Configuring your Email Program

Complete instructions for setting up email accounts

Please choose your email program from the following list for instructions on how to set up your email account on your computer:

Using the relay server for outgoing (SMTP) mail

If you are authorised to use the relay server at relay.niner.net, please see Configure your Email Account to Use the Relay Server.

Troubleshooting

There are four issues that we commonly deal with regarding email, all problems with sending email and all related to anti-spam measures either installed on your server or used by your ISP:

Your email program might be configured with the wrong SMTP port: If, when trying to send email, you receive an error displayed by your email program that refers to a block list, your email program is not configured correctly. Please click the link above that corresponds to your email program and go through your settings very carefully to ensure that your email program is correctly configured to use port 465 over SSL for SMTP -- i.e., sending email through the outgoing mail server. If you do not have this configured correctly, your email program will use the default public SMTP port (25), and you will very likely be blocked from using this port to send email. If you are authorised to use the relay server to send email but get a "server not found" type of error, please ensure that you follow the instructions to use port 587 (without SSL) for your outgoing (SMTP) mail server.
Your ISP might be preventing you from using your own SMTP server to send email: Some Internet service providers (ISP) use an anti-spam technique called "port 25 blocking". If you find that you can connect to your server to download incoming email, but you cannot connect to send outgoing email, this may be the cause. The instructions linked to above already take this into consideration, bypassing your ISP's blocking of port 25. Please ensure that you follow these instructions carefully.
An anti-spam technique used on your server might be preventing you from sending email: NinerNet employs an anti-spam technique on your server called "POP before SMTP" to prevent spammers and other unauthorised people from using your mail server. This technique requires that you successfully manage to check an existing email account on your server for messages (even if there are no messages in the account) before you are then allowed to send email through your mail server. Once you have successfully checked for mail, you are then allowed to send email from your IP address for a period measured in minutes -- usually 20. If, when you try to send email, you get an error message that refers to "relaying" or says, "Sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts", then you need to check your email account (i.e., check for new incoming messages) and then try again to send your outgoing email. To avoid running into this error you can set your email program to check for incoming mail every ten minutes (if you have an always-on Internet connection), or make sure you check for email as soon as you connect and before sending (if you have a dial-up connection).
Are you using Outlook 2002?: Outlook 2002 has numerous known issues, both with SSL connections and with remembering passwords. Because of all the problems associated with this version of Outlook, we cannot support its use with the email services provided by NinerNet. Please either upgrade to a more recent version of Outlook (or even downgrade to an older version) or use a different program altogether. (To find out what version of Outlook you have, click "Help" then "About Microsoft Office Outlook" [the exact wording may vary] in the help menu.)

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