I recently switched from Plus net to BT. I have my own domain so that when I move internet supplier I can keep the same email addresses. This has worked fine in the past but now BT will not let me communicate with Hotmail addresses. Why, and is there a way around this problem?
Why are you using BT at all? Use PlusNets smtp relay for outgoing. = smtp.plus.net
Because I wish to. I never used Plusnet other than for internet. I use, and have for years, Thunderbird, it is only BT as an internet provider
I could be wrong but I would have thought that Plusnet would limit the use of their SMTP server to their own customers.
I have a similar setup in that I am a BT customer and I have my own domain which I use for emails in conjunction with BT's email system. Incoming emails are forwarded from the company hosting my domain to my BT email address. I download my emails from the BT email server. Responses/outgoing emails are sent to BT's email server which has an alias for my domain email. This basically lets me pretend to be someone (from a BT email point of view).
I'm not quite sure what you mean by not being able to communicate with hotmail addresses.
I havent had any problem sending emails from BT (using my domain alias) to hotmail addresses.
I have had incoming emails being discarded by BT. Their spam filtering seems to be a bit over the top. I ended up in the middle of an argument between BT and the domain hosting company. I was literally in the middle was neither support team were prepared to talk directly to each other. Various DNS settings were changed which seemed to help a little bit but I still have some missing emails.
The best cure I found was to add each incoming email address to the BT email whitelist (accessible from the Web GUI). A bit of a pain but it seemed to help.
Alan
Are you sure it's BT and not Hotmail that's stopping you sending to Hotmail addresses? What are the symptoms? What SMTP server are you using?
He's just said he's moved from Plusnet, so he can no longer use the Plusnet SMTP server.
My bad, you switched to BT FROM plus net.
Ah. And are you using BT's relay?
And why is the use of Thunderbird or any other particular email client relevant?
As I say I miserad that as moving from BT TO plusnet.
I simply couldnt imagine anyone moving TO BT.
There can be issues sending via BT using a foreign (to BT) email address.
But it is not clear
(a) whether the problem is sending or receiving (b) How mail is being sent, or received.
Well sending direct from BTs web server using their webmail does not invlove an SMTP relay...
I think there may be two different variants of BT Mail. I was switched some years ago to a different system and I've no notification since that I've been switched again. My URL is
I too have my own domain. But not Hotmail.
Are you sure your POP details are all correct? The local host may be totally different to that in the email address, as may the server.
With my BT email, they are <*****@btinternet.com> and <mail.btinternet.com>
My own domain, very different.
I think it also required a mandatory password, unlike by previous ISP.
That may give you problems.
In order to have good delivery, you need to
(a) Use your ISP's SMTP relay (if sending @[your isp] addresses) or (b) Use a SMTP relay that isn't on any RBL lists (see C below) and matches any SPF records for your domain that you may have. If you have no SPF records, that may give problems at times, but not that often. (c) choose a half competent ISP (BT aren't so bad, but not that brilliant either). (d) Probably use SMTP-Auth, these days.
Hotmail (and outlook.com) are very, very keen on blocking mail that looks even slightly spammy, and in particular for being real sticklers for correct reverse DNS and SPF. One domain I'm involved with at work has regular issues because (for reasons I won't bore you with) I cannot set up SPF properly.
To use BT's relay, you used to have to authorise your domain on a webpage somewhere. No idea if that still is the case.
Do you get any non-delivery reports back? You might not because hotmail is again notorious for not sending them, probably to reduce backscatter.
Thank you all for your replies, but the questions are to involved for me. :-((
You are probably doing something wrong. There is an issue that some BT headers look like forgeries to their own email system so that people on BT cannot always send emails to each other. You have to be unlucky to encounter this intermittent problem but I have seen it happen.
I can't see any reason why BT should blacklist sending to hotmail addresses - how exactly does it fail and with what error msg?
I can only assume you enjoy paying more to get customer service slowly from half way around the world to move from Plusnet to BT. They are both nominally the same ISP only with different external skins.
Thunderbird does have the odd bug if the mail server is tardy in responding or there is a mismatch in security certificates.
>
What are security certificates?
We too have moved from Plusnet to BT.
Plusnet would not offer a connection using FTTP. Not at all. So, given we have just had FTTP made available and our ADSL was appalling[1], we had to find an ISP that does - and there are not many.
[1] Appalling meaning a good day gave 4 Mbps download. A poor day gave 0.07 Mbps. A bad day gave 0.0 Mbps. Hence moving to FTTP was essential.
Really? IDNET certainly do.
Then you had an unresolved cable fault.
Don't know if your problem is the same but when I had problems with mail from BT addresses Mythic Beasts told me: "you have greylisting turned on for your domain. This is a spam filtering system that works by delaying mail from unknown senders and servers. This works because most legitimate mail servers will retry after a few minutes, whereas spammers won't.
Unfortunately, it seems that BT are very slow to retry, hence the delay that you're seeing.
Generally we no longer recommend greylisting, as we find the delays that can be caused are more of a nuisance than the spam that it prevents."
Yes, they did have an FTTP trial programme, and those who got onto it can stay on it, but they no longer accept trial participants, and have no FTTP service for sale, hopefuly they will change this once FTTP rollout increases ...
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