Issue with Email confirmations

[dreese]

I desperately need help with my email settings. Two weeks ago I opened a support ticket because I noticed that I was getting notifications like this:

Your message wasn't delivered because the recipient's email provider rejected it.
The following organization rejected your message: gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

I have had a number of customers calling me recently that they hadn't received the email confirmations. Now I know why. Apparently, anyone who had a GMAIL address was being rejected.

Support let me know that the mail service is being discontinued and that the best solution would be to update my mail settings to send the software generated emails from Outlook 365 instead of the MIVA server. The problem is that I can't find the correct details to update the mail settings.

I've spent hours and hours trying to resolve this. The worst part is that I can't even get back to my original settings. Support said they reset them but now no one is getting email confirmations and I'm not getting the merchant emails either. This is a major problem because I often have to email customers regarding shortages and I don't have an email with their order details so I can this easily. I have also had many calling me because they are not sure their orders went through.

I haven't had a response from support for a couple days and I need to get this resolved ASAP. Can anyone help with what the settings should be for Office 365/Outlook? Or what to check to get the settings back working for the localhost mail?

TIA!
Debi

[rbuelna]

I desperately need help with my email settings. Two weeks ago I opened a support ticket because I noticed that I was getting notifications like this:

Your message wasn't delivered because the recipient's email provider rejected it.
The following organization rejected your message: gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

I have had a number of customers calling me recently that they hadn't received the email confirmations. Now I know why. Apparently, anyone who had a GMAIL address was being rejected.

Support let me know that the mail service is being discontinued and that the best solution would be to update my mail settings to send the software generated emails from Outlook 365 instead of the MIVA server. The problem is that I can't find the correct details to update the mail settings.

I've spent hours and hours trying to resolve this. The worst part is that I can't even get back to my original settings. Support said they reset them but now no one is getting email confirmations and I'm not getting the merchant emails either. This is a major problem because I often have to email customers regarding shortages and I don't have an email with their order details so I can this easily. I have also had many calling me because they are not sure their orders went through.

I haven't had a response from support for a couple days and I need to get this resolved ASAP. Can anyone help with what the settings should be for Office 365/Outlook? Or what to check to get the settings back working for the localhost mail?

TIA!
Debi

Hello dreese,

I responded to your ticket with some information. Please take a look and reply on the ticket.

Warm Regards,

[[email protected]]

Following. I would like to know if you were able to fix this. We are on Office 365 and I have one store that for the life of me refuses to cooperate. I was able to implement the mail changes for a different store/domain without any issue. For now I just put it back the way it was and will address it again at a later time.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Office 365 is particularly problematic to use for transactional emails because Microsoft doesn't want people using it in that manner. They've incorporated a very lengthy delay into the overall time it takes to send an email, which isn't noticeable when using a normal email client because it just sends in the background, but those 8 to 10 or more seconds are not good when a web application is the thing trying to do the sending while a shopper is waiting for it to complete its work.

For users of Office 365 that want to increase the speed and reliability, SendGrid's transactional email services are best in breed for that. Basically $20/mo for even as many as 50,000 emails per month. Besides speed, the other benefit is mail server address reputation, which, due to their volume, is both great and something that can be difficult for us to replicate. Most of our customers have a unique server address to ensure one cannot negatively impact another, but then your own site's mail volume is what determines whether or not your mail server reputation rises to the point where the major mail providers call it "good", and that can often require hundreds or more messages per day on a consistent basis. Stores generating a quantity of messages below that threshold may have a "neutral" reputation, and therefore benefit from SendGrid. Office 365 servers of course have a similarly "good" reputation, but have the transactional speed issues.

[Miss Kate]

I desperately need help with my email settings. Two weeks ago I opened a support ticket because I noticed that I was getting notifications like this:

Your message wasn't delivered because the recipient's email provider rejected it.
The following organization rejected your message: gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

I have had a number of customers calling me recently that they hadn't received the email confirmations. Now I know why. Apparently, anyone who had a GMAIL address was being rejected.

Support let me know that the mail service is being discontinued and that the best solution would be to update my mail settings to send the software generated emails from Outlook 365 instead of the MIVA server. The problem is that I can't find the correct details to update the mail settings.

I've spent hours and hours trying to resolve this. The worst part is that I can't even get back to my original settings. Support said they reset them but now no one is getting email confirmations and I'm not getting the merchant emails either. This is a major problem because I often have to email customers regarding shortages and I don't have an email with their order details so I can this easily. I have also had many calling me because they are not sure their orders went through.

I haven't had a response from support for a couple days and I need to get this resolved ASAP. Can anyone help with what the settings should be for Office 365/Outlook? Or what to check to get the settings back working for the localhost mail?

TIA!
Debi

I am in a similar boat. I have asked questions via support tickets and given information and have yet to be given any help with this. I'm beyond frustrated. Microsoft wants me to verify I am owner of my website and I have no idea how to put the MX or TXT information into the website so Microsoft can verify ownership. I initially went to Network Solutions as I bought my website name from them back in 2003 and the instructions given by Microsoft don't coordinate with what I have access to. According to them, I can't access my Advanced DNS Settings because they are locked by my website host (Miva). Could someone please help? I logged into Plesk a couple of days ago and saw the current settings but wasn't confident in changing anything.

I certainly didn't appreciate getting a support ticket created by a Miva engineer letting me know my site would be getting migrated within 30 days to a new server, giving me a new IP address. Also, letting me know Miva will not be supplying email any longer. Some of us small businesses are too small to be able to afford in-house help in doing these things & I try to do as much as possible myself. I've weathered through multiple versions of Miva code changes but this latest issue is a kick in the gut. I certainly wouldn't be adverse to paying a monthly/quarterly/annual fee for email if it remained reasonable. Right now Microsoft Exhange which I signed up for is $4/mo.

[Rick Wilson]

I appreciate the PITA factor, but the good news is once you're on Microsoft (or Google or similar) those email programs are giant, much better at email deliverability as well as spam protection, etc... and will be around forever.

We couldn't charge $400 per month and make email worth it (nor would be any good compared to MSFT/Google, etc...).

Also 30 days is fairly standard notice, again not denying that switching email is a PITA, but I don't see how we would've been able to give you longer notice. We're working through these server by server.

And as a rule of thumb other competitors in our market have long since stopped including email with their ecommerce platform offer.