Sending Mail issues when sending vary in cause, as your outgoing mail server is determined by a variety of factors, most importantly your ISP (Internet Service Provider). By definition, these problems are often difficult to diagnose and tricky to fix as there are so many combinations of ISP's, server settings and mail clients.  This is designed to be a guide to help you through the issue - as we can't give a "click here" solution in one step.  Follow the guide, it's written in simple terms so you don't need to be an expert.

If you are one of our clients, please feel free to lodge a support ticket using our client portal to have one of our friendly staff assist you personally.

Lets start with a few definitions

• ISP = your "internet service provider", basically the company that you pay to access the Internet
• Mail Client = the program that you use to get your mail.  This might be something like Outlook, Outlook-Express, Thunderbird, Mac Mail etc... No, "Windows" is not mail client.
• POP3 = your incoming mail server.  Usually something like "mail.ruttentech.com.au"  (with your domain name instead of ours)
• SMTP = your outgoing mail server.  Sometime called the sending mail server.  Similar in format to the POP3 server, but not always the same.
• Port 25 = think of ports like radio channels, and #25 is the port most commonly used for sending mail.  (receiveing is on a separate port, most commonly 110
• SSL = Secure Socket Layer.  This is basically encryption for your mail - you don't want this unless you already know how to do it.
• Authentication = A fancy name for a simple username and password combination. It's so that the server knows who you are, and if you are allowed to process mail on it.

Now - to the actual problem solving

If you have an enlightened ISP - Try this first

The you can simply use the same server as the incoming mail server (as provided to you from our documents ). In effect, this means that your outgoing mail will be processed by our mail server, the same as the one that is processing your incoming mail. You will have to ensure that you have the setting "My outgoing mail server requires authentication" turned to "ON" (or equivalent in your mail program of choice).

If problems Persist - double check

However, many people will receive an error message. There are two typical messages that people receive, one says something about "refusing to connect to server". In this case, it is nearly always an issue related to the authentication. Double check that you have the "My server requires authentication" switched to "ON" and that you have also gone to the settings (usually under "More Settings" or "Outgoing server") which allows you to add the outgoing server authentication (username and password). You can usually select an option at this point which is similar to "Use the same as my incoming server".

Blocked Relay - Port 25

Some people will continue to receive an error message - this usually notes "Port 25" and may mention "relay blocked" or something similar. In this case, your ISP has the strange (but common) misconception that crudely blocking access to other mail servers will help the global spam problem. In this case you have two options:

Method A:- Use your ISP as the outgoing server. This will still send your mail out as coming from your account - it is simply process on the server from your ISP. In this case, you will need to:

1. Adjust the outgoing mail server (SMTP) to to settings provided by your ISP,
2. Check the box requiring outgoing server authentication and also
3. Add your ISP username and password in the "More Settings" for your outgoing mail server. Remember to use your ISP username and password here.

Method B:- Often it is easily just to bypass the blocked port all-together. With this common problem in mind, we have configured our mail servers to listen for mail on another port as well - so you can connect to "Port 26". To do this, you need to:

1. Ensure that the incoming and outgoing mail servers are the same (as sent to you by us),
2. Then choose "My outgoing server requires authentication" and ensure this is set to "on"
3. Go to your "more settings" and/or "outgoing server" and ensure that it "uses the same as incoming server"
4. Go to your advanced settings (or something similar) and change the outgoing (SMTP) port to 26. (from 25)

This should now use our server for all incoming and outgoing mail - bypassing your ISP filters and blocks.

Hello?  Is this thing working ?

If you have any doubt as to if our mail server is working, you can always log into our new "Turbo Mail" webmail service at any time. It is designed to allow you to check your email when away from your computer - all you to have to do is visit http://www.ruttentech.com/turbo and enter your email address and password.