My host, Siteground, has recently migrated my account from cPanel into their own Site Tools system. This migration broke my SMTP on Quickfile. However, having updated my settings on Quickfile as per Siteground’s instructions, I am now getting the time out message followed by “Your SMTP server did not reply in a timely fashion. Please ensure the port number is correct and any firewall on the SMTP server is allowing outside access.”
This is using port 465 recommended by the host. Previously, I was using port 587 which worked, but no longer does. However, port 25 appears to work and I get the activation email, but support at my host stated that it’s not a recommended port, thus;
“The standard port used for SMTP connections is 25. Alternative SMTP ports are – 2525, 587. For secure SMTP over SSL, you can use port 465. Many Internet service providers, however, block port 25, that’s why it is recommended to use one of the alternative SMTP ports.”
Many residential ISPs block port 25 traffic so that advice is more aimed for when you are setting up your clients at home or on your phone etc, but Quickfile isn’t using a residential ISP and I would assume Siteground isn’t either.
Thank you for the reply, and I suppose just using port 25 is what I should do. I have, however, now had a very comprehensive reply from Siteground support regarding port 465 working on their/my end including a bunch of logs that make no sense to me as I’m not tech-minded.
I have investigated your case in detail and I can confirm that the SMTP service for your account is working correctly.
I have tested this by creating the test mail account sgtest@***********.com and connecting to it via the remote mail client Thunderbird. Here is the information I used for the connection:
I have also reviewed all server-side mail logs, however there are no entries about any mail-related issues from your account, or from your IP.
Since what you are using to connect is a third party software, I can recommend contacting them and asking if there is any information on their side - for example in their logs - about any issues with the connection you are making, and if there are any specific server-side changes required for the connection to be successful. Please also confirm from which IP is the connection being done so we can investigate this further.
I have omitted the logs and some other information that was included as I’m not sure whether or not there is sensitive information contained therein that’s not permitted here.
Is the advice still to go with port 25, or should I be getting this looked at by Quickfile support/tech?
As lurch said above, if the settings work then use them. However if the settings that Siteground have given you work then you may be best to use those?
If you use the SMTP settings elsewhere for example on your phone? It may be best to mirror these settings?
The settings recommended by Siteground don’t work, this is why I initially posted. Under Siteground’s recommendations, I should be configuring email clients using the following;
This is wrong - port 465 will never work as that is for an older mode of operation sometimes referred to as “SMTPS” where the server expects to negotiate a secure channel automatically as soon as the connection is opened.
The SMTP client library used within QuickFile only supports the newer “STARTTLS” mechanism whereby a client first establishes a normal unencrypted connection to the standard SMTP port number (25 or 587) and then requests an upgrade to a secured connection by sending the STARTTLS command.
