Greenby outgoing server

[#1]

While still with Plusnet, I was having what were apparently known problems sending to Hotmail and Outlook.com (the Plusnet servers appeared to be blacklisted); and a more confusing issue with Gmail, where most of my mails were being marked as spam.

I was told the migration to Greenby should fix all of these, but of course it's only going to have an effect if I reconfigure the clients on my various devices to point to different servers.  In which respect I am confused ...

The Greenby bot told me just to change to a different Plusnet server.  Given that I'd already been told the Plusnet servers were an issue -- and given that Plusnet presumably want us to move away from their servers -- this seemed implausible.

When subsequently I got what I presume was a human response, it referred me to a different server.

I then came across a Greenby support page which suggested yet a third one.

It seems I also have to turn encryption off, which doesn't _sound_ like a good thing.  But when I do so, I am then told that there is a problem with the server certificate.  (The bot insists that you get this popup only if you _don't_ turn off encryption.)

And to cap it all, there is apparently a bug in myemail client (Outlook) which appears to override any manual changes you make to the setup and always resets things to point to the original server.

Any thoughts / suggestions very much appreciated.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Greenby hosted mail servers have and IP that starts : 91.xxx.xxx.xxx

Close MS Outlook and make the server changes via the Control Panel to get them to stick.

[#3]

There are further changes scheduled for next week which will set the Plusnet SMTP service on par with the other migrated outbound services.  It will be interesting to see if that does have an impact on Google’s belligerence … or not!

Personally I doubt it as Google and others have taken being difficult to new orders of magnitude.

[#4]

Wow -- that was quick!  And thank you very much Philip -- it does indeed seem to have worked.

In case anyone else has to jump through the same hoops with Outlook, the issue I was seeing was that pretty much every time I tried to use the Repair option to change the outgoing server details, Outlook was making up its own mind behind the scenes as to what to use, and was simply overriding the new details with the ones it had previously.

Or was it?  Following Philip's advice I tried using the Control Panel to make the same change, only to find that there, the _new_ details were displayed.  (In Outlook, however, even now, the old details are still in place.)

Anyway I've sent myself a message from Outlook and checked the headers, and the message no longer seems to reference the original server, even though Outlook is still displaying it.

Only issue now is that Outlook is unhappy about the server certificate, but it does at least seem to send things ok.

So as I say -- thanks very much for your help Philip.

[#5]

Thanks for the information.  I'll keep an eye open to see if this has any beneficial effect on the accounts I have yet to update.

[#6]

@plusForumUser 

Good to read you have made progress.

@Townman 

Oh ye of little faith.

If relay.plus.net becomes IP 91.204.208.26 and has functionality aligned to relay.force9.net
I would expect good results delivering to the picky free-mail destinations.   

What I have grasped over the last 6 months or so is just because the email Authentication is aligned and working well for our <mailbox>@<account>.plus.com emails, it does not mean that other brands are equally well served.

When I see relay.plus.net move to a Greenby IP I will do tests messages to Gmail and to BT Internet
to see how the Authentication looks in the headers.

[#7]

@PhilipHeyes 

Or … Ye of hard bitten experience!

It is not relay.plus.net which has been black balled, but rather the AVSOUT servers which sit behind them.  They have been black balled due to poor sender reputation.  That is a characteristic of the using population, not the services themselves.

SU intelligence does not hint at the authentication layer changing in the immediate future, for the legacy or new platform.  That being the case, outbound for plus.com switching to a Greenby proxy service does not hint at any fundamental change which is likely to mitigate abusive use of the mail service.

Remember that the plus.com population is significantly larger than the other brands, having a consequential much increased opportunity for abuse.  It is the significantly larger user base which caused the strategy adopted for the smaller brands to fail drastically for the Plus brand over August BH 2025.  I was on holiday in Scotland desperately trying to find someone in the know to engage with … including naughtily contacting someone direct.