topic Re: How to use relay.plus.net in Email

How to use relay.plus.net

Bobins99 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:38:19 GMT

Whilst I've been a Plusnet customer for years, I got a new account 2 years ago when I moved house and went to Full Fibre.

The new account doesn't have a plusnet email address attached to it (unlike my old one).

I've recently been trying to use relay.plus.net for sending a small number of emails for a club I'm involved in.

All attempts to use relay.plus.net result in a "535 Authentication rejected” error even when I authenticate manually using AUTH LOGIN over TLS.

I'm using my broadband user ID "accountname"@plusdsl.net and my broadband account password.

I tried changing my password to remove "special characters" that relay.plus.net might not like but I still get the 535 error.

Am I doing something wrong?

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

jab1 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:49:36 GMT

@Bobins99 If your email address is not a Plusnet (or legacy business one), you should be using the SMTP servers of whoever is providing the service. Relay.plus.net is only going to allow authorised users.

Which email provider are you using - e.g. Google/Yahoo/Proton?

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

pvmb — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:54:34 GMT

@Bobins99 wrote:

Whilst I've been a Plusnet customer for years, I got a new account 2 years ago when I moved house and went to Full Fibre.

The new account doesn't have a plusnet email address attached to it (unlike my old one).

I've recently been trying to use relay.plus.net for sending a small number of emails for a club I'm involved in.

All attempts to use relay.plus.net result in a "535 Authentication rejected” error even when I authenticate manually using AUTH LOGIN over TLS.

I'm using my broadband user ID "accountname"@plusdsl.net and my broadband account password.

I tried changing my password to remove "special characters" that relay.plus.net might not like but I still get the 535 error.

Am I doing something wrong?

Depends what you mean by "wrong". AFAICS, from what you have posted above, you are trying to log in to an account that you do not now have. Therefore the authentication fails as intended. I can't think there is much more to say.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

Townman — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:56:30 GMT

Your question is unclear in that you do not indicate which account's credentials you are attempting to use - that of the new account from two years ago or the "old one".

the two year old account will not have had the mail component offered as part of the package, so your current credentials are never going to work. The free email service add on was dropped a long time ago.

As for the "old" account, that hints at an issue arising at the time of the house move. If requested at the time, there were circumstances where Plusnet would resurrect an old account as a free email-only account. Did that happen?

Whatever, you appear to be wanting to send "from" some other address (the club's?), therefore you should be using THAT email service's SMTP / relay server, not Plusnet's. Not being able to login onto the SMTP server would be only the start of your issues: Plusnet's SMTP server is not going to be deemed a valid sender for your club's email address, therefore SPF verification will fail and services such as Gmail are unlikely to accept delivery of the email.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

Townman — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:59:33 GMT

@pvmb wrote:

@Bobins99 wrote:

I'm using my broadband user ID "accountname"@plusdsl.net and my broadband account password.

... you are trying to log in to an account that you do not now have.

@pvmb

I read that as @Bobins99 is attempting to use their CURRENT account details, which will never have had the rights to use email at all (as they state). The statement of issue is somewhat ambigious.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

PhilipHeyes — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:44:20 GMT

accountname@plusdsl.net is not what I have used as a Plusnet email address or SMTP Username,
that looks like the Username for the a/c logon when we had ADSL.

accountname@accountname.plus.com might be an email address if you have a mailbox of that name.

Use the Plusnet Member Centre email admin to see what mailboxes exist :

https://www.plus.net/manage_my_mail/

or www.greenby.com if you a/c has migrated.

But as mentioned above even with valid credentials it is not going to work well if the Plusnet SMTP server
is not the exact one intended for the club's email address ....

... and then there is the question of how to see the replies ?

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

jab1 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:46:39 GMT

Difficult to tell, as the OP hasn't replied, but I am going to stick my neck out and guess they are trying to use the account details to create an email address, which is doomed to fail.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

Bobins99 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:08:29 GMT

Ok I'll try and be clear.

I have my own small mail server on which I receive email successfully for the club domain however, because all Plusnet dynamically assigned broadband IP addresses are blacklisted, I cannot send emails from my email server.

I believed as a Plusnet customer i could use relay.plus.net as the outbound smtp server provided I authenticated to it with my account credentials.

An online search suggested that I would need to authenticate to relay.plus.net using my broadband user ID and password. I have been using the one for my current PN account and Fibre broadband. My broadband user ID is in the format "account username"@plusdsl.net. and a password that matches PN's requirements.

My broadband connects fine with those credentials

I am trying to understand as a PN customer if I can actually use relay.plus.net and if so, why my authentication fails.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

jab1 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:13:58 GMT

@Townman / @PhilipHeyes I'm sure the OP is wrong in the above post - especially if they use AI-generated answers - but it is getting a bit murky for me, and you guys know more than I do.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

Dan_the_Van — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:45:16 GMT

@Bobins99

Is there a plus.com email address associated with the @plusdsl.net you are using?

unless there is I can't see how it would work, anyway @plusdsl.net is only used for the broadband username NOT the email/relay address setting. That would be accountname@accountname.plus.com

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

njay — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:59:01 GMT

I believe OP is probably using account userid rather than full PN default email address as auth credentials for relay.plus.net

This works as long as the Broadband account being used has email facility which i suspect was the case for original account but that was closed and new account doesnt have email

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

jab1 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:00:06 GMT

You are possibly correct, @njay - providing of course that they have a valid Plusnet email addy, of course.

EDIT: Just seen your edit.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

PhilipHeyes — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:05:22 GMT

If this works, the OP will be a bulk sender of forged emails, the rejection rate will be exceedingly high
due to SPF DKIM & DMARC not being PASS.

The effect on the Plusnet sender reputation will be negative as this will look like a spam storm.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

MisterW — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:17:02 GMT

@Bobins99 and even if you do manage to get it to work and send mail for your domain, once relay.plus.net is fully migrated to Greenby it wont work anymore!

You need to get your domain email hosted properly and use the hosting service's mail servers

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

Bobins99 — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:26:51 GMT

Thanks for all the replies.

I used to have a fixed IP address with PN but that went when I switched to the new account and Full Fibre. The blocking of outbound mail from my domain wasn't an issue originally but is now as all of PNs dynamic IP addresses are blocked.

My new PN account didn't get a PN email as they'd already started to offload their email service (and my old PN email address went with the old account)

I would only send a handful of emails in a month so "PhilipHeyes" suggestion that I be causing a spam storm wouldn't be true and my DNS records would have been set to match the delivery mechanism.

In the end, I'll temporarily pay for an SM|TP relay service for the domain and move to an ISP that can give me a fixed IP at the end of my PN contract.

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

MisterW — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:01:14 GMT

@Bobins99

In the end, I'll temporarily pay for an SM|TP relay service for the domain and move to an ISP that can give me a fixed IP at the end of my PN contract.

It'll probably cost you at least £5/month for a static IP, either from an ISP that offers it as an option or a higher basic price from one who includes a static as standard.

Why not just host the domain with the likes of Mythic Beasts, https://www.mythic-beasts.com/hosting , it costs £2/month (£20/yr if paid annually) for an email only account and you dont have to run your own email server!

Re: How to use relay.plus.net

stuck — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:56:36 GMT

@Bobins99 +1 to what @MisterW suggests. I bought the Mythic Beasts Web 25 package. I've got reliable, pain free, email and webspace for not a lot of money. Their customer service is excellent, you deal with humans who actually read your messages and address the contents of your message.