Hi,
I was hoping to get some help resolving an ongoing issue with intermittent outgoing email. I work in a small office of 4 people, and we all work on Macs (a 2011 iMac, a 2014 Mac Mini, and two 2014 MacBook Pros). All are on Yosemite. Everyone uses Mac Mail except for me on the Mac Mini, I use Thunderbird. One of the MacBook Pros gets used from home on a regular basis, with a different ISP than we have at the office, and it also has the issues there that are described below.
For the past few months we've been having issues with our outgoing emails. One day everything is fine, and the next we'll try to send emails and receive error messages that essentially say we can't connect to the outgoing mail server. We'll click ok to clear the message, and hit send again and the message will usually send no problem, but occasionally you have to try a third time. This can happen to just one email, or 5 in a row, or one and then the next three are fine and the 4th gets this message. It can happen just once, or on and off for 30 minutes, or for a few hours. It seems to be completely random. I don't have any of the specific Mac Mail error messages, but in Thunderbird I get 1 of 3 separate error messages. It seems to be random which message I get, but the SIGTERM/SIGINT message seems to mostly happen if I'm trying to send an attachment (and again, it's random which attachments go and which don't, and often they'll go after trying a couple of times). The messages are:
1. Alert
An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded: box695.bluehost.com Service not available - SIGTERM of SIGINT received - closing connection.. Please check the message and try again.
2. Send Message Error
Sending of message failed.
The message count not be sent because connecting to SMTP server mail.[ourURL].com failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your SMTP server settings are correct and try again, or contact the server administrator.
3. Send Message Error
Sending of message failed.
The message could not be sent because the connection to SMTP server box695.bluehost.com was lost in the middle of the transaction. Try again or contact your network administrator.
We contacted our hosting company initially and they said it was our ISP. We checked with our ISP and they said it was our hosting company. Given that it happens with two ISPs I'd say it's probably not an ISP issue. We contacted our host again and they suggested that it was something in our office network, and had us checking firewalls (again though, it happens from home also). We contacted an IT company we've used in the past and had them working remotely for us twice to look at this problem, based on things our host has said. At this point they're telling us they have no idea what the problem is and can't help us, and to keep after our host about it. Our host said they can't help us unless we log onto our webmail in our cPanel whenever this issue happens, try to send mail from there, and give them the error codes that come up. I am trying this, but this is problematic for a number of reasons, mostly because this is a random issue so by the time I send the message from webmail, it would have sent properly from Thunderbird anyway.
This has been happening since March, and no one seems to be able to figure out what the problem is, let alone how to fix it. A few things I've read have said maybe there are technical settings that could be causing emails to be blocked, and besides our hosting company the only commonality we all have is that we're all on Yosemite so I thought I'd pursue that. So, if anyone has any light to shed on this issue it would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
I was hoping to get some help resolving an ongoing issue with intermittent outgoing email. I work in a small office of 4 people, and we all work on Macs (a 2011 iMac, a 2014 Mac Mini, and two 2014 MacBook Pros). All are on Yosemite. Everyone uses Mac Mail except for me on the Mac Mini, I use Thunderbird. One of the MacBook Pros gets used from home on a regular basis, with a different ISP than we have at the office, and it also has the issues there that are described below.
For the past few months we've been having issues with our outgoing emails. One day everything is fine, and the next we'll try to send emails and receive error messages that essentially say we can't connect to the outgoing mail server. We'll click ok to clear the message, and hit send again and the message will usually send no problem, but occasionally you have to try a third time. This can happen to just one email, or 5 in a row, or one and then the next three are fine and the 4th gets this message. It can happen just once, or on and off for 30 minutes, or for a few hours. It seems to be completely random. I don't have any of the specific Mac Mail error messages, but in Thunderbird I get 1 of 3 separate error messages. It seems to be random which message I get, but the SIGTERM/SIGINT message seems to mostly happen if I'm trying to send an attachment (and again, it's random which attachments go and which don't, and often they'll go after trying a couple of times). The messages are:
1. Alert
An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded: box695.bluehost.com Service not available - SIGTERM of SIGINT received - closing connection.. Please check the message and try again.
2. Send Message Error
Sending of message failed.
The message count not be sent because connecting to SMTP server mail.[ourURL].com failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your SMTP server settings are correct and try again, or contact the server administrator.
3. Send Message Error
Sending of message failed.
The message could not be sent because the connection to SMTP server box695.bluehost.com was lost in the middle of the transaction. Try again or contact your network administrator.
We contacted our hosting company initially and they said it was our ISP. We checked with our ISP and they said it was our hosting company. Given that it happens with two ISPs I'd say it's probably not an ISP issue. We contacted our host again and they suggested that it was something in our office network, and had us checking firewalls (again though, it happens from home also). We contacted an IT company we've used in the past and had them working remotely for us twice to look at this problem, based on things our host has said. At this point they're telling us they have no idea what the problem is and can't help us, and to keep after our host about it. Our host said they can't help us unless we log onto our webmail in our cPanel whenever this issue happens, try to send mail from there, and give them the error codes that come up. I am trying this, but this is problematic for a number of reasons, mostly because this is a random issue so by the time I send the message from webmail, it would have sent properly from Thunderbird anyway.
This has been happening since March, and no one seems to be able to figure out what the problem is, let alone how to fix it. A few things I've read have said maybe there are technical settings that could be causing emails to be blocked, and besides our hosting company the only commonality we all have is that we're all on Yosemite so I thought I'd pursue that. So, if anyone has any light to shed on this issue it would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!