't log on to the relay.free-online.net SMTP server (receive on IMAP.free-online.net works fine).

Sending from the GMail app on my phone works OK, as does the webmail portal. Other email accounts on Outlook also work OK.

I called the help team, and they politely said that if I can send via other methods, then the problem wasn't down to Plusnet (fair enough, but it doesn't fix my problem).

John

Re: Free-Online email servers

MisterW — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 14:49:50 GMT

@John_Hull

Have you checked this that @OriginalBigBri posted above

Sorry, turned out to be an Outlook problem. For some reason it had decided to change my login from
myaccount+mailbox
to
mailbox@myaccount.co.uk

No idea why, but it seems to be working now I've changed it back

Re: Free-Online email servers

John_Hull — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:04:14 GMT

Thanks for the response. I tried setting the login to username@mailbox.free-online.co.uk and that seemed to work (once). but then it didn't.

Re: Free-Online email servers

MisterW — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:09:27 GMT

@John_Hull you may now be hitting the other problem 'blacklisted by local policy' which seems to be occuring. The problem is that most email clients don't report the actual error , rtaher they report a user/password problem!

The problem is being looked into...

Re: Free-Online email servers

John_Hull — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:14:04 GMT

Thanks. It's very frustrating! I just realised that the email I tried to send from my phone hasn't gone either, so maybe it's not just Outlook.

Re: Free-Online email servers

OriginalBigBri — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:21:48 GMT

So I'm now getting the problem again.

Just managed to download my wife's mailbox on her laptop, now I can't send on mine

outlook has the correct settings, so this must be something Plusnet are messing with.

Re: Free-Online email servers

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:22:05 GMT

@MisterW

The problem is being looked into...

last time there was issue with a email server migration the email system was rolled back to the plusnet servers

Re: Free-Online email servers

John_Hull — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:21:51 GMT

Just to confirm that two emails sent from my phone have also failed to send, so it's not just an Outlook issue, but it does just seem to be sending. I'm still receiving emails OK.

John

Re: Free-Online email servers

MisterW — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:25:43 GMT

@Dan_the_Van

last time there was issue with a email server migration the email system was rolled back to the plusnet servers

Correct, I can only assume they'd rather try and understand/fix the problem this time! Rolling back is, of course, an option...

Re: Free-Online email servers

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:40:41 GMT

@MisterW

They may have broken metronet email as well

nslookup mail.metronet.co.uk Name: mail.legacy.enmail.co Address: 91.204.208.192 Aliases: mail.metronet.co.uk

Re: Free-Online email servers

OriginalBigBri — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:57:57 GMT

I can't believe Plusnet are messing about with the mail servers again without even letting customers know beforehand.

Well, actually I can. I'm guessing they don't want the hassle of email, like they didn't want the hassle of providing web hosting.

But if I started doing that with our customers' servers and causing them downtime without even telling them I was going to do it, we'd be losing customers pretty quickly. Just saying.

I'm just so annoyed about this. And while I (and I'm sure others) are massively appreciative of the time you guys who aren't Plusnet staff spend on here helping others, there really should be proper customer service from Plusnet to call when something like this happens.

Re: Free-Online email servers

John_Hull — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 08:31:32 GMT

I called customer services yesterday.

The person I spoke to said there weren't any issues with their servers, and clearly it was my fault, or Outlook's fault, or somebody's fault, but their servers were fine.

Re: Free-Online email servers

OriginalBigBri — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 08:37:44 GMT

I thought it was Outlook at first, but I'm positive it wasn't, as a) there's no reason Outlook would have changed the settings, and b) the problem came back for me after I had it working.

Reminds me of the time BT swore our work phones not working was nothing to do with them as there were no problems in the area and no work being done, and out of my window I could see 4 BT vans and 6 or 7 people stood round a large hole in the ground scratching their heads.....

Re: Free-Online email servers

John_Hull — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 09:18:46 GMT

A couple of emails that have been sitting in my outbox since yesterday have just gone in the last couple of minutes.