I used maildroid for years but Google has now blocked it wrt email. I discovered Android Thunderbird and installed it. It works fine with my Gmail account (sending and receiving). But maildroid still works for my account hosted on site5.com, but Android Thunderbird doesn’t. It silently discards emails sent to external sites. I’ve been working with site5 support for days now. They finally tried to an external site and observed the problem. They have now been promising their internal advanced support team is working on it, but it has been many days and no success yet. I decided to try K-9 after I discovered it was the code base for Android Thunderbird. It fails in the same way.
Then I found this from Jan 2023: Cannot send an Email out of my Domain - Support - K-9 Mail Forum This seems to be my problem exactly, and there was no followup that it was solved.
Note that there is no problem with inbound email, only outbound.
The outgoing SMTP server is named correctly and configured for port 465, SSL/TLS security, and the email account name on the site5 server is given correctly, and with its correct password.
I think this may be broken in the Android Thunderbird and K-9 implementation.
(btw, I installed Android Thunderbird on a different Pixel 7 as well, configured it, and it also had the same problem, so it wasn’t a phone cache or bad install issue).
Help! Thanks!
If the issue is as described in:
Cannot send an Email out of my Domain
https://forum.k9mail.app/t/cannot-send-an-email-out-of-my-domain/6028
the problem isn’t that K9 and Thunderbird are discarding or otherwise unable to send mail to another domain, rather it’s with the way your mail server is handling messages that it is receiving from your client.
K9 uses “localhost” on the EHLO connection when delivering mail to your configured mail server. Some mail servers don’t like that. What they should do if they plan to not deliver messages received is either reject or refuse them. Some, seemingly inluding yours, instead simply drop the messages into their trash (/dev/null or equiv).
Whether they think they are correct or not on the “localhost” issue, dumping the message and failing to inform the authenticated sender is rather poor form.
In the end this is an issue for your mail server support to resolve. Either they need to configure their servers to accept messages that have “localhost” on the EHLO for messages going “off domain”, or properly refuse/reject the message - informing the user.
So the problem is with site5.com, correct? (and not the ultimate destination of the email which in my tests is a gmail.com server).
If that is true, site5.com is not a full service email site. I started with IXWebHosting, which got bought by site5, and suddenly I had to learn about cPanel when I never did before. Since site5 has been “working” on my case for days (over a week if I count the time to get it to the internal “experts”). And at least a year if I count the time they have ignored the above link I found from Jan 23. So I’m guessing they are not going to solve it.
That leaves me with the “solution” to leave site5 for another web hosting site. One that is full service in the email host department as well. Does anyone have recommendations? Basically I code my web site in HTML directly, put it on a server, and maintain an email address at that server site to handle hobby related mailing list emails as opposed to my main Goggle email.
Is leaving them my best option? Or are there other solutions?
Thanks, John
TL;DR: move your mailbox to a competent provider that specializes in email.
Separate your webhosting from your email service. Unless they are some rare unicorn that excels at both, there is no good reason for them to be from the same provider. Most webhosting providers suck at email, cheap webhosts even more so.
Site5 is an EIG/Newfold Digital brand, just like the all of the other providers that exhibit the symptoms you are experiencing. If you don’t already know EIG’s abysmal reputation, it won’t take much searching online to become familiar with it.
Whether or not you should move your webhosting elsewhere is out of scope for this forum. That said, no one should be using them for email. It is not a service that they know how to run properly.
[Apols for OT, but it was requested…]
For what it’s worth, I personally use, and strongly recommend https://www.mythic-beasts.com/ for email hosting, DNS, domain reg, etc (they also have other offerings). Good services, reasonable prices, excellent support. No connection other than as their customer.