My email doesn't work

Email Forwarding

The quick answer (for email forwarding accounts)

  • We generally use email forwarding to provide you with email services on your domain name.
  • You must have a currently functioning email address provided by your ISP or some other provider
  • Once you confirm you have a functioning email address, we will forward your mail to you.
  • You can optionally change your "reply" address to your public domain email address once you have tested that sending that address an email will turn up in your inbox.


The long answer

If your email is not working, please follow through this procedure to fix the problem.

  1. Are you connected to the internet and can you do a search on Google... Please prove to yourself that this is not an internet connectivity issue.
  2. Do you currently have a working email address? If not, we can't help you, because we use email forwarding. You must provide at least 1 working email address of your own accord.
  3. You should have at least 1 email address provided by your ISP who provides your broadband or dialup. Or you could use Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail. 
  4. We use email forwarding, and thus we require that you have at least 1 functioning email address so that we may "forward" your email to you.
  5. Please confirm that the email address provided by your ISP is working... just send yourself an email to your ISP email address... e.g. myname@myisp.co.nz
  6. If your real email address is not working, then you need to contact your ISP to resolve the fault. Do not tell them anything about your domain, nor regarding any email forwarding service provided by us, or they will probably not help you. You must enquire with them why your email like myname@myisp.co.nz is not working.
  7. Please work with your ISP to ensure that you have a working email address.
  8. Our support staff will email you on this ISP address and request that you respond to them... Until you can prove that your basic ISP email address is working, we cannot provide you with any additional support.

Once you have at least 1 working email address, you may continue the support procedure

  1. Most problems are solved in the previous section. Send yourself a test email to your domain name. If it turns up in your inbox, then problem solved.
  2. Login to our CMS and click on the EMAIL option under your domain name. Make sure that you have setup your email forwarding rules. If not, do so now, and you will need to wait an hour.
  3. Is it an hour since you last made a change to your email settings?  Please wait an hour for changes to go live. If you have made domain changes or nameserver changes, then you may need to wait even longer.
  4. Has your domain name expired? Have you paid for your bills recently?  Is your website live? If your website is not live, it's probably because your domain name has expired due to non payment.
  5. Please now contact support detailing your real ISP email address, and the email address of your domain name that you are having problems with.

 

POP/IMAP Accounts (Mailboxes provided by us)

The answer for users who have a mailbox account provided by us.

  1. Are you connected to the internet and can you do a search on Google? Please prove to yourself that this is not an internet connectivity issue.
  2. Now send an email to your own email address. Did it send? Did you get any errors?
  3. Now use the webmail settings for your pop account to check your email over the web. If you can see the email in there, that's great, that means your email address is working. Bad news is, this is where our support stops.
  4. If your webmail is not working, then please contact us... explain why it is not working, is it that you can't login? Or is it that you can't see your test emails in your inbox?
  5. Does your inbox have more than 1000 emails in it? It is a known issue, that your inbox, or any mail folder, will become sluggish once you have more than 1000 emails in it, as the server needs to read every email every time you refresh your inbox/folder, even if you only see 20 messages at a time. Please wait at least 1 minute for a large folder to load, then you should archive old emails to some other folder. 
  6. If your webmail is working, and it is your outlook express that is not working, then we can't support you any further sorry. It will be faster and cheaper for you to contact a local computer technician to fix the problem.
  7. However, typically it is because of the following reasons:
    • Your internet access might have dropped off recently, and a password box might have popped up, and you might have typed the wrong password in. If you keep getting that password box, make sure you are using the same password as specified in our CMS email settings. Do not use your CMS login. Use your mailbox login.
    • Make sure you are using your entire email address as your username.
    • You have recently installed some kind of firewall or spam killer or other "protectionist" software. At some stage you have accidentaly told it to block your email program (and possibly ticked the box to remember this setting)... this can be hard to reverse. Open your options for any of these programs and reset to default settings... then be careful as it learns your habits again.
    • If you are in an office environment, your nameservers may not be working... You will need a technician to check this, but if its a small office, just try resetting your ADSL modem (by pulling out the power cord - ask everyone in your office before doing this)
    • Sometimes you don't have any problems with our mailserver, sometimes it's because you have another mail account configured that no longer works.  Read all your error messages carefully to make sure it is our mailserver you can't see.
    • If you are using TLS security, which many mail services enable by default, make sure you are using the correct incoming and outgoing mail server. Unfortunately, the servers that are auto chosen by many mail programs, are not able to be used for TLS. You cannot use your own domain name for TLS, because we don't provide mail SSL certs for individual domains on the mail server. You can either disable TLS, and use the default servers, or you can change the servers to the correct servers as below. 
    • Make sure you are using the incoming and outgoing mail servers provided by our instructions inside the CMS.
      • Incoming: mail.cms-tool.net
      • Outgoing: smtp.cms-tool.net


Is it a problem that you can't get emails from friends?

  • Perhaps the email is in your spam folder.
  • Make sure the sender of the email is currently a valid contact in your address list (including all email addresses they commonly use)
  • Perhaps they have been blacklisted as a spammer
  • Perhaps their ISP has been blacklisted as a spammer
  • Perhaps they used words in their email that could be construed as spam
  • Perhaps their email contained so many attachments that it was too big... The official limit for an email is 5 megs, although some mail servers allow more, you cannot guarantee which route an email got from A to B, so any mail server in between could have dropped the email for being too large.
  • Perhaps the email contained a virus
  • Perhaps the email contained an executable application, or some other content not permitted to be sent in emails.
  • Different servers have different rules
  • Perhaps you are customer of an ISP experiencing major issues, who may have just decided to trash all messages at a given point in time.

 

    Please don't consider it a support issue if you only don't get email from 1 specific person just once or twice.  If you are getting emails from everyone else, then the problem is most likely not one we can fix for you, nor one we can diagnose. Email is not a perfect delivery mechanism (90% of all email is spam, even though you don't see it, real emails really are a needle in a haystack) If you have a continued problem with a specific email address and have considered all other avenues, then please let us know all the details, including which avenues of testing/enquiry you have already made.


    Another Common Issue

    Did you used to have your domain email hosted by another provider? Are people who use that old ISP or yourselves for broadband or dialup, having issues sending emails to each other?

    The issue is that sometimes your old ISP has not completely removed all settings relating to your domain from their system. Even if  you specifically told them that you had transferred your domain (or very likely if you hadn't told them), then they might have configurations related to your email still active. So if someone sends an email while connected to that ISP (or a reseller of that ISP) then that email will be processed by that old configuration, and wont ever get anywhere near our servers. So we will be unable to ascertain the reason.

    We don't like calling helpdesks of large ISPs anymore than the next person. You should first contact your old ISP to investigate this. If your ISP is particularly large, or you get a particularly stupid person helping you, then they may try to tell you that this is not possible... However, on several occasions, and with more than 1 ISP in nz, we have had this issue... If at first you don't succeed with this avenue, then please contact us... If we later determine that your ISP (or you, or a third party) was at fault then we will need to charge you for the time it takes to resolve the issue.


    Our Limited Support Service For Email Issues

    Note, we will provide support for your POP3 mailbox to only confirm that your webmail is working and that your POP3 account is working from our end. If you experience issues on your own computer, eg due to internet access, firewalls, outages, viruses, computer corruption, illegal software, or general lack of knowledge on how to setup your email accounts, then this support time will be provided at your expense. We suggest that all businesses make available to themselves a local computer technician who can solve problems on site, who will then be able to actually see your screen and use your keyboard. Please understand that there are many different email clients, many different ISP's providing outgoing email services, many different levels of customer experience. Without being able to see your screen or use your keyboard, we just cannot provide that level of support. If we can confirm that your webmail is working correctly, then this is the demarkation point between confirming your email service is being provided correctly, and your need to provide your own IT technician to manage your own computer interface.

    If you want us to provide technical support over the phone for your computer, then we can, however this time is chargeable. Standard fee for helping with customers email configuration via the phone is $50 (maximum of 30 minutes).

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