More Greenby grief - I can no longer send mail from Thunderbird on my PC

[#1]

@mavison I've been using POP3 from the outset. As you mentioned both STARTTLS and SSL/TLS in your earlier reply I didn't know which to use and chose STARTTLS because it was offered in the list and worked on the SMTP server. I'll probably try SSL/TLS in the next day or two and report back.

For a bit of background I use POP3 because I like to keep my messages on my local PC. I use IMAP on my other devices. I have Thunderbird set to delete messages from the server after 14 days. That gives me time to save any I want to keep if I first pick them up on my phone for example.

The server appears to have been down for a while today. After picking up some messages first thing in the morning Thunderbird started reporting failure to log in as it automatically checked for messages. I received this message:

It's back this evening but I hope this is not an example of the kind of service I can expect from Greenby. If it is, together with their almost non-existant customer service I may well be looking to jump ship.

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Personal information removed from a public forum.

[#2]

@Buggwrit Sorry about the confusion with SSL/TLS and POP3.

I also use POP3 on one mailbox - but not normally on Thunderbird, though I have tested my settings on Thunderbird.

I have not seen problems today (been away from computers) but I hope that the performance problems will be resolved as Greenby tune their system after such a massive migration, and the usage returns to a more normal state. In general, after initial problems were resolved, my emails have been behaving reasonably well, though email setup and usage does vary tremendously from user to user.

I have raised several tickets on Greenby Support, and though currently their response can be slow I have had some real technical support once you get past the AI bot.  Again, I have hope that their support response and the AI bot knowledge will improve. If not, there will be a mass ship jumping!

[#3]

Okay, I finally got around to trying port 995 with SSL/TLS. After the outage on Christmas day there was another brief one on Boxing day so I decided to wait until it looked stable. After years with an insecure login another few days wouldn't matter.

It still doesn't work with these settings and I'm wondering if I also need to change the server name from mail.plus.net to mail.force9.net? Thunderbird wants to restart if I do that so I'd just like to confirm it before I go ahead.

[#4]

@Buggwrit  if I also need to change the server name from mail.plus.net to mail.force9.net? 

You must use the correct middle part of the server name for your account - only use force9 if you have a Force9 address.

The thread title is about not being able to send emails from Thunderbird - you now seem to be talking about problems receiving emails using the POP3 protocol? Is sending now ok?

Is the mailbox you are trying to use with POP3 your primary mailbox, or a secondary one?

Have you changed any passwords since your migration?

Are you able to use the instructions in the post Diagnosing email server connectivity issues - the guide near the top of this email forum?

[#5]

I must confess I only have a limited understanding of how all this works and I'm getting more and more confused.

Thanks to your assistance I am able to send mail successfully now. I am also able to receive mail after sorting out the password problem following advice from the Greenby AI bot.

I don't understand about primary and secondary mailboxes. As far as I know I only have one, which is presumably therefore my primary one.

Having, with your help, sorted out the problem with sending mail in which you recommended changing the server name from relay.plus.net to relay.force9.net and changing the port to 587 this latter part of the conversation only arose because of the discussion regarding encryption of the password during login. I thought it would be good to have password encryption if that were possible but simply selecting SSL/TLS and Port 996 didn't work so I wondered if perhaps I needed to use <force9> in place of <plus> in the outgoing server name. I don't understand what you mean by a Force9 address.

What really baffles me is that on my wife's laptop both sending and receiving mail with Thunderbird have worked seamlessly since the migration with no changes. So her mailbox is still mail.plus.net, Port 110, and her SMTP is still relay.plus.net, Port 25. The only difference from mine is that her username takes the form <username+user> and she has a different password with no special characters.

It seems as though mine only ran into problems because of the unaccepted special character in my original password but resolving that still left the problem with sending mail, resulting in the change to relay.force9.net, Port 587. If hers still works with relay.plus.net Port 25 why did mine need to be changed?

I would really like to understand why I needed to make the changes when my wife didn't but having got everything working I'm minded to just forget about encryption and carry on with my life.

[#6]

@Buggwrit 

Thanks to your assistance I am able to send mail successfully now.

Good - that is the main thing!

I don't understand about primary and secondary mailboxes. As far as I know I only have one, which is presumably therefore my primary one.

The primary one is the initial one created when you started to use Plusnet email (with an username of acoount). It sounds like you then created a secondary one for your wife (which is why her username is account+user). You can see them both listed if you sign on to the Greenby portal at greenby.com then click on the Email tab on the left. You possibly have only one email address for each mailbox, but it is quite possible to have several addresses (or aliases) attached to a mailbox (as I have).

I don't understand what you mean by a Force9 address.

Plusnet over the years took over the emails from several other companies, including Force9, Free-online, Metronet, Madasafish, and others. They each operated with their own server names, and some with different email facilities and ways of operating the account. These differences I suspect have caused Greenby some unanticipated problems! For example, my address is name@account.f9.co.uk but yours will be a different format.

Why you had problems and your wife did not I am not sure - it is difficult to be know exactly what happened when.

My settings for Force9 - unchanged by the migration - do use recommended encryption, and are...
    IMAP Server: Port: 993  Security:  SSL/TLS
    POP3 Server: Port: 995  Security: SSL/TLS
    SMTP Server: Port: 587  Security: StartTLS 

But if your settings work for you, I would leave well alone, at least until the migration settles down.

[#7]

Thanks for the clarifications. I do, in fact, have a couple of aliases for my mailbox and my wife has one for hers.

I agree, best leave well alone whilst it's working. 😊

Happy New Year!  🎉

[#8]

Frustratingly I'm still getting random occurrances of failure to log in to the POP server and now I'm also starting to get this message when forwarding mail. I eventually managed to forward this message using K9 Mail on my phone which uses IMAP. The error makes no sense to me as this was the only message I'd tried to send today to a single recipient (my wife's mailbox).

My wife doesn't seem to be having any of these problems on her laptop running Windows 10 with all the original Plusnet settings and with a different mailbox as discussed earlier. I wonder if there's  still something not set up right with mine although if that were the case I'd expect the errors to be consistent rather than random. Her password doesn't contain any special characters and I'm tempted to try reverting to all my original Plusnet settings and changing my password to get rid of the special character in it.

Any thoughts?

[#9]

The Greenby mailserver appeared to crash completely for a time last Wednesday (11th Feb) as we couldn't access mail on any of our devices.

I'm still getting the message referred to in my last post. It's fairly random but seems to happen mostly when the message includes an attachment, even when the attachment is quite small (<200Kb).

Today I had to resort to using webmail to send a reply with an attachment that was only 147Kb but later on I tried a test with Thunderbird using the same one and it went through successfully so I'm totally baffled as to what's going on.

If anyone has any insights on this or any contacts at Greenby that can bypass the AI I'd be most grateful.

Pleeease!!!

[#10]

@Buggwrit The "too many recipients in last hour" error plagued me and others from some time around October - way before I was migrated ((Force9), but after changes for migrations had started. The problem was more noticeable when sending later in any hour, and never happened soon after an hour started.

Since I was migrated in December, I have continued monitoring for these errors, and not seen any (though have seen many others!).

This is the first report I have seen from a migrated user - if it happens again, try sending soon after the hour has changed.

[#11]

Well, it's some consolation to know it's not just me. Thanks for the tip, I'll try that and report back in due course.

If it's confined to Force9 that could explain why it hasn't happened on my wife's laptop which, as I said, is using all the original Plusnet settings.

[#12]

@Buggwrit If it's confined to Force9 

I am not sure that was the case - though I am aware some things are different between brands.

[#13]

Hi @mavison your suggestion does indeed seem to work. I just had two failures at a couple of minutes TO the hour. Tried again about five minutes later and both went straight away.

A very useful tip, many thanks.