I’m having problems with the SMTP setup, I keep getting the following error message:
“The operation has timed out.
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.”
I’m using the settings provided by provider - godaddy.com, I’ve tried both secure and non-secure connections without success. The settings all work correctly as I have tried each of them with outlook, and on my phone.
Secure SSL/TLS Settings
(Recommended)
Username: r.freeman@techwizard.support
Password: Use the email account’s password.
Outgoing Server: n1plcpnl0019.prod.ams1.secureserver.net
SMTP Port: 465
Non-SSL Settings
(NOT Recommended)
Username: r.freeman@techwizard.support
Password: Use the email account’s password.
Outgoing Server: mail.techwizard.support
SMTP Port: 25
Would you mind checking your logs to give me some more information about the timeout?
Right, thank you for your quick response and partial resolution! The good news is that it now works with the Non-SSL Settings, but I’d really like it to work with SSL.
So to clarify, mail.techwizard.support, port 25 without SSL is now working. n1plcpnl0019.prod.ams1.secureserver.net port 465 SSL is not working. Any thoughts?
Due to cPanel SMTP services typically taking 20+ seconds to respond all we did yesterday is extend our timeout from 10 seconds to 30 seconds. I’m not sure why it would fail on port 465, do you see any error message?
Glenn, I was receiving the following error message:
It looks like there was a problem reaching your SMTP service
Error Message The operation has timed out.
More Details 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.
However, I now have it working using port 587… as suggested by ian_roberts. I have absolutely no idea why this should work when my phone, Outlook and windows mail are all working with port 465 as indicated by the settings. Ian, do you have any idea why this works? Are you familiar with cPanel email configurations? I think I might contact GoDaddy and enquire further. Glenn do you have any thoughts here?
Port 465 is for old-style immediate SSL on connection, where the server starts the SSL negotiation straight away before offering a normal SMTP session. The more modern approach to secure SMTP is for the client to connect to one of the regular non-secure port numbers 25 or 587 (which use the same protocol but 587 is dedicated to client message submission rather than server-to-server exchanges) and then issue a STARTTLS command to “upgrade” the connection to secure.
If the client library used by QuickFile is trying to do STARTTLS on port 465 then that won’t work. They may be able to configure it to make a special case of 465 to do TLS-on-connect, it depends on the library.
We use the built in SmtpClient for .NET 4.5, this exposes the property EnableSsl. I’m by no means an expert on SMTP but the following (from the MSDN documentation) seems relevant.
An alternate connection method is where an SSL session is established up front before any protocol commands are sent. This connection method is sometimes called SMTP/SSL, SMTP over SSL, or SMTPS and by default uses port 465. This alternate connection method using SSL is not currently supported.
Yes, Microsoft don’t help when they give things misleading names like that… It might be an idea to change the label in QuickFile to make it clear you’re talking about STARTTLS rather than immediate SSL - maybe “use secure connection (STARTTLS)” or something like that.
I had made several attempts to set up SMTP settings previously and got frustrated at each attempt. Although One.com specify using port 465, which never worked, changing to 587 has put a smile back on my face.